Here's the article:
http://www.calendarlive.com/stage/cl-et-stage6jun06.story

quote:

Originally posted by patrask:
To Charlie Mount: Hey! you made the LA Times today 6/6 on page E28 in The Theatre section in a review of The October Country: Picture of yourself (as the younger Ray) and David Curtis (as the play's John Huston). You look better in person. You have real talent and Chutzpah, for playing The Man in his presence. Kudos again on your performance, and the rest of the show was great. I did notice a little opening-night stuff, but it was not enough to distract me from the story unfolding in front of my eyes. I hope the Banshee is all right.

Yes, I saw the article, and the photo, and I'd just like to say that that pic was taken the day before the costume mistress hemmed my pants. I look like an elephant from the shins down.

The Banshee is fine, thank you. Feeling much better.

The houses have been wonderful and I hope many more of you get a chance to see the show.

Just a short note. Went and saw the play on June 12th and met Charlie. The plays were great. Charlie was great. Our Banshee was great. Meeting Charlie was also great. A very, very nice guy with a ton of talent! Ray introduced the plays and he was great, also.

I could hear the director, who was sitting near me in the audience, prompting the effects people, but the play was great. The "Banshee" and Charlie were my favorites of the night; they saved the best for last.

It was a pleasure meeting you both. I actually gave my last performance yesterday, as I have a family function to attend next week, and a very able understudy is going on in my place next weekend. Nice guy. He should do very well.

This was my first experience with the Pandemonium Theatre company and I was very impressed by their appreciation of the actors, their attention to technical detail and their desire to, above all, serve the text. I understand they're working on "Something Wicked This Way Comes" here in L.A. and I'm sure they'll do a terrific job.

Mr. Bradbury attended many performances and was exceedingly gracious and accessbile to audience members wishing a word or an autograph. A very kind man, and a pleasure to work for.

Hey,

If your jar was specially made by an FX team, it's possibly made from Sugarglass. This is used in theatre and film to make bottles, windows etc as it smashes extremely easily and with minimum injury, in the same way that if someone in a bar-room brawl breaks a stool over a guy's head, the stool was made from balsa wood.

Whether they would have used sugarglass to make the jar, however, I dunno.

As for opening night hitches, as someone once said, Opening night is the night before which a play is ready to open. Think that was Oscar Wilde or Groucho Marx

One little anecdote I shared with Charlie and haven't posted here yet is, when I first read "Banshee," I was very anxious to know whether the "London Times" review was real or whether John Huston made it up to torment Ray. The timeline in Nolan's "The Ray Bradbury Companion" gave the exact dates for when Ray was in Ireland, and I searched microfilm of all "London Times" issues for those dates. Only one review appeared during that time, but it wasn't for a short story collection, but of "Fahrenheit 451." I sent a print to Ray but don't seem to have kept one for myself. As I remember, it was somewhat less than favorable, but not an outright pan. Charlie was very interested--said the one thing Ray was never very clear on was whether there ever WAS an actual review, or whether John burned a piece of newspaper he simply claimed contained a review. Since they decided to make John out as much a liar as possible, they implied the review was his invention. Whether there's any truth that he wrote a mock review under an assumed name and the Times printed it, I couldn't say, but I'm quite sure that only one Bradbury review appeared during that time, as I checked the papers quite meticulously. Bradbury never commented on the copy I sent him--maybe the whole episode was just too painful to discuss much.