Heaving Hedgehogs in Hanover

Posted by Bruce Miller

After a 12 noon meeting in Ashland on Wednesday, Phil and I decided to drop in on our Swingtime Canteen company at Hanover Tavern before their 2 pm matinee. Our gorgeous ladies were in their costumes and our dashing men were stepping up to their piano, bass and drums in an effort to begin the show, when word came down from Michelle (of the restaurant that bears her name) that she had just been called by a bus group of 45 South Carolinians. They were traveling up 95 and would be about 25 minutes late for the performance. Could we hold?

Three groups comprised most of the sold out house that day. The Henrico Rec and Parks group and the Red Hat Ladies were already sitting patiently in their seats. And right smack dab in the middle of all of them were 45 empty seats for the gentle folk from Charleston.

Situations similar to this happen from time to time, and Phil and I frequently are called upon to do our “dog and pony show.” I’ve never been sure which one of us is the dog and which the pony. Perhaps we’re both donies. Or pogs. But our goal is to keep the on-time audience members happy until the “held up in traffic” audience (usually arriving by the busload) actually shows up.

When it’s a children’s theatre audience, and Christmas, I haul out my audience participation versions of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the Snow Bear Boogie, etc. We put our right paw in and our left paw out, and we parents jangle our car keys to Jingle Bells until the errant playgoers finally make it into their seats. At Easter-time I’ve been known to resort to Little Rabbit Foo Foo.

With an audience of spirited senior citizens, it’s not quite that easy. Making antlers with our hands every time we get to the word “reindeer” doesn’t seem to float their boats. So Phil and I took to the stage and announced that we’d be happy to answer questions about the history (fascinating, actually) of Barksdale Theatre and Hanover Tavern.

After breezing through my less than encyclopedic (but fairly accurate) knowledge of Patrick Henry and Hanover real estate circa 1776, the questions started getting tougher. “Who is the Montgomery Room named after?” (The Montgomery Room is the dining room in which the group had just eaten lunch, and I don’t have a clue how it earned that moniker.) “Did Thomas Jefferson really visit Hanover Tavern and which room did he stay in?”

I felt myself missing Nancy Kilgore.

Nancy, God bless her soul, knew all the answers. And when she didn’t, she was an unrivaled expert at making them up. She was at her most dazzling when the “real” answer was either fleeting or unknown. Watching Nancy lead groups through the Tavern and/or other historic Hanover properties was like watching Maggie Smith captivate the tourists visiting an historic British manor house in Lettice and Lovage.

In that wonderful play by Peter Shaffer, the character of Lettice, hilariously played on Broadway and in London’s West End by Dame Maggie, repeats the same historical narrative to a different group of tourists four times, and each time her docent declamation becomes more fantastical and compelling. In the final iteration, she has the tourists spellbound with a tale of British gentry vaulting down the grand staircase holding aloft platters brimming with baked hedgehogs.

I must admit I resorted to a bit of hedge-hogwash myself when I described the fiddle contest that Henry and Jefferson are alleged to have had "just on the other side of that door" during the Christmas season of 1759. We know from his journal that TJ visited the neighboring estate of Nathan Dandridge that year on his way to William and Mary. Who’s to say that the fiddling legend is untrue?

Of course, the Hanover Tavern in which Patrick Henry worked and played actually burned to the ground sometime in or just prior to the 1780s, and the one we know and love today (at least the northern section in which the theatre is located) was not rebuilt until 1791. But that’s not the way that Nancy Kilgore told it. And if I have the choice of being true to history or true to the memory of Nancy’s wildly enthusiastic embrace of the Tavern’s spirit, I’ll pick the latter any day of the week.

After all, as Nancy once said, “Once you’re sitting in those seats, darling, you’re not in a museum, you’re in a THEATRE!!” Here here.

--Bruce Miller

Images (from the top): Hanover Tavern, Swingtime logo, Rudolph in Claymation, the new Thomas Jefferson gold piece, Nancy Kilgore in Stop the World, Maggie Smith in Lettice and Lovage, Patrick Henry.

Deathtr ... errr ... Birdtrap

Posted by Jacqueline "Jackie" Jones

A new acquaintance once asked me what kinds of roles I play. My friend Holly came to the rescue: "Jackie tends to play quirky characters," she said. Yeah, I thought. That and moms. Helga "I am psychic" Ten Dorp, my delicious current role in the production of Deathtrap now playing at Barksdale Hanover Tavern, definitely falls into the quirky category.

At Barksdale’s Hanover home, the cast dressing room is affectionately known as "the Pat Carroll Room" because it was the bedroom Ms Carroll occupied during her earliest runs of Nunsense. It shares the Tavern’s third floor with the business office of Michelle's Restaurant, and in this upper sanctum, actors and culinary artisans co-exist side by side.

About a year ago, Agatha Christie’s Mousetrap was my first show back at the Tavern since its renovation. During the run, we actors had been instructed not to open the windows because of the new alarm system. Till last week, I had never been tempted to disobey.

But on the Thursday evening of Deathtrap's Invitational Dress Rehearsal, I climbed the crooked “servant” stairs at the Tavern’s southwestern corner and entered the long and winding hallway that leads to our northwestern dressing room. Was it my imagination? A pigeon flew overhead. “There’s a bird up here!” I shouted.

Back and forth my new feathered friend frantically flew, seeking escape. That's when I noticed a broom-wielding bartender rushing forward from the other end of the hall, holding his “weapon” aloft like Sweeney Todd. And an arm-flapping waitress (Mrs. Lovett?) began squawking at my back. The pigeon, knowing an animal lover when he saw one, assessed the situation and headed straight toward me.

Quick as a bunny, I turned to the eastern windows looking out toward the historic Hanover Courthouse, hastily removed the "security nail" and tapped with all my might until the top window dropped. The bird, knowing a good thing when he saw one, circled my head like a plane attempting to land at JFK and then whizzed past my ear and out the window into the freedom of beautiful Hanover County.

“Give me liberty,” I thought. Patrick Henry tended bar in the original Hanover Tavern, you know. And his immortal words seemed to be working just as well for pigeons in 2007 as they had for patriots in 1775.

The restaurant staff, relieved by the speedy departure of our uninvited guest, headed back to their stations as I sauntered into the dressing room. My fellow actors were oblivious to all the excitement.

Soon the show began, and I headed downstairs in all my theatrical regalia to prepare for my first entrance. Except for a brief introduction the previous evening (and our Hitchcock moment a half hour earlier in the upstairs hall), Michelle’s new bartender and I had never met. Even if he were able to recognize me in street clothes, he'd never seen me all done up for the play in Helga's Little Dutch Boy wig and blue beret. Perhaps that explains the very curious look he gave as I strode past the bar on my way to the stage door and whispered, "You really didn’t need the broom, you know. It's good luck to have bird-poop on your head."

Oh, those crazy theatre people, I’m sure he thought, probably not identifying me with the pigeon rescuer from the upstairs hall. I smiled. Pete and Nancy Kilgore (animal lovers extraordinaire) would have been so proud.


--Jacqueline “Jackie” Jones
http://www.jacquelinejones.net/

Hiatus in Hanover

The question I’m being asked most frequently this week is, “Why is Barksdale taking such a long break at the Tavern.” And every time someone asks it, it’s easy to hear the concern in their voice.

Please be assured that nothing is going wrong. In fact, everything is going right. It’s quite true that Smoke on the Mountain closed this past Saturday, April 28, and that The Odd Couple will not open until Friday, June 29. That’s a break of two months—pretty unusual for a resident theatre.

But the reason for the hiatus could not be more “usual” in the nonprofit sector. We’re taking a two-month break from Hanover Tavern because of money.

You see, Hanover Tavern is itself a nonprofit organization, and Barksdale Theatre is a separate nonprofit organization. From 1953 until 1990, Hanover Tavern was owned by Pete and Nancy Kilgore and Muriel McAuley. The Tavern was their home, both literally and artistically. They raised their children and their pets there, and they worked tirelessly and selflessly to save the historic Tavern for future generations.

In 1990 they made a difficult decision. They realized that the 18th Century Tavern that they loved needed millions of dollars of work if it was to remain standing into the 21st Century. They also realized that their job was making great theatre, and that they wanted to turn the responsibility of raising the millions that were needed over to a broad-based community foundation.

And so they sold their beloved Tavern to the Historic Hanover Tavern Foundation. They used the proceeds of the sale to fund a meager retirement account—the only pension they ever received from their lifetime of work at Barksdale Theatre. In 1993, Pete, Nancy and Muriel retired after 40 years of exemplary service. And in 1996, they lent their support as Barksdale Theatre, under the staff leadership of new artistic director John Glenn and the Board leadership of Carrie Galeski, Ted Linhart and Neil November, moved theatrical operations to the beautiful new space at Willow Lawn that we occupy today.

When Barksdale returned to the Tavern in January 2006, we did so as a rent-paying tenant. We are one of three major tenants of the Tavern. The other two (our partners, so to speak) are:
· the Historic Hanover Tavern Foundation, which not only owns the Tavern but also presents numerous historical programs and interpretations year round, and
· Michelle’s Restaurant.

As the Historic Hanover Tavern Foundation seeks to fulfill it’s fiduciary responsibilities for the Tavern’s finances and future, it works with its two partners (Barksdale Theatre and Michelle’s) in an attempt to maximize earned revenues. Let’s face it, 18th Century Taverns may be cool, but they're not inexpensive to maintain.

One of the things that the Foundation has learned is that a major revenue source for the Foundation and Michelle’s is the income received from weddings and wedding receptions held at the Tavern during the months of May and June. Due to sound issues, plays cannot be presented in the theatre at the same time that weddings or wedding receptions are taking place elsewhere on the property.

And so the Tavern has asked Barksdale Theatre to forego theatrical programming during the months of May and June, so that they and Michelle’s can maximize the revenue they receive from springtime weddings. We are happy to oblige.

So, during the next 60 days, please come visit us at Willow Lawn for Intimate Apparel, or visit our sister company, Theatre IV, for The Wizard of Oz at the Historic Empire Theatre. And plan now to join us on or after June 29 for The Odd Couple at Hanover Tavern.