A Sucker Born Every Minute

You might remember one of the memorable episodes in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn—the stunt pulled by the characters known as “the Duke” and “the King,” scam artists Huck runs into while rafting on the Mississippi.  

The pair rent out a theater and then advertise a performance of a show they call "The Royal Nonesuch," to which women and children are not to be admitted. Naturally, all of the men in town—expecting some X-rated action—buy up the tickets, only to learn they have been hoodwinked when all they get for their money is the sight of “the King” prancing in his birthday suit across the stage. 

Tonight, I felt like one of Mr. Twain’s suckers. 

I attended what was advertised to be a performance of Tennessee Williams’ seldom-produced play, In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, at the New World Stages.  I am a long-time admirer of Williams’ work and welcomed the opportunity to see this play about an artist barely clinging to his sanity.   

So…the audience is sitting there 15 minutes past curtain time, with nothing but a makeshift set suggestive of a bar to look at, when out bounces someone who introduces herself as Maria Torres, the director/choreographer. 

Ms. Torres announces that they will be unable to perform the play because a member of the cast was not able to go on (whether due to sickness or injury was unclear, at least to me).  However, she didn’t want us to leave empty-handed; instead she wanted to share with us a bit of what it was we would have seen if we had, indeed, seen it. 

She awkwardly read aloud a couple of paragraphs from the program and explained how they had intended to embellish the play with bits of choreography and works of art to make the production more multi-dimensional (as if Tennessee Williams were incapable of accomplishing this through his use of language).  She then brought out a couple of performers who gave us two very brief segments of under-rehearsed (improvised?) choreographed movement. 

The whole thing lasted perhaps ten minutes, including a very lengthy pause between the first and second fragment. 

And that was it.  Ms. Torres sent us on our merry way, expressing the hope that we had been sufficiently intrigued to come back when things were up and running. 

Members of the audience were dumbfounded.  And no one on the staff at New World Stages would take any responsibility for this fiasco, which they were surely aware of long before we all showed up. One couple I spoke with said they had understood the actors would be performing with scripts in hand.  I also overheard someone else saying some ticketholders had been contacted earlier in the day about the pending cancellation.  

In any event, we were marched out to the exit without so much as a sheepish apology—much less the offer of a refund or rain check. 

I must say, in over fifty years of theatergoing, I’ve never experienced anything like this.  Yes, there have been canceled shows, but these have always been accompanied with apologies and refunds or tickets for another performance.   

Not this time. 

Caveat Emptor, everyone!

Feel free to tell your friends about this blog, and to share your own theater stories by posting a comment.