The Show Must Go On Local Actors And Actresses Forget About Broken Limbs And Giant Slivers For The Sake Of Great Theater.

The world of theater is subject to all of the laws of physics, and also, unfortunately, to Murphy’s Law:

Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.

Over the long history of Spokane theater, plenty of things have gone wrong. These things have ranged from the comical (the horse that relieved itself on stage) to the tragic (the death of a cast member). The rest are somewhere in between, and most of them can best be summed up by this rough plot outline: Key cast member gets sick/injured/drunk/arrested. Unsuspecting actor/stage hand/stranger is handed a script. Result is a triumph/disaster.

Comical or tragical, the one common element in all of these stories is: The show must go on. It sounds like a cliche, but in theater, it truly is a sacred creed. As we shall see, it’s a creed that applies in the silliest and saddest of circumstances.

Here are a few anecdotes from Spokane’s stage history:

The Incontinent Horse: “The Music Man” was being performed in 1980 at the Spokane Opera House with a cast of over 100 actors and one trained horse.

At least, everyone thought it was a trained horse. This gray nag, which pulled the Wells Fargo wagon, was guaranteed “never to have an accident or commit any kind of felonies on stage,” according to Fritzi and Bill Cahill, who were both in the cast.

“We ran three nights, and every night - EVERY NIGHT that horse made a monstrous puddle,” said Fritzi Cahill. “It was a splash, not a trickle. The audience would snicker and giggle, but some of the actors on stage had to hop around this. Some of them actually had to step through it.”

But, troupers all, they went right on with their scenes, although the mikes occasionally picked up the voices of the children in the cast muttering, “Yuk.”

As for that horse, well, every performer gets stage fright. However, most performers know how to control it better.

The Limping Nun: Jean Hardie, one of Spokane’s most talented actresses, was whooping it up as the Mother Superior during the first performance of “Nunsense” in 1990 at the Spokane Civic Theatre. During one particularly rambunctious move, she landed wrong and popped a muscle in the back of her calf.

“I had to go back and finish the number by tap-dancing on my one good foot,” said Hardie, who was in excruciating pain.

After having her calf taped during intermission, she limped out for the second act on a cane. The audience thought it was part of the act, and Hardie began to improvise all kinds of shtick with the cane. The leg healed within a few weeks, but the cane stayed in the play. In fact, the cane even came back for the revival and for the sequel.

“That cane became part of the character,” she said.

Attached to the Set: Charles Kenfield, a local actor, director and composer, was in an Eastern Washington University production in the early ‘80s. In one scene, he was supposed to run up a flight of stairs, collapse and slide down.

In the course of sliding down, he impaled his leg on a big splinter of plywood, about 2 inches long and the diameter of pencil. He couldn’t move.

“I found myself uncomfortably attached to the set,” said Kenfield. “Somehow or other, I managed not to scream. I realized what I had done, and I was able to break it off and finish the play.”

But that nasty dagger of wood was still in his leg.

“You just re-focus, that’s all you can do,” he said. “The character was supposed to be in severe emotional pain anyway, so maybe it was Stanislavski method-acting taken to the extreme.”

The Ghost of the Emergency Room: Chuck Burmingham was playing Fezziwig in “A Christmas Carol” at the Spokane Civic Theatre in 1986 when he tripped over a platform trying to make an entrance. He fell heavily on his arm. He knew immediately that it was broken.

“Instead of having the sense to get help, I said `The show must go on,’ and I went on and did my lines and did my dance,” said Burmingham. “The kids in the scene could tell something was wrong. The only one who didn’t realize was my dance partner, who kept grabbing my arm. It almost killed me.”

As soon as the scene was over, he convinced Marley’s Ghost to drive him to the emergency room. They were both still in costume.

“Here was a guy dressed like Marley’s Ghost and a guy dressed like Fezziwig wandering through the emergency room. I’m sure they wondered …

“I told them, `I think I broke it.’ They said, `Oh, yeah. The bone’s sticking out. You broke it, all right.”’

The show finished its run with a new Fezziwig.

No Time to Grieve: Kersten Anne Conrad had just landed a role in “South Pacific” at the Civic Theatre in 1988, her first lead role.

In the middle of the run, she received a devastating phone call: Her brother, age 38, had died unexpectedly.

“I was completely numb,” she said. “I didn’t want to do the show. I just wanted to stay on the couch and cry.”

Yet her director told her that the performance would be therapeutic. Instead of therapeutic, she found it to be excruciating. The last thing she wanted to be was the perky Nurse Forbush.

“I did the show by rote,” she said. “My goal was to get to the finale.”

She dedicated the rest of the performances to her brother, but it was one of the hardest things she’s ever had to do.

“I never really got to grieve in the proper sense,” said Conrad. “But the show is a commitment.”

The Death of a Cast Member: Jean Hardie was directing “The Music Man” at the Spokane Civic Theatre in 1988 when she learned the devastating news: Larry Strawbridge, who was playing the mayor, had died in a car accident.

Hardie and the rest of the cast were stunned, but they never for a minute thought about canceling the next evening’s performance. Instead, she asked her husband Peter Hardie if he could take over the part. He was the show’s set and light designer, and he had actually served as a stand-in for Strawbridge during one of the earlier rehearsals. So Peter Hardie crammed for the part and went on the next night. The audience did not know the reason for the substitution.

“He made a few mistakes, but the character was such a bumbling blowhard, his mistakes were not noticed,” said Jean Hardie.

Maybe it sounds cold to go on with the show in those circumstances, but theater people will understand. Hardie said Strawbridge would have wanted them to carry on and would have been shocked at the idea that they wouldn’t.

“Larry was a theater person all of his life,” said Hardie. “He was an old pro. Theater people really do pride themselves on being able to go on.”

As for paying him their respects, that’s exactly what they did that night. That performance, said Hardie, was their tribute to Larry Strawbridge.