Opening Night Anxiety Reaches Wuthering Heights

5 p.m. last Thursday.

The 30 bizarrely dressed members of the cast of Wuthering Heights are crammed into the Loeb theatre's Green Room. They have three hours until the curtain goes up, and no one is happy about it.

Director Alek P. Keshishian '86 has been reading his notes on mistakes at the dress rehearsal to the actors for 45 minutes. The litany of missed cues, out of place actors, sloppy blocking and other theatrical errors, great and small, will go on for another 45 minutes before he releases most of the cast for dinner. Meanwhile, the theatrical crew scrambles to place new lights and put some freshly developed slides into the carousels.

An opening night in the theater is ordinarily a state of controlled disaster. But Wuthering Heights is no ordinary show. Subtitled "A Pop Myth," the setting and costumes are an amalgam of Victorian Gothic and MTV Modernism, and almost all the dialogue has been replaced by lip-synching to pop songs by the likes of Sting and Kate Bush. Keshishian has transformed Catherine, Heathcliff, and Linton from English nobility to pop stars, and added supporting characters like an agent (Nicholas C. Bienstock '88) and a washed up singer (Mona A. Khalil '87).

While most of the cast is eating dinner, Keshishian and stage mangager Julia K. Moskin '89 work from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. with the principles: Catherine (Julie J. Glucksman '87), Heathcliff (Michael K. Allio '86), and narrator Nelly Dean (Amy F. Brenneman '86).

In the last 48 hours, Wuthering Heights has been transformed from a messy collection of badly lighted dance numbers into a real show; but there has not been time for a complete runthrough, so no one knows what it will look like as a whole.

By 7 p.m. the cast is back in the dressing rooms for make-up. "Green lipstick is so awful," moans an extra. "Anyone want some glitter?" asks Khalil. Crosses and lightning are painted on cheeks, while Bienstock wanders around the room begging for brown eyeliner.

Everyone is aware of the shaky state of the show. "I'm in a brillian frame of mind," says extra Susan L. Kelly '87. "I think we're in the best position," she says to fellow extra Monica O. Sams '88, "because we just have to be amusing."

"Amusing as shit!" replied another cast member.

Up in the control room lighting cues are still a source of controversy. Keshishian checks the slide system. "The slide projectors are just not that hot, and we don't have the money to rent the real good ones," says Keshishian. He notices that one of the slides is out of order. "This is the sort of thing that has be fixed," he tells the control room crew.

"We have stayed up night after night after night after night to try to get the system going," Keshishian says later. "Patching is a problem because the American Repertory Theater takes away half their dimmers to the Hast Pudding.... The problem is that it's a show that relies very heavily on technical elements because it's about pictures."

At 7:35 p.m. Keshishian goes around the dressing rooms, reassuring actors, approving costumes and kissing all the female cast members. When someone points out that his lips have been covered with glitter, he suggests renaming the show Wuthering Heights: A Glitter Lips.

Upstairs in the Green Room Bienstock, Debbie E. Copaken '88 (Isabella), Evan E. Seevak '89 (Hindley), and David Silver '88 (Mr. Earnshaw) wait around. "I want to know the backstage superstitions," says Copaken.

"You can't say the name of the Scottish play, you're not supposed to use real flowers or feathers..." says Silver.

"What Scottish play?" asks Copaken.

"The Scottish play by Shakespeare," says Bienstock. "Macbeth," says Seevak. "You just spoiled tonite's performance by saying it," says Silver.

Wuthering Heights kept the large audience

Wuthering Heights kept the largeaudience waiting almost a half hour as the"techies" tried to correct last minute problemswith the lights and slides. But once the showbegan it became clear that the slide projectorswere going to refuse to work no matter what.

The other parts of the show were working,barely. The soundtrack was recorded in advance, sowhen "Dress You Up" started up, Glucksman had tobe on stage, stuck zipper or no stuck zipper. Sothe actors sometimes moved about in darkness.Spotlights appeared where they were not supposedto be. Blackouts took too long. Brennemanfrequently improvised narration to cover thetechnical problems.

Wuthering Heights has had difficultiesfrom the start. Keshishian's unusual approachraised many eyebrows at the Harvard RadcliffeDramatic Club, which hasn't chosen a studentwritten or adapted show in years. Even aftergaining approval, Keshishian underwent a 50 minutegrilling by the faculty committee, which spentonly seven minutes over the other Mainstage show.The jokes and derision, combined with a veryprofessional PR campaign, have given WutheringHeights the highest profile of any mainstageshow in years; it's the first in memory to belisted in the Boston Globe Calendar.

It's 9:30 p.m., and intermission. People seemedto be enjoying what they saw even if they didn'tfully understand it. "It's surprisingly good,"admitted a former boyfriend of Glucksman's whoasked not to be identified.

The second half went better, a succession ofstrong numbers culminating in Copaken'shypercharged "Too Turned On," which garnered anovation from the audience. But the thread of thestory started to unwind as the cast tried to coverfor a series of lighting snafus, malfunctioningmikes and absent slides that clarify the meaningof the lyrics.

The show ended with "Wuthering Heights" by KateBush, the song that inspired the project. "When Iheard the song," said Keshishian, "it just struckme--not to get too intellectual about the wholething--as really beautiful, and that there wassomething really cool about the fact that therewas this modern singer singing this song thatbrought to life the book."

After the show cast members and the audiencemingled in a lobby reception. The response wascautiously positive, though the test will comethis week, when reviewers and those who have paidto see the show turn up. The cast dribbled away tobars or to bed; Keshishian acceptedcongratulations, confered with the crew and then headed home to work with Brenneman on the narration.

Correction: April 8, 1986

Due to a reporting error, a quotation in an April 5 article entitled "Opening Nights Anxiety Reaches Wuthering Heights" was incorrectly attributed. The statement attributed to Monica D. Sams '87 was made by another cast member.