On Monday they tore down the set for Same Time Next Year; most of the furnishings on the set had been borrowed from the Ammerman house, so they hauled them back where they belonged.

Same Time Next Year had been the next play on the schedule for so long it was hard to believe it was behind them now, but at least it seemed as if they were moving ahead with things. They were ready to get on with the twin bill, and they were about as prepared for it as they could be.

Given the option they could have used a fairly elaborate set for A Marriage Proposal, but not much of a set was needed at all for Chocolate, Roses and Sex, so they decided they could get away with an emptier one. After a quick conference, Brett, Meredith, and Kellye decided to build a second set of plain flats that would be used at a couple of points in the future. While they did need some sort of a backdrop for the Chekhov play, a bare wall would have worked just as well for Chocolate. They wound up hanging a couple pictures on the back of the set, along with some curtains framing a fake “window.” Also, a painting hung on the back wall. Surprisingly enough, it would go a long way toward dressing the set for The Hermit of Walden, just by taking down the curtains and the pictures, leaving the picture of the window.

Now they could actually set up the furniture for A Marriage Proposal, which allowed them to work out the final details of the stage directions. Brett, Meredith, and Mike had given the play a lot of practice, and it didn’t take them long to have everything as polished as it could be.

Costumes, on the other hand, were a bit of a hassle since they decided to use ones correct for the period. Both men’s and women’s clothes had changed a great deal since that era, but they did have a bit of luck, since the Chubukov costume Mike would wear in the play would also work for The Hermit of Walden. With some modification Brett would be able to use the same costume for both plays as well, and Rachelle and Lu could share one costume for both plays, too. Still, they had to get the costumes, and when Meredith came up dry after some scrounging around secondhand stores for possibilities, there was no choice but to rent them from a costume shop she knew about. It was a day’s drive round trip for her to pick them up, but she reported that it was good to get away from Curlew Creek for a while.

At least Meredith’s costume for Chocolate was simple; she just raided her own closet for the outfit.

Since they’d already done one play with many performances for the dinner theater, there wasn’t quite the nervousness and anticipation for the next shows. On Thursday night they held the dress rehearsal in front of Marty and Samantha, along with a few others, and it came off with no noticeable hitches.

The one piece of anticipation of the unknown that increased their interest was the fact that Janine Warrenton, the author of Chocolate, Roses and Sex would be flying in from New York; she expected to be there in plenty of time for the play. Meredith had been the only one of them exchanging e-mails with her. She reported that while the exchanges had been interesting, they hadn’t revealed much about the woman, so there was no way of telling how she would react to Meredith’s interpretation of the character, or how the modification Brett had suggested would be received. In any case, they were looking forward to meeting her.

Since Brett wasn’t acting in Chocolate, he decided to spend the pre-show period out near the wine bar, just talking with people and getting a feel for the crowd. It turned out that at least a few of them had seen a performance of the previous show, and he got the impression tonight’s would be well received.

He was standing talking with one customer – about wine, a little to his surprise, since he didn’t consider himself much of a wine expert – when Samantha came up to him. “Brett,” she said, “here is someone I’d like you to meet.”

Brett looked at the woman Samantha had with her. She was short and slender with shoulder-length black hair, somewhere around his age at a guess. “Janine,” Samantha said, “this is Brett Wickwire, who’s our producer, sometimes director, sometimes actor, and general jack of all trades for our theater. Brett, this is Janine Warrenton.”

“P-p-pleased t-to m-m-meet you,” the shorter woman stammered.

“I’m very pleased to meet you,” he replied, wondering if her stutter was normal, or if it just came from nervousness. “We’ve all been very impressed with Chocolate, Roses and Sex.”

“I c-c-can’t b-b-believe it’s actually being p-p-performed,” she replied nervously. “I’ve b-been writing p-p-plays s-since I was a little g-g-girl, a-a-and th-th-this is the f-f-first t-t-time it’s ever happened.”

While Brett figured that she might have had a right to be nervous under the circumstances, something that told him that she must have some natural speech impediment anyway. This was something he really hadn’t expected. Well, it didn’t matter right now. “It’s an honor to have you with us,” he told her. “I’d take you back to meet Meredith VanArnhem, who’s performing your play, but it’s close to show time, and she’s concentrating on getting ready to give a good performance.”

“I’m l-l-looking f-f-forward t-to m-m-m-meeting her.”

“I’ll be watching this one from the audience,” Brett continued. “Would you care to join me?”

“Y-y-yes, p-p-please.”

With that stutter Brett figured that he wasn’t going to be getting any deep conversation out of her, but that was all right. “Would you care for a glass of wine? They have some very good wine here.”

“Y-y-yes, white, p-p-please.”

Brett went over to the wine bar and poured a couple of glasses of Curlew Creek Niagara Blanche, then led Janine over to a table that was otherwise empty. “It looks like we’re going to have a good crowd tonight,” he told her, trying to be friendly. “We haven’t sold the place out yet, but it’s just our second play, and it looks like the crowds are steadily increasing.”

“Th-th-that’s g-g-good.”

God, he thought, it would really suck if she stammered like that all the time. It had to be hard to get along like that. She seems shy as hell, and there was no doubt why that would be.

Over the next few minutes the two of them managed to get through a very limited conversation, though Brett was the one who had to do most of the talking. She went through the glass of wine in that time, and he got up to get her a second one.

There were a few late arrivals – Brett couldn’t tell if they had reservations or were walk-ins – but finally Marty went up to the stage and asked for everyone’s attention. He thanked everyone for coming, and went through the usual routine, but then added. “We’re going to be opening tonight’s performance with Chocolate, Roses and Sex, a one-woman play performed by our own Meredith VanArnhem and written by Janine Warrenton. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time the play has ever been performed, and to honor that occasion Ms. Warrenton has come all the way from New York to be present with us tonight. Janine, take a bow, please.”

“M-m-me?” she whispered to Brett in what seemed to be him near horror. “I c-c-can’t.”

“Just stand up, give a little wave, and sit back down,” he prompted.

Brett watched as she got up in extreme trepidation – he wondered how she managed to stand up at all – it seemed to him as if her knees were literally shaking. He knew about stage fright – he even got a few butterflies every now and then – but this was downright stage paranoia, or stage horror, or something. She gave a weak little wave to the audience, then sat back down in obvious relief, then grabbed the wineglass and drank about half of it in one swallow.

Oh shit, Brett thought. Marty, that might not be the brightest thing you ever did. This girl is even shyer than I thought. Oh, well, what’s done is done. “See?” he whispered to her, “That wasn’t hard at all.”

She didn’t say anything, but gave him a look that clearly said, “A fat lot you know about it.”

“It’s over with now,” he reassured her. “You did just fine.”

She nodded weakly, then drained the wineglass. Marty was continuing with his pitch about trying out some of the various Curlew Creek wine products, so Brett made a fast trip over to the wine counter and grabbed another glass of Niagara Blanche, figuring that Janine probably needed it.

He made it back to the table just as Marty was bringing the house lights down. It was dark for a few moments, and then he could just barely make out Meredith making her way to the stage. In a few more seconds the stage lights came up – not the general stage lighting that would be used in A Marriage Proposal, but the tighter spots that focused on the single chair on the stage. Meredith stepped from the darkness on one side of the stage, walked over to the chair, and stood behind it, leaning on it a little, then started her performance. “When I was a little girl,” she started, “it was my dream to grow up, get married, and be a mommy …”

Though Meredith had had only limited practice with the new version of Chocolate, Roses and Sex, she went through it like the pro she was. It was good – it drew a lot of laughs from the audience, sometimes in places where Brett hadn’t expected quite that much reaction. It was going well, and Meredith was really into the nameless character.

Brett was enjoying the performance; it seemed to be going a lot better than the rehearsals, so Meredith was rising to the occasion. However, in the darkness in the back corner of the room he couldn’t get much feeling for how Janine was reacting to it. A couple times he noticed weak laughter coming from her, but that wasn’t telling him much of anything.

Chocolate, Roses and Sex ran a little long for a one-act play. That was fine, since Brett felt that A Marriage Proposal was a little on the short side. So it was nearly an hour before Meredith finished the long soliloquy, then stepped into the darkness at the side of the stage while Marty brought the lights down. There was a roar of applause, while Marty brought the lights up she stepped back to center stage again, and gave a nice bow to the crowd.

“Wow, they really liked it,” Brett whispered to Janine. “That went even better than I hoped.”

“Y-y-yeah,” she stammered, but somehow it sounded a little hollow to him. Something was wrong. He didn’t know what it was, but had a nasty suspicion that he knew what it might be – he’d guessed wrong about how to interpret the script. Well, there wasn’t anything he could do about it now.

Marty brought the stage lights down long enough for Meredith to escape to the dressing room, then brought up the house lights for the announcement about going to the serving line. “Would you like me to take you back to meet Meredith?” Brett asked. “We figure it’s only courtesy to let the customers get to the food first.”

“Y-y-yes, I’d l-l-like that,” she said, but now that he could see her better Brett could see tears were running down her face.

“We’d better go do it before she gets started changing costumes for A Marriage Proposal.” Brett got up, then led her back through the kitchen. It was even better lit out there, and he could see that she was very teary.

Meredith was in the dressing room, right where he’d expected to find her, nibbling on the plate of Amish chicken that had been waiting for her inside the door – with the costume change, she didn’t have a lot of time during the intermission. “Meredith, you knocked them dead,” he told her.

“I thought it went pretty well,” she agreed.

“Meredith, this is Janine,” he said. “I know she’s been looking forward to meeting you.”

“Hi, Janine,” Meredith said. “So how did you like your play?”

“It w-w-wasn’t exactly what I e-e-expected,” Janine stammered. “It w-w-was … d-d-different th-than I h-h-had it in m-m-my m-m-mind.”

“We weren’t sure what you had in mind,” Meredith replied. “When we started rehearsing, I did it a little more gushy and girly, sort of lipstick lesbian, if you get what I mean.”

“I th-think I d-d-do,” Janine nodded.

“Brett suggested we do it in the style I did it,” Meredith continued. “We talked it over for quite a while, and even did a trial run in front of some friends doing it both ways. The way I did it seemed funnier, so we changed it to that way.”

“It w-w-was f-f-funny,” Janine managed to say, “B-b-but s-s-somehow it d-d-didn’t seem like it c-c-came f-f-from the heart. That’s n-n-not w-what I intended.”

“You intended it the other way?” Meredith asked gently, realizing that there was more to be said than Janine was able to say.

Janine just nodded, not quite able to get out the words, but the tear in her eye told both Brett and Meredith more than her words could.

“So now you’re disappointed?” Brett asked gently.

Again, the nod and the tears sent the message to both of them.

“You shouldn’t have to come all this way to be disappointed,” Brett said gently. “Meredith, what do you think?”

“If you’re thinking what I’m thinking you’re thinking, it’d be fine with me.”

“Look,” Brett said. “I’ve got to gobble something to eat myself, and then get dressed for A Marriage Proposal. Let me take you out front and introduce you to Kellye, who’s one of our other actresses, although she’s not acting tonight. I’m sure she’ll be glad to go through the food line with you and sit with you while we’re doing the next play. After that, we’re going to do something very special.”

“All r-r-right.”

Kellye was actually working as a wine server, but under the circumstances Brett didn’t think Marty would mind her disappearing on him; she wasn’t doing that much during the shows anyway. Brett found enough time to whisper to both Lu and Kellye to make sure that Janine was comfortable, but not to let her get too lubricated on the wine.

That took a few minutes, and then Brett had to grab a plate from one of the church ladies in the kitchen. The Amish chicken was very good, but he couldn’t take the time to enjoy it. He was already partly dressed for the role – wearing the pants he would need for the Ivan Lomov character – but he had a shirt, tie, and waistcoat to put on, all of which looked suitably archaic.

By the time he got back to the dressing room Meredith was already well along in her costume change, wearing the slip and crinoline that would go under Natalia’s long period dress. They were used to sharing dressing rooms; they had done it before and would do it again. “Shit,” she said as Brett came into the room and began peeling off the jacket that he considered appropriate for being in the audience.

“My feeling exactly,” he said.

“Does she stutter like that all the time?”

“If anything, she was doing better in here than she was out front. She’s extremely shy, and very uncomfortable in front of crowds. I thought she was going to faint dead away when Marty asked her to stand up.”

“Poor kid,” Meredith shook her head. “She does write well and has a good feeling for her characters, but now I can’t help but wonder if she’s saying in her plays what she’d really like to be saying for herself.”

“That thought crossed my mind,” he agreed. “In fact, it would be a little scary if it weren’t quite so sad. You’re not going to have any problem doing this, are you?”

“I shouldn’t have.”

They couldn’t talk much as they continued dressing for the play. It was now time to get into the wild, histrionic characters of the Chekhov play. In a way they were all easy roles to play since everyone was so crazy.

In minutes they were ready, and Mike had joined them. Marty stuck his head in the door and asked if they were set to go, and was told they were. “Marty,” Brett said, “when we get done, and after we take our bows, I’m going to have a special announcement. I’ll do your wine pitch as a part of it.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“A special treat for our special guest,” Brett grinned. “But I think it will be a treat for the audience as well.”

In spite of not having worked with Mike in an actual performance before, they made a great job of it. Though the play was nearly a hundred and fifty years old and had the air of a period piece, it was just as funny as it ever was. There were times they had to pause in their delivery to let the laughter of the house die down. There had been times that Brett thought the play might be a bit of a gamble, but the reaction to it was so positive that he was glad he’d held out for it.

The play wound down to its end; Natalia finally accepted Lomov’s marriage proposal, and then they got right straight into another argument, not that the whole play hadn’t been filled with funny arguments between the players. Brett had often wondered what that would have meant for Natalia’s and Lomov’s future with that kind of track record if it hadn’t been just a play.

They got a really great round of applause when the stage lights came up for their bows. As they had hastily pre-arranged, Meredith and Mike left the spotlighted area at the center of the stage, leaving Brett standing there alone.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he started. “I’m glad you enjoyed the presentation. It proved to me that Chekhov can be just as funny now as he was over a century ago. But we have a special treat for you tonight, one I’m sure you will remember for a long time to come.

“If you remember at the beginning of the show Mr. Ammerman introduced Janine Warrenton, who wrote Chocolate, Roses and Sex, the play we opened the evening with. Now, Ms. Warrenton’s script can be interpreted in several ways, and we decided on a presentation of the play that didn’t exactly meet with her vision. So, rather than the encore we had planned for this evening, our encore is going to be Chocolate, Roses and Sex again, but this time done more like she thought it should be done.

“We did something like this during rehearsals, and we all learned something about what acting really is. As soon as you have your desserts and Meredith VanArnhem can get her costume changed, you’re going to see and hear what acting is really all about. It will be the same actress, the same script, the same set, the same costume. But I think you’ll all agree with me that it’ll be a totally different play.

“So get your desserts, starting at the far end of the room from the serving area. You might need to stop by the wine bar and get a glass in your hand or a bottle for the table, because you’re going to want it. This is the kind of treat that you’ll rarely see anywhere, and by that, I mean both the wine and Chocolate, Roses and Sex.”

In only about fifteen minutes Meredith was ready for the stage, barely rested from the exhausting theatrics of Natalia. It had been a week and a half since she’d done the “lipstick” version of the play, but right from the beginning she was in a totally different character – if anything, perhaps over-emphasizing the femininity and the vulnerability of the character.

Sitting in the back of the audience with both Kellye and Janine, Brett could see that there were not as many laughs – some of the lines that had really gotten the audience going in the earlier version were hardly noticeable here. However, the play was warmer, more intimate; it was easy to fall into understanding the frustrations of the unnamed girl Meredith was playing. It was a much deeper, much more thought-provoking presentation, much more dramatic.

Brett was sitting next to Janine, and while he couldn’t see much in the low light, he could tell from the way she acted that this was much more the play she’d been thinking of when she wrote it. It could well be, he thought, that Meredith was dead right – the script was Janine’s way of saying things she didn’t have the courage to say for herself.

The play finally came to an end, and from what Brett could tell most of the audience was sorry about it – they wanted more, and he couldn’t blame them. Once again Meredith strode off the stage into the darkness, then came back to bow to the applause, which was thunderous, easily the best of the evening if not of the whole season so far. Like Brett had said, they’d just gotten a lesson in what acting was really all about.

Since they couldn’t greet the audience in the food line this time, Brett, Meredith, and Mike did it at the door as the audience filed out. Much to Brett’s surprise, Janine joined them, getting a number of compliments. To his surprise, her thank you’s to those who had compliments were mostly without stuttering.

He was also surprised, when, as soon as the last of the audience filed out, he saw Janine and Meredith in a deep, deep kiss that went on and on. “If you want my opinion,” Kellye whispered, “That looks like just a little more than just a thank you.”

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