Hockey and the Cello

I suppose that it seems like fun to get away from writing about politics and remember silly events of many years ago.  Interestingly, as we now live in a different area since September, and are making brand-new friends, we start describing our lives to each other, recalling and telling stories we had not thought of or told for years.  Some of them are fodder, I guess, for this site.

Back in the 1970s, I was performing in opera, operetta and related theater activities in Boston, before I decided that it was a poor occupational choice to find yourself having to work with actors the rest of one's life.  In one such endeavor, I was performing in a production of the Stephen Sondheim work, "A Little Night Music", the musical based on the play "Smiles of a Summer Night."  Its signature, still often-done song, is "Send in the Clowns."

This work was a fun piece, set in Sweden, still on Broadway then and in road companies around the country.  The musical requires an actor to play Henrik, the 20-year-old son of the protagonist.  Henrik is a seminary student who is quite stressed, and when he is stressed, he plays the cello.   He feels himself to be totally irrelevant, and those around him don't help, ignoring him and constantly responding to his earnestness by telling him, "Later, Henrik" (about which he sings; here is a clip of his song "Later" ... in fact, you need to see it for this story to make sense, but just advance to 0:58 where the song starts). 

Henrik is not an easy part to cast; it requires someone who can fake playing the cello, sure, but more importantly it requires a tenor with a lot of flexibility and some really high notes he can control while looking like he's playing the cello.  And, per the song, he has to be short.

I realized how hard it was to cast when I auditioned for the part as a 26-year-old actor, got called back and realized I was the only person who had been called back for the role (I could actually sing back then).

So we went into rehearsals, and came right down to two days before opening night, with full dress rehearsal the next day.  The cellist in the orchestra, who was from Long Island, had worked very long hours with me to ensure we were in perfect sync on "Later", and it would look for all the world as if I were actually playing (the bow was chemically anesthetized so no sound would come out of it).  Two days before opening, we were in good shape.

Now, it should be pointed out that I am a hockey fan, although that is not relevant for this story.  What is relevant is that both the cellist and the music director (conductor) were also hockey fans.  The music director was John Melnyk, a native of Winnipeg, a very good and nice man who lives back there to this date, as a professor at the university.  The cellist's name, sadly, is long-forgotten.

As luck would have it, an NHL hockey team (Montreal) was playing the New York Islanders on the night before dress rehearsal in that year's Stanley Cup playoffs.  The two of them repaired to one of their respective apartments to watch the game and support their respective teams.  I'm not sure how an NHL playoff game would have been on TV in those days, but it was Boston, so I guess it was a big enough deal to be broadcast, else this story would have died there.

So as luck would have it, and after a beer or four, the conductor and the cellist were anxiously following the game when the Islanders scored a goal that was apparently critical to the outcome of the game (I looked it up; it was an overtime game-winner).  The cellist was ecstatic and, lubricated no doubt by consumed suds, leaped out of his seat with arms raised.

Unfortunately, he had not reckoned with the small gap between his seat and the low ceiling, and in his excitement, slammed his fingers against the ceiling, breaking at least one of them.

I do not doubt that, even if you do not in fact play the cello, you may infer that a broken finger is a total impediment to playing it, as the conductor and the cellist realized on their way to the emergency room to get a cast put on.  You may also infer that, somewhere on that drive, the topic of the show, the performance, and also who was going to tell me that I was going to have to spend the next two days figuring out how to work with a new cellist.

The show, of course, went on; the fractured cellist never recovered in time to take his spot as my accompanist back before the show closed, and the performances of "Later" were, sad to say, never as good and well-timed as they might have been had we gone on with the original cello-playing gentleman in the pit.

Whose name, as I mentioned, is mercifully lost to the ages.

I have told this story for the last forty years.  A year or so ago, it occurred to me that my meandering storytelling style might have led to some embellishment, and that it might be a good thing if I were somehow to circle back with any of the involved principals to see if they remembered it as had I.  So I used the glories of Al Gore's Amazing Internet to locate the conductor, John Melnyk, whom as I mentioned, I assumed to be back in Winnipeg and was thus fairly easy to locate.

I rattled off, in an email, the story above as I recalled it, noting that I was sure to have inadvertently let most of the facts "evolve" over the years.  "How close", I asked him, "did I get the details?", rather assuming that outside of the fact that the cellist broke a finger, the rest might have been a bit factually suspect.  "Was it a pretty big stretch?"

"Nope", the good professor replied, "That's about what happened."

Oh, well, at least I feel better about all the other stories I tell.

Later.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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