*Don't Dress for Dinner* review

Hubby wants to shag his mistress, needs to get Wifey out of the house. Wifey discovers that a Cute Young Thing is coming over to cook dinner (suspicious, that). Then Wifey learns that her own lover — conveniently enough for our plot, he’s Hubby’s Best Pal — will also soon be arriving.
The name of the game in *Don’t Dress for Dinner,* then, is Mutual Deception: Wifey and Hubby are each trying to get some quick nookie before the other finds out.
But they don’t get much nookie. And what they do get isn’t quick in, er, coming.
But that’s in the nature of farce: frustrations, complications, recriminations, all in good fun.

Playwright Marc Camoletti’s character manipulation is almost algebraic: A matched with C is much naughtier than A matched with B, especially if D takes an interest in both B and C.
Once the cook goes through pretending to be not the cook but an actress, or else someone’s niece, or else somebody’s mistress — and just before she goes back, drunkenly, to being a cook again — playgoers are going to find their intellects disengaged, unhinged. When plots and counterplots are this convoluted, you can’t figure them out, at least not in the moment. So turn off your brain: You’re just along for the ride.
It’s like playtime for adults who may once have had a lascivious thought or two (which is to say, all of us).

As Bernard the Hubby — who’s always *thisclosetogettingcaught* — Scott Miller is particularly good at quicksilver changes from pretend-contentment to anguish: “Oh, good,” he smiles, brightly; “Oh, God,” he moans, miserably.
As Jacqueline the Wifey — sometimes scorned, so beware the hell of her fury — Leigh Sandness snakes an arm up a column, strikes poses and gets all raspy-voiced in indignation. But she doesn’t usually overdo it, which is important.
Comedy’s funniest when the actors play it seriously. For them, the stakes are high, and mugging for comedic effect just won’t do. It’s for those of us in the audience to giggle at what fools these lecherous mortals be.
So in the opening scene, when Hubby and Wifey are making their separate tryst-arrangements, what if there were less in the way of guilty grimaces and anxious finger-chewing? We’d still get the point, and the characters would seem less like cartoons.

In the meantime, someone (like director Thomas Heppler) needs to tell Shawna Nordman (as the cook) that mincing hands and continual eyeglass-adjustment convey anxiety, and that while mincing hands and continual eyeglass-adjustment may be funny the first three times, they stop making sense once the cook gains leverage on the men and a position of relative power.
Nordman still makes a delightful drunk, though, and she gets to wear one outfit — designed by Dee Finan and her team of costumers — that’s just about perfect for farce: Right before our eyes, it transforms from way too prudish to nearly too revealing to just-about-right sexy.

David Baker’s set design stuffs paintings and sculptures by local artists into the interior of an exposed-timber French farmhouse that’s nearly as eccentric as the characters running around inside it.
At its two-and-a-quarter-hour length (including intermission), *Don’t Dress* could use a trim: Nobody can keep laughing that long, and a comedy with so much extended and multiple role-playing requires a lot of time for explaining who’s playing which role now. And you know what they say about explaining jokes.
The finale of *Don’t Dress for Dinner,* though, is clear enough. The husband has been sleeping around, and the wife knows it; the wife has been sleeping around, and the husband knows it; and at play’s end, they come to an understanding that in the midst of all this philandering, their marriage will go on.
Sounds like spouse-swapping to me — which, in light of recent events at the Civic, is interesting. Funny how what’s titillating and giggly on stage is grounds for firing people off it.
But then farce, for all its artificiality, is like that: It acknowledges our sexual waywardness, then contains those desires within societal norms. Hubby and Wifey acknowledge their flaws, keep them private and reconcile. Maybe even comedies have something to teach us.

*Don’t Dress for Dinner* • Thurs-Sat 7:30 pm, Sun 2 pm, through Jan. 30 • $21; $19, seniors; $16, students; $8, student rush • The Civic • 1020 N. Howard St. • spokanecivictheatre.com • 325-2507 or (800) 325-SEAT

20 Questions with Tom Heppler (continued)

(Thomas Heppler, right, as Marcus Lycus, with Jerry Sciarrio as Pseudolus, in Diana Trotter's production at Spokane Civic Theater of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, May-June 2009)

Bobo: You get to take a semester course in one of the following: voice, set design, choreography, costume design or lighting design. Which do you choose, and why? What would you expect to learn?
Tom Heppler: Well, I can't dance 'cause I'm too white. Set design, I used to do. Voice, I don't really know. I mean, I took choir and that kind of thing. But I don't have an ear for it -- I just work really hard instead. God help me, singing is the hardest thing for me to master.

Bobo: Tell me a little about Harding in Cuckoo’s Nest. Your performance is wonderful. What discoveries about him have you made in rehearsal? How much has the part been cut for the one-hour competition version?

Tom Heppler: … and you have to come up with character choices that still work. But Harding was one of those great parts that I really wanted to do.

In Lonely Planet, the first time I walked out onstage and met Troy’s character — that was living the moment. That was really nice.

about not making it to regionals with Cuckoo’s Nest:
“You know, in the past, it was always, ‘Oh, Spokane wins all the time.’ So there was a lot of, ‘Oh, Spokane’s coming, so we’re not coming.’ But there you go, that’s the way it is.”
When we went to nationals with Assassins — to be totally objective [smiles], we should’ve been first. Crowns won, and it was a nice musical revue of gospel tunes. But there are about 10 criteria that the judges are supposed to evaluate you on, and whether or not the cuts are suitable is one of them. And we were the only one who made any cuts. Other productions were just of a single act, or scenes.”


What do you think to yourself just before you go onstage?
On opening nights, I always get very emotional, for I wish my parents were still around to see how I developed, how I ... [gets teary-eyed] ... completed stuff.
But talking about these things gets me all verklempt.
On other nights, I have my script, I look at my notes -- every night. I look at my script for I KNOW.
And I need my downtime. On show nights, I take a nap from 5:30-6:30 pm. Everyone at the Civic knows that I have to do that. They even have a special blanket for me.
You take a nap in the green room?
It's much nicer since they remodeled down there.
But failing that, I have to find a hole to hide in, a corner to stand in. People come up and want to talk, but I'm all, "Bye-bye, I need to focus here."


I’ve gathered half a dozen passages from reviews in which I’ve mentioned Tom Heppler. (This can be a scary process, for both of us. Frankly, I’d forgotten you were in, or directed, a couple of these shows. Also frankly: I cringe when I think of how kind and gracious you are in person, and how I’ve criticized you in print. We all love theater, and love to talk about it. Here’s a chance, admittedly rather awkward, years later, for you to tell off that damn critic and let him know what you really think. Or not.)

I Do! I Do! at the Civic, May ’04
As Michael, the husband in this two-character show, Thomas Heppler was unburdening himself of his complaints against his middle-aged wife Agnes (played by Jan Neumann). He had just announced his opinion that women, when they approach their “matron station / Begin a certain process of deterioration.”
The audience – the women mostly, but not entirely – hollered and booed, discombobulating poor Heppler, who had to find his bearings and soldier on.
The show had just admitted, in effect, how stale, sexist and out of touch it is.

Rocket Man at CenterStage, Feb. 2005:
As Donny, the focal character, Heppler is just wacky enough to be the guy who tosses out every last one of his possessions -- but we miss the desperation of a man who just ... might ... do anything to rid himself of disappointment.

as director of Spinning Into Butter by Rebecca Gilman, at the Civic’s Studio:
Still, during a hopeful phone call that concludes the play, director Thomas Heppler has chosen wisely: Even as she engages in some peacemaking, Utter stands awkwardly, ensnared by the telephone cord that coils around her.

My Fair Lady at the Civic, Sept. ’05:
(after a long opening section about how wonderful Kendra Kimball and David Gigler were as Eliza Doolittle and her father, I included the following near the end)
… this Lady's second act sometimes fell flat. Heppler's portrayal of Higgins doesn't help. He has the fussiness, the devil-may-care single-mindedness of a British academic, but problems crop up in the first act in "I'm an Ordinary Man," when both the vocal and instrumental attacks on the chorus ("but put a woman in your life") were weak. On exit lines like "damn you!" and "let the hellcat freeze!" (both aimed at Eliza), Heppler wasn't convincing or irate enough.
Heppler doesn't quite catch the ambiguity of the medley of tunes (and emotions) that his character is supposed to express in among snippets of "You Did It" and "Without You" and the famous "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face." The wavering -- will he surmount his own selfishness and grow in much the same way Eliza transformed herself? -- isn't quite there yet. But Heppler does achieve real pathos -- in his finest moment of the entire evening -- when, caught in that same spotlight, he makes the final refrain of "Accustomed to Her Face" feel like a breakthrough moment: At last, the confirmed bachelor isn't quite sure of just how confirmed he is.

Assassins, Civic Studio, Feb. ’07:
(in the midst of a near-rave, I singled you out for criticism)
Thomas Heppler’s Proprietor, like [Andrew] Ware-Lewis at times, isn’t projecting nearly enough vocally. A couple of dramatic ring-the-carnival-bell moments don’t register because Heppler seems hesitant.

Laughing Stock, Jan. 2008 at the Civic:
Some portions of the evening, however, are slower and flatter. As the artistic director, Thomas Heppler has some cell-phone conversations with the theater's patroness that don't underline or time the jokes well.

Oklahoma! at the Civic, Oct. ’08:
Thomas Heppler’s Persian peddler does delightful slow burns and comic double-takes.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Jan. ’09 at the Civic:
As Harding, the leader of the wacked-out inmates, Thomas Heppler shines, showing off with his hands and his vocabulary (but ineffectually). In one sequence, Heppler makes the transition from trying to laugh off his sexual neurosis to angrily denouncing the woman who worsened it. (The audience simply laughed. But the pain was real.)

Tom Heppler: Sometimes I feel in your reviews, when you mention ARt or even Interplayers, you treat them as if they are of a different caliber. But all three, at least now, are community theaters. They don't offer Equity contracts, or only seldom. I've seen stuff at Interplayers or Actors Rep, and there seemed to be some more credibility given to them that is not justified in many ways. They're not LORT or regional theaters.

It's interesting to see what you say. But sometimes I'll go, "Oh, yeah, that's what he said. Well, screw it. It's what one guy thinks." But it's always interesting to see your comments vs. Jim's comments.
Civilians will always look at it from a pure entertainment point of view. I try not to see it from an actor's point of view.


I know from Troy's experience with Spokane Theatrical Group that theaters are hard to run. Because you're on your own, trying to get people on the board, to fund-raise. Everybody just wants to perform. The business of show business is a lot of work.
I rememember when Troy did Peter Pan at the Met, he couldn't get anybody to build the sets. So I said, "I'll do it." I built 'em in my backyard. And he came out and looked at 'em and said, "Son of a bitch, you did it."

When I'm directing, I always bring in non-theater people, just to get an opinion -- and it's always useful.

I've learned something new on every new show. Once you think you're good ...
But when I'm at an audition, and I see a reading that's a brilliant idea, I steal it, sure.

On My Fair Lady, Carol Miyamoto taught me that I didn't know what theater was. She said, "You will learn it and sing it as it was written. And then I will let you play with it." Well, that scared the hell out of me. But I learned it, note-perfect.
On "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face," he grows to care for her, realizes that it's been more of a father-daughter relationship. He realizes that he's been an asshole. So I wanted it to be more heartfelt at the end.

Do you ever just watch a show (or a movie)? Or, as an actor, do you often think to yourself, “Oh, I would have done that scene in an entirely different way”?
It takes 10 years to be an actor. It's not until you really start to listen -- it's all in the way you say it back [to the other actor].
So it's a craft that can take a long time to learn.
But some people come to it naturally. I asked Amanda Plummer once, for example, "Why are you still in school?" She was just 17, but she was brilliant.
I worked with an actor once who complained, "Every night, you do it differently." But I haven't really changed anything consciously. It how the line comes out. If I'm listening to my fellow actors, I don't change it purposefully. I just say it differently or interpret it differently according to what I've just heard.

In your experience, are the best actors the ones who are all intense backstage, or the ones who fool around?
Commitment to the project is important. The people who I see in this area who are very good are the ones who focus. The ones who are always bouncing around are not as good.

I had a teacher in college who said, "You're not a very talented actor. Let me rephrase that: You're going to have to work your butt off to get what other people get naturally."
So that's what you do.

After getting 10 years' experience, I realized that it depends on the character. If you yell at me, I may laugh at you. Someone told me once, If you're in a drama, look for the comedy. If you're angry, look for the humor. If you have to cry, dont' cry.
If I see people fake-crying onstage, I get really mad.
Not screaming can be more scary than if somebody screams. Besides, it hurts your ears and becomes annoying.

Who do you admire around here?
Troy [Nickerson], as far as being a director. He takes stuff like the musical Christmas Carol that with Kelsey Grammer was just absolute dreck and makes it gorgeous. And Melody [Deatherage] and Kathie [Doyle-Lipe] and George Green, Paul Villabrille, Damon Mentzer, Patrick McHenry-Kroetch -- with all of them, I don't know how they do what they do, but they're all amazing.

I'm 52. That means I've been doing this for 32 years. And I plan to keep doing it as long as my memory holds up.
I'll tell you one thing about middle age: It takes longer to memorize your lines. But you have your tricks...
When Michael Muzatko brought his high school kids here, I was working on my lines, and he wanted them to see what I do.
I write out all my lines -- no punctuation, no spacing, just in one big block of text. And I learn 'em that way. I trained that way, so that there'd be no inflection on a line.
The kids were very good -- they ask the best questions.


It's not theater unless ...
Unless you have an audience.
But do you actually enjoy applause at the end of a show -- really enjoy it? Because it always makes me feel a little self-conscious.
Yeah, I do. I enjoy the applause. But these people who see theater seldom, or at the Fox -- they stand up at the end of every show. A standing ovation should be a very rare experience -- though it's lovely when it happens spontaneously. With Godspell, with Assassins, you can tell -- they jump to their feet before the last note is played.

Sometimes actors will say, “Oh, but we didn’t get a standing ovation tonight. And I go, ‘Yeah, so?”
I saw that play about the three couples grieving — this was on Broadway — what’s it called?
The Shadow Box?
Yes, and at the end, the people just sat there. The actors came out, and each couple bowed, and it was silent. And it wasn’t until they took their group bows that the audience started applauding.
Just stunned silence ...
And when I saw that, I just went, ‘Whoa, that is cool.’”
When I saw Angels in America in L.A., it was like that. So I was very glad when they did the Reading Stage version of that at the Civic, because I really wanted to play that role.

“You know when they should be standing up, and you know when you don’t deserve it. You know when it rips.”

In a lot of the productions at Spokane Civic Theater that Tom Heppler has been in, it has ripped. He's a class act, and he's one of the pillars of the local theater community.

20 Questions with Tom Heppler

Tom Heppler is currently appearing as Marcus Lycus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at Spokane Civic Theatre (through Sunday). He works as the administrative assistant to one of the executive VPs at Sterling Bank.

{ Bobo note: After a whole series of e-mail snafus and malfunctioning tape recorders and -- oh, you know, just life getting in the way -- this interview is finally appearing, four months (!) after I first sent questions to Tom. So you'd better enjoy it. Or else. }

What’s your first theatrical memory? What show made you think, “I’m impressed by theater”? And what (different?) show made you think, “I want to get involved in doing theater”?

In 1976, I saw my first real show. We had season tickets to the Golden Gate Theater in San Francisco, and we saw A Chorus Line. I was about 20. We got the better of the two casts that were doing the national tour at that time — in L.A. and San Francisco, we got Donna McKechnie. My sister and I sat in the third tier, way up high, and I was blown away. My sister said, "I don't know what was more fun — watching the play or watching you.

What kind of theater did you do in high school? And in college?

I was going to community college in the Bay Area and doing a business major, but I kept switching to the theater classes. And my report card came home and my father asked, "What the hell are you doing?"

I knew I wanted to major in theater. I checked out Sanford Meisner, Lee Strassberg -- and they only sent two students a year

Well, I didn’t get that, but I asked the instructor, could you get me in the summer class at the Neighborhood Theater, a six-week summer program. And for the full year, I got in myself. I was 22.

I liked the Playhouse: it was three hours of acting, an hour and half of voice.

I had gotten into UCLA and UC Irvine and Juilliard, but that experience is what made me into an actor. It was a two-year program, and they cut from 100 kids down to 25. Well, I didn’t make the cut. That’s when I learned that theater is political. But there were amazing people in my class: Amanda Plummer, Chris Noth....

So you went from not seeing or doing much theater at all, to seeing Chorus Line in ‘76, to attending community college in the Bay Area and going after theater full-bore.

I told my parents I was leaving and was going to New York. I was naive and stupid. I had never been in a big city. I was in telephone sales -- I was in school from 9 to 6, and then I would work from 7 to 3 in the morning.

How could you work in the middle of the night?

It was all time zones.

Other than theater, what are your hobbies?

Gardening. I have five acres up by Mount Spokane High School.

What’s coming up now?

Not much. [laughs] My trees are going up. But even though I’ve lived up there for 10 years now, the coyotes and the moose and the deer — they scare me.

And I do woodworking I restore furniture, but I haven’t had much time for that lately. Just for stuff around my house.

You have tremors, shaky hands. What’s your diagnosis and prognosis?

I’ve gotten so that when kids ask — and kids do ask — I tell them it’s because I eat too much Jell-o.

And their eyes get big, and they’re satisified with that.

It’s just a family characteristic that comes from my father’s side of the family. Sometimes I make it do that for a character I'm playing, and it's funny — sometimes onstage, they won't shake when I want them to, and I have to make it work.

Most inspiring place you’ve visited outside the United States?

Venice, Italy. It's incredibly charming. Like the Bay Area, it's all built on landfill. There are entire towns built on piers that are still there after hundreds of years. All the first floors are shut off because of flooding. The people are beautiful and the city was amazing, but very dirty.

My favorite place right now ... next October, I'm going to Egypt to cruise up the Nile, a 17-day cruise. I've tried going to Egypt three times before, but the State Department shut down the visas.

Why the interest in Egypt?

It's where civilization started. I've always been fascinated to see that part of the world.

Let's change topics. For someone in your life, you’re not as good a friend as you should be. For some other individual, you’ve been a really good friend. Discuss.

Well, I have very few friends but quite a lot of acquaintances. I think of friends as the people who, when you really need something done right now, they'll come over. I have friends I've known for 25 years, and I have friends I've known for six months. It's just a bond that you get over time.

Who’s your hero? Do you have any former heroes who, for you at least, have fallen off their pedestals?

"Heroes" -- I don't really like the term. I mean, these sports people or actors or politicians, and everyone regards them as heroes ... I just don't get it. Anybody can be a hero in the situation -- the mom who lifts the car off the kid.

What mildly (or wildly) popular activity, sport or pastime holds just about zero interest for you personally? Why?

I'm not much into sports. I just find it boring as shit -- all those egos running around on that little field.

Tell me a little about Harding in Cuckoo’s Nest. Your performance is wonderful. What discoveries about him have you made in rehearsal? How much has the part been cut for the one-hour competition version?

This is the fifth one I've done. For a competition show, the director cuts it down, then runs it, then cuts it down some more. It usually takes three cuts to get it down to its essence.

Then you have to learn all the lines again, sometimes from a different point of view, because the dialogue that supported that transition earlier is not there. So you come up with different character choices.

I never audition for a show that I don't want to do.

For example, I auditioned for Harding while I was in costume and makeup for Ali Hakim upstairs in Oklahoma! But I just wasn't getting it. I wasn't focused. And it wasnt until the third time that it clicked. Yvonne even said to me at one point, I didn't think you were going to get it.

Diana let me read for both parts in Lonely Planet. That's the only show in which I've kept open, doing and changing things all the way through. It was never dull.

React to the following in whatever way you see fit, Tom.

Bowen’s reviews are too long. They’re too snooty. He plays favorites. He has little understanding of Aspects A, B and C of theater. He shouldn’t single out individual performers for criticisms. He’s too easy to please. He’s way too negative. He fixates on little details. He talks too much about theater in the abstract. He has a funny mustache. He’s too bald. I don’t like the way he breathes.

Oh, reviews ... everybody says they don't read them, but they read them.

It's just your opinion, or Jim [Kershner]'s opinion.
It's odd, in no other profession do they have anybody reviewing them publically.

But it's all just part of the gig. I don't take them that seriously.

Another sticky wicket – this time, about this very blog. What’s your reaction to the following?

Comments on this blog go through me. I reject about 10 percent to 20 percent of them. My criterion: If a comment is purely negative and personal, it doesn’t get in. If, however, it’s critical of an individual but also raises a valid opinion about a show or a performance, then I allow it to be posted. For technical reasons and for the foreseeable future, apparently, anonymous commenters on this blog (as distinct from the Inlander Website in general) will be able to remain anonymous and won’t be required to register with a traceable pseudonym like “Spokane Theater Nut.”

I don't like all the negative comments on the blog. People are uglier when they're anonymous. They'll always be competive. There will always be jealousies. But I don't like it when they get into the personal stuff. I mean, Are you really gonna go there? And besides, if you don't like the personality, you can still like the work. Actors are very egotistical and very insecure ...

... no?!

And sometimes, we don't edit ourselves [laughs].

But I don't read the blog much. I don't have a computer at home, and I'm on the damn thing all day at work, so I don't really care. We all rely too much on technology.

Think of “funniest backstage moments that I’ve experienced or witnessed in Spokane theater.” Now spill. (You can leave names out of it, but we hope you won’t.)

In Death of a Salesman, I was playing Bernard, and I had a lot of downtime. So I’m down in the dressing room, eating tortilla chips, and I hear Melody [Deatherage] over the intercom, and I realize, ‘Son of a bitch, that’s my cue!’ So I haul ass upstairs, and I make it exactly on time. And Melody gives me my line, and when I start speaking to her, I start spitting tortilla chips all over the stage.

Was it so the audience could notice?

No, I don’t think so. But Melody sure noticed. And I’m thinking, ‘What are you gonna do to hide it?’”

... to be continued ... (as you can probably tell from the formatting alone, assembling this interview has been a bear ...)