Open Rehearsal: The Court Theatre Blog
December 21, 2009
A Coda to IRMA VEP
A week ago Court Theatre closed The Mystery of Irma Vep with a bittersweet final performance that also witnessed the victory lap for Ellen, our long-time stage manager, who is retiring from stage management forever (she tells us). This was one show that I never wanted to close. If I was forced to choose one performance to take with me on a desert island for all eternity, it would be Erik and Sully and The Mystery of Irma Vep.
Two days after closing, I was in New York. I had a few hours to kill in the village, so I found my way to Sheridan Square, the location of Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company. The little square it overlooks now contains a high-end optometrist, a Starbucks, and a pet store selling puppies in the window (underneath an unmarked photograph of Mickey Rourke, smiling, holding a puppy up to the camera). The Ridiculous is gone; in its place is a new theater company. I spent half an hour looking around the front door of Axis like a tourist for any trace of the Ridiculous that I could photograph and put on this blog, but there isn’t a shred of evidence that it was once Ludlam’s theatrical home. In Court’s program I’d written that the little parcel of street outside the building had been renamed Charles Ludlam Lane, but the place itself suggested otherwise: there wasn’t a single sign or marker indicating as much.
So do our most cherished performances meet the fate of the ephemeral. But where are the snows of yester-year?
One Sheridan Square, former site of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company
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