Murder On the Orient Express

On January 12th at 9 am, I auditioned for the Great Lakes Theater main stage. I loved my monologues and had been able to work on them with some great, great people. Feeling pretty chipper and cavalier about the whole thing, my impression was that it went well.

I wasn’t ready for them to call me a week later and offer me a contract.

Great balls of fire! That phone call hit me like a lasso, like lightning out a slingshot, like a rare good song on the radio. I never saw it coming, but they got me and I was theirs. For the next five weeks I’d be a working actor at the Hannah.

I wondered why more cast members were being brought on so late into a rehearsal process until I found out what a marvel the set was going to be. Our Orient Express was a five thousand pound simple machine, a steel wheel turned my manpower. A team of eight costumed engineers would crew this two and a half ton whopper, pushing it for turns that went as long as five hundred and forty degrees. I was to be one of them. Rick Martin, our set designer and lighting designer, had really dreamed up something magnificent.

Friends from other theatres have confided in me that when their companies put on a production of “Orient Express,” they opted for a motor. In these different shows, it was a machine that made the windows pass and the compartments whirl. The whole set lurching to a start or grinding to a stop was all automated. Every audience member I spoke with after our shows agreed that actually seeing the mighty thing be moved by a crew was the better kind of magic trick. Even though they saw how it worked, there was something awe-striking about the fact that it even worked at all.

For me, what it meant was that I had to become more deliberate about my meal portions than ever. Before every show I made sure to chow down on a power platter of greens, proteins and carbs (and a handful of m&m’s during intermission) so I could keep the steel moving.

The run of this show was an honor and a thrill, I can’t believe I’ve taken bows in the same building that Groucho did. Not much else to call it but a true ride.

Costume by Esther Montgomery Haberlen, photo by @JeffreycPhotos