Long Runs
"And I once understudied Dick
Whittington's cat"
By Marty Bell
MARLENE DANIELLE (Bombalurina) was seen on Broadway in Sarava,
Marlowe, and as Anita in West Side Story. Off-Broadway, she was
Chiffon in Little Shop of Horrors, and was featured in Damn Yankees
at Jones Beach. Other credits include the movies Fort Apache and Tootsie;
and choreographer/principal of her latest national commercial. Among her many
achievements, one of the most rewarding was collaborating with Andre DeShields
on Black by Popular Demand.
The first real chill of autumn
sneaked into town this first Monday evening in October. But the outdoor café at
Rockefeller Center is jammed with men in suits and women in body-hugging black
cocktail dresses with shoulder and more exposed to the crisp air. A large
society band glides easily from Kern to Berlin to Porter as couples fox-trot
around the floor where other will be ice-skating any day now. Large bunches of
black and white balloons decorate the tables. All around, young attractive man
and women, most of them sinfully slender, in clothes that you'd kill to look
good in, embrace and kiss like long-lost friends do. You don't need a Playbill
to know that these are the "Cats." Almost 200 of them. These are all
the actors over the past nine years have taken their turns slithering into the
painted leotards to become the twenty-six felines that composer Andrew Lloyd
Webber and director Trevor Nunn created from T. S. Eliot's poems. The occasion
for this feline reunion is that today is the show's ninth anniversary.
Why hold such a blowout after nine years rather than,
say, ten? Well, the thematic justification is, of course, that cats have nine
lives. The practical concern is that the show might not survive to see another
October. With tonight 3,758th performance, which preceded this party, Cats
has already surpassed Fiddler on the Roof to become the third-longest
running Broadway musical of all time, trailing only A Chorus Line and Oh,
Calcutta! Each of those shows had considerably lower weekly running costs
than this sizable production, which permitted them to break even with smaller
audiences, thereby protracting their runs. So Cameron Mackintosh (who presented
this Broadway Cats along with the Shubert organization, David Geffen, and
Webber's Really Useful Company) cannily chose to throw a bash now that both
humbly concedes the end is in sight and attracts enough media attention to build
attendances and delay the final curtain. Such is the promotional skill of
Mackintosh, the savviest marketer of our current producers. He also throws the
best parties.
The gathering of 1,000 or more has brought together and
unusual combination of people connected with the production being honored, and
others who are not and wander around slightly lost, like wallflowers at their
spouse's high-school reunion.
(This evening does provide an opportunity to clear up
one of the great mysteries of this musical: A motif of the show is the concept
of "Jellicle" cats. The opening number is about them, and the Act I
finale is the "Jellicle" Ball. We also hear about "Pollicle"
dogs. Well, you no longer have to feel like an idiot, like the rest of us, for not
knowing what they are. According to Andrew Lloyd Webber, when T. S. Eliot was a
little boy, his grandma would talk to him about "dear little cats" and
"poor little dogs"- but to his young ears it sounded as if she was
saying "jellicle cats" and "pollicle dogs.")
Though Cats looks good on any actor's résumé (especially
as a credit for dancers who have survived Gillian Lynne's gymnastic
choreography), it is not exactly a career booster. It's an ensemble piece. The
actors' features are masked behind heavy paint and headpieces. And playing an
animal in a nearly storyless evening provides little sense of the performer's
acting abilities. So when you spot faces of ex-Cats scattered around the plaza,
you recognize them from previous or subsequent work: Terrance Mann, the original
Rum Tum Tugger, who went on to garner a Tony nomination for his performance as
Javert in Les Misérables; Scott Wise and Charlotte D'Amboise, who were
both featured in Jerome Robbins' Broadway; Harry Groener, who would
follow a four-year stint on television's "Dear John" by starring in
the upcoming Crazy for You; Ken Page from Ain't Misbehavin'; and
Gregg Edelman, who originated the role of the writer Stine (or was it Stone?) in
City of Angels.
Cats was once a pit stop for each of them. It was a
hit, and it was fun, and they worked with some interesting people, surely. But
it was these other shows that truly made the difference in the careers of these Cats
alumni; and it is these other roles that writers, directors, and producers recall
when they are casting.
The job of acting, by its very nature, breeds opportunism. It is a
freelance occupation, and even the best situation is only temporary. So a show
is not viewed as just a job; it's also an audition to audition for the next job.
Most actors tend to stay in a show as long as they feel they are benefiting from
the exposure. Then they leave in search of the next opportunity. A part is not
thought of as just a payday; it's also evaluated as a "career move."
In an earlier era of musicals theatre, performers were proud to stay with a show
for years and, in some cases, for the run of the show. Today, most agents try to
get their clients an "out" after just six months. And for better-known
stars, even six months has become too long for them to be in New York and out of
the movie market. Checking the records, we find that eighteen of the original
twenty-six Cats were gone by the end of the second season of the run.
Standing inside the glass doors of the American Café, on the
periphery of the plaza, we find a kitten with different stripes. There Marlene
Danielle, glamorous this evening in a brocaded dress, with lovely coca skin and
waves of dark, flowing hair, is approached by a radio reporter who holds a tape
recorder in front of her full mouth and asks, "So how are you able to keep
this fresh every night after nine years?"
In a polite and soft voice that belies the fiery growl she
lets out when strutting her stuff through teh Winter Garden junkyard as the
sensual Bombalurina each night, Marlene says, "A long time ago, my acting
teacher taught me that it's not acting- it's reacting. You've got to get
in a frame of mind so that you're seeing and hearing things for the first time.
I don't anticipate that crash that's coming. I forget it. I've never heard it
before. Then- pow!" Her eyes flash with surprise. Then she smiles.
"That's what makes it fun every night."
As Bombalurina, Marlene (pronounces Mar-leh-na) Danielle is
often in the background as other cats tell their stories stage center. Yet
throughout the evening she remains a mysterious and seductive presence,
sashaying slowing in and out of focus with a ballerina's grace. Although her
smooth elegance blends into the corps, her body stands out. Painted in orange
and red and black, with a full head of orange fur, she is eminently noticeable
as all-woman in a show of neuter characters. She's the sex kitten, so to speak.
"She's a at who can mix with any kind of
crowd," Danielle says. "She can fit in with the kittens as well as
with the adult cats. She moves easily in and out of situations. She's the
good-time girl. She makes light of things and is not afraid of anything."
When she's given the chance to grab the stage in a hard-driving solo describing
the elusive Macavity the Mystery Cat, she flaunts her wares like Mick Jagger
performing "Hony-Tonk Woman," which at this evening's hot performance
won her a roar both at the number's end and at Marlene's curtain call.
Of the 3,758 performances of Cats on Broadway, Marlene
Danielle has done about 3,500. Along with featured actress Bonnie Simmons and
chorus member Susan Powers, Marlene has been at this job for nine years tonight.
But Marlene's is not another sad theatre story- the
frustrations of a performer stuck in a job who can't find an opportunity that
will rescue her. Instead, Marlene's is a positive theatre story- one of a woman
who realized early into the run of the show that it was going to be around for a
long while, and that tat presented an opportunity. It could provide her with
things in life that gypsies don't often have: financial security and a family
life, both rarities in show business. The chance to be present to watch a child
grow up. The chance to lay down real roots.
Marlene is accompanied this evening by her seventeen-year-old
son, Benjamin Bernouy; by her mother, Dorothy Epps; and by her sister, Aelise.
This is only fitting since this show has been a catalyst to improve all of their
lives. The impressive family may have just a little bit more to celebrate this
evening thananyone else at the festive gathering.
Marlene Epps spent her early childhood in
St. Albans, Queens. Her mother, Dorothy, worked t the Bulova watch company. Her
father, Lawrence, waited tables at the Steak Joynt in Greenwich Village and at
Lundy's in Brooklyn's Sheepshead Bay. When Marlene was seven, her father left
for good and her mother decided that an outerborough environment was not an appropriate
one for her two growing daughters. So she moved her family into a railroad flat
on West Third Street in Greenwich Village, diagonally across the street from the
Blue Note jazz club. "We had a bathroom in the hallway and a bathtub in the
kitchen and one bedroom with a triple bunk bed," Danielle says. "The
rent was only thirty-three dollars per month, so my mother worked only when she
wanted to or needed to. And it was the happiest time in our lives.
"Richie Havens was playing next door at the Night Owl.
Bob Dylan and the Lovin' Spoonful were running up and down the block. And Jimi
Hendrix. It felt like we were right at the center of pop culture."
"We were pretty wild kids, me and my sister. We were
three girls living alone and out door was always open. People hung out at out
house all hours of the night. My mother got a lot of criticism because of the
freedom she gave us. But she didn't care. She felt like she was doing the right
thing, and she was."
Danielle attended Public School 41 on Greenwich Avenue, where
"a lot of the kids were from broken homes. We'd hang out in the halls after
school and harmonize. The echo was great in those hallways." The school's
music teacher, Mr. Feldman, heard Marlene sing in the halls. He invited her into
the chorus and encouraged her talents. The students voted for Marlene to play
Dorothy in their production of The Wizard of Oz, performed with no script
and made up as it went along.
"Our house was filled with music," she says.
"Ray Charles, Nat King Cole, Bessie Smith. Tough songs, one about a woman
going to the electric chair, which went right to my gut. Then one day I remember
seeing Tina Turner on television, when she was still with Ike. Short skirt,
blond wig, all that dancing. I remember thinking, Wow! That's entertainment. I
want to be that."
When Marlene was twelve, her mother met a man who worked in
the music business in Philadelphia, wanted to be near him, and moved her family
there.
"I had culture shock after living in the Village, in
what I thought was the center of everything that existed," Danielle says.
"I was having a hard time adjusting so my mother suggested I get involved
in some cultural activity. She insisted I get some classical training, and at
fourteen I started dance school at the Pennsylvania Ballet.
"I also got selected in a lottery to attend an
experimental high school that had no building. To study we went to houses and
museums and jobs. It was good for me because I was brought up with such freedom.
I worked in a boutique sewing appliqués so I could pay for dancing
school."
When Marlene was fifteen, an art student from France
named Daniel Bernouy came to Philadelphia to study and lived in a spare room at
the Eppses' house. Marlene fell in love with Daniel, graduated from high school
early at sixteen, and went with him to France to live and continued to pursue
ballet.
While studying in Paris, Marlene was invited to go to
London to audition for the school of the Royal Ballet. "At that audition, I
realized for the first time that before anything, ballet was about body
type," she says. "They wanted a certain neck, shape, butt. I knew I
didn't have the parts to become the kind of technician they wanted. I saw how
different my body was, compared to the frail white English girls. I came to
France with my heart sunk."
A year later, when Marlene was eighteen, she and Daniel
married. Then son Benjamin came along. When they returned to the States, she
accepted an apprenticeship with the Dance Theatre of Harlem.
"I figured I was with my people," she says.
"But even her they wanted a different type of body. I was thicker and
bigger-boned. I had this teacher there named Alice Elliot. She has this great
air about her. And one day she put her hands on her hips and said, 'Marlene, you
know what you have to do? Get yourself a pair of long eyelashes and go dance.' I
knew what she was saying. There were other kinds of dancing I would be more
suited to. That made me realize I could still dance, even if it wasn't going to
be in a ballet company."
Marlene was determined to give her son the same
experience growing up in Greenwich Village that she had treasured. The family
moved to a railroad flat on Carmine Street, just a few blocks from where Marlene
has spent her grade-school years. Daniel painted and Marlene mothered. Then one
say she received a phone all from a former Katherine Dunham dancer named Walter Nicks
who had a modern-dance troupe of either that toured Europe performing and
teaching. He was one girl short, and was leaving the next day. Daniel and
Marlene's mom said they would take care of Benjamin, and they encouraged Marlene
to take advantage of the opportunity. So the nineteen-year-old Marlene went off
to France for her first professional job.
"One night we were sitting around the dinner table
in France," Danielle says, "and Walter talked about this script
someone had sent him for a Broadway musical set in Brazil. When i acme home, I
bought a copy of Backstage- first time I ever bought it- and I saw a
casting announcement for this show called Sarava, based on the novel Doña
Flor and Her Two Husbands. I said, Hey, that's the one Walter was telling us
about. I know this one. I gotta go for this audition.
"I had never gone to a theatre audition before. I didn't
know the process. I walked in wearing a unitard, tights, and heels, and walked
to the back of the room. I watched what the choreographer was doing. There were
conga players. And it was hot! I knew exactly what he wanted. It was the same
stuff I was doing with Walter Nicks's company. When my turn came, I started in
the back row and the choreographer saw me and said, Girl, get down here in
front. I had the hair and the movement, and he wanted me to show everyone. I got
hired to do the workshop- I think it was the first workshop that equity
endorsed- for twenty-five dollars a week.
"I had no sense of theatre. The other dancers would talk
about these other productions and I was completely ignorant. I didn't know the
repertory. I didn't know about regional theatres. I just had this kind of
attitude toward the material that was right on, so I got hired.
"I could never do that audition now. I was a wild woman.
The movement just came naturally to me and I just had fun."
She did the workshop, went out of town with the
production to Bostom, then in 1979 came to Mark Hellinger Theatre with the show.
Sarava was a musical based on a Jorge Amado
novel about a love triangle about a Brazilian widow, her suitor, and the ghost
of her late husband. It had a book and lyrics by N. Richard Nash and music by
Mitch Leigh, but it is most remembered as a show that was doing such good
business in previews as a result of an energetic television commercial that it
kept postponing its opening until the critics decided to purchase tickets and review
the show without being invited.
"Working in that show, I noticed different levels
of professionalism," Danielle says. "My training in ballet had been
very intense. I had Russian teachers and a lot of discipline. But a lot of
Broadway dancers were less disciplined. They almost seemed nonchalant. There
were singers who were really trained and then those who just had talent and used
it instead of honing it. Theatre was a very American, very new York culture,
different from what I had grown up around. I sensed that a lot of the people
were unhappy. They thought they should be doing better. And they complained a
lot. They complained that the music should be better. The Doña Flor (played by
Tovah Feldshuh) should be more ethnic. But I didn't care. Hey, I was on
Broadway! And I was getting paid more than anyone in my family ever had."
The 1978-79 Broadway season has an artistic success in
the Harold Prince- Stephen Sondheim collaboration Sweeney Todd and a
commercial success in the Neil Simon- Marvin Hamlisch- Carol Bayer Sager
collaboration They're Playing Our Song. But it is primarily remembered as
a season of expensive flops, many by the creative A-team including Michael
Bennett (Ballroom), Gower Champion (A Broadway Musical), Jerry
Herman (The Grand Tour), Alan Jay Lerner (Carmelina), and Richard
Rogers (I Remember Mama). Amid all this expensive rubble, Sarava
managed to stay alive for almost five months.
One day, Marlene saw a notice on the backstage
call-board for a revival of West Side Story. "This was the one show
I knew because I had loved the movie," she says. "So I said to myself,
I'm gonna get this job! The dance call was at the Hellinger, and the dancing was
a piece of cake for me. I got called back for an audition at the Minskoff
Theatre. I went downstairs to the bathroom, and when I came out, there were all
these girls sitting around a piano singing, 'Happy birthday to you, happy
birthday to you...' So I asked in this little voice, 'Do I have to sing
"Happy Birthday"?' The musical director said, 'What else can you do?'
I said, 'How about this?' And I turned by back toward him and put my hands on my
hips, spun around, and sang:
" 'Puerto Rico, you lovely island...'
"Then I said, 'And how about...'
" 'A boy like that, he kill you brother...'
"The other girls are now saying, Shoo! Where come
off doing that? Then I get a call to come in and read for the role of Anita. And
I think, Now this is really gonna be cool. I'm gonna get Anita. So I go to the
call all cocky and I hear this squeaky voice say, 'Hello. I'm here.' In comes
this woman in a tight dress with her hair up. I didn't know she was Debbie Allen
or who Debbie Allen was, but just by the way she entered I knew she was it, and
I was here to read for her understudy. I did get into the show and to cover her.
When Barry Moss, the casting director, told me to come in and sign a contract, I
just said, Okay. No excitement. I expected it to happen because I didn't know
any better.
"Watching Debbie Allen every night, I learned to
be a leading lady. She was so gracious with everyone, making them feel a part of
her success. And she gave one hundred percent very single night.
"Then she got a part in the Ragtime movie
and she came right to me and said, These are the days I'll be out and you're
going on. That was perfect. It gave me the chance to invite everyone to see me.
The night she left, she took me onstage after the performance and walked me
through it- said things like, Watch that trap; you can get a heel caught. Watch
the scenery coming in from there.
"The next night, after my debut in the role, I
come back to my dressing room and there's a dozen roses there with a card that
says 'Read your reviews. You were wonderful. Love, Debbie.'
"She even sent her agent to see me. He became a
good and helpful friend."
Meanwhile, Benjamin attended P.S. 41 in the Village,
just like his mom had. Daniel continued to paint, without any commercial
success. And Dorothy Epps began working as an investigator for the Workmen's
Compensation Board and moved into a 3,000-square-foot loft on West Forty-sixth
Street next door to the Lyceum Theatre, where Marlene and her family soon joined
her mother.
Each summer, Benjamin would vacation with Daniel
in France. At six he has already developed a faculty for imitating accents. He
liked to put on his father's hat and imitate Maurice chevalier singing
"Louise." Dorothy Epps saw an ad in the trade papers for a casting
call for young boys for a musical about Charlie Chaplin. So she decided to take
Benjamin to it. He had no training at all, but he brought his father's hat, made
up his own choreography, and did his Maurice Chevalier impersonation. He got
hired as the understudy. So Dorothy gave up her job and joined the child on the
road as his chaperone. Benjamin soon signed on as a client of Debbie Allen's
agent. He went on to a production of Member of the Wedding in Nashville
and the television movie Evergreen, which was filmed in Toronto. "My
mother and Benjamin had a ball on the road, living in hotels and on those per
diems," Marlene says.
Marlene spent a year in West Side Story.
"Now I was starting to learn the ropes of theatre," she says. "I
went to a lot of the auditions and started to see that everything wasn't going
to be like Sarava and West Side Story for me. There were a lot of
places where I didn't feel comfortable. And I saw lot of people who were better
than me. I started to becomes like the rest of the people. I realized I was a
certain type, that I have a certain coloration, and I'm not right for
everything.
"I audition for Bob Fosse for the All That Jazz
film. He was very kind to me and appreciated my style and technique, but I
wasn't his. I realized there was a difference between the tall show girls and
the ballet people like myself. Now that I'm older and more experienced, I'm
closer to what he was looking for. But I was very naïve at the time.
"Then I was doing Damn Yankees with Joe
Namath at the Jones Beach ampitheater and I got a call to audition for Michael
Bennet for Dreamgirls. I made the callbacks, but when I got there I saw
all the girls were darker. And they didn't have my hair. I saw I was in a
situation I wasn't going to fit into. The girls were great. They were great at
so8l. I never developed that. My training had been more classical. But after I
auditioned, Michael and everyone at his table fell back laughing and applauded.
Then I got a call from Vinnie Liff, the casting director, who said Michael asked
him to call and tell me that if he was ever doing a show I was right for, he was
going to use me. That's all I needed.
"It made me realize I wasn't always going to be right
for situations I wanted to be in. To perform on Broadway, there are so many
things that count. But what comes first is the package. First it's the
impression you make, and only then is it what you can do."
Marlene danced in the chorus of an oddity called Marlowe,
which spent six weeks at the Rialto Theatre in the fall of 1981.
Early the next year, she was called by Vinnie Liff and
invited to audition for the American company of Cats, which was already a
sensation in London.
At her first audition, she sang and danced
"America" from West Side Story, as well as a ballad called
"Home." She was called back to the old Broadway Arts Studios at
Fifty-fifth Street and Broadway to learn part of the "Jellicle Ball"
sequence. "At the next audition, Trevor Nunn came up to me," she says.
"Complimented me on my hairstyle and asked me why I spoke French- which was
on my résumé. I told him my husband was French, and that was it."
Marlene was called in one more time, on Easter Sunday,
to audition on the stage of the Lyceum, right downstairs from the loft in which
she was living. By the third audition for a show, actors assume they are under
serious consideration. It's at that point many of them start telling friends
they are "up for" a role in a show. That can be true. But sometimes
what "up for" means is that the director and his or her creative staff
are seeing a lot of different types to help them sort out precisely what they
are looking for.
After three auditions for Cats- and all the
mounting anticipation accompanying the protracted process- Marlene Danielle was
not offered a role.
That summer, inspired by her Dreamgirls audition
to cram up on pop music, she learned fast enough to be asked to sub for Leilani
Jones (who had a commitment to do an industrial show) during the opening week of
Little Shop of Horrors off-Broadway at the Orpheum Theatre on lower
Second Avenue. Marlene performed the show and got good reviews; then Leilani was
back and she was gone.
Then in August, she received a phone called from Vinnie
Liff. Cats was already a few weeks into rehearsal, and a job had become
available to understudy Cassandra, Tantomile, Demeter, and Bombalurina.
"I wasn't sure I wanted it," Danielle says.
"I had always been onstage, and I didn't know if I could handle standing
by. But I had a child, and my husband was having trouble selling his art. I had
gotten used to getting that weekly paycheck during Sarava and West
Side Story, and it sure made life easier. This was a job in New York, where
I could be with my family.
"Somewhere along the way, I had lost some of that
wildness I grew up with. I realized that the security looked good to me.
Practically, I knew I needed that job."
Cats is a physically demanding show, and the
dancers sustain frequent injuries. Even during previews, Marlene found herself
subbing in most performances. Then, about six months into the run, Wendy Edmead,
who opened as Demeter, started missing performances, claiming an injury, and
Marlene went on frequently. But at a dance all for Francis Ford Coppola's motion
picture The cotton Club, "I saw Wendy right there in front, dancing
her little buns off," Marlene says. "So I talked to management and
said, Get me in here." Edmead was let go and Marlene became the regular
Demeter. A year later, Donna King, who had originated the role of Bombalurina,
left to marry the production's English scenic designer, John Napier, and Marlene
assumes the role she has played ever since.
At about the same time, Daniel Bernouy's fruitless
struggle to succeed as an artist was taking it's toll on their marriage. "I
never minded that he wasn't doing well," Marlene says. "I was doing
what I liked doing and making things work for the family. But he was very
frustrated and we decided it was best if we parted."
Marlene had been in Cats for more than two years
by that time. When opportunities for new shows came along, she auditioned.
"I didn't get cast," she says. "But I don't know what I would've
done if I had. This show was giving me the life I wanted. It was allowing me to
be here in new York while my son was growing up. So I wasn't thinking like an
actress who had been in a show for a long time and felt she just had to get out.
It was quite the opposite. I knew this show was going to be here and it was
going to give me the opportunity to make money for a long time.
"When you're in this business as a Gypsy, you
never plan. You just live day to day. But then I began to realize, Hey, since
this show is going to be here, maybe I can make some plans.
"One day I was sitting home reading and the television
was on and this show called something like 'How to Make Money from Real Estate'
came on. And it's like a bell went off in my head. We had moved around a lot
from rental to rental, and I didn't want to rent anymore. The only things I ever
really wanted were to own a house in the city and a house in the country.
"So my mom and I decided we'd find a property together.
We found a HUD house up for auction in Philadelphia. I bid twenty-five-thousand dollars
and found out by mail that I had made the highest bid. It was a rental property,
and it brought me some income and started a relationship with lenders.
"Then the loft we were all living in up above the
Lyceum was no longer available. I was gung-ho on real estate by now and I wasn't
going to pay rent anymore. My sister, Aelise, who works in the fashion industry,
decides to go in with me now. We looked all over the city, but couldn't find the
right place. Then we found a brownstone in Jersey City that was perfect. So
Aelise and I bought it together and we all moved in there. Here we were, the
three girls who had shared one bedroom in the thirty-three-dollar-a-month
railroad flat in the Village, owning our own place, each with a unit of her own.
That felt good. And we weren't finished.
"Then we started to look for a piece of property
in the country. We found a forty-acre lot three hours upstate. It was perfect.
It had an old farmhouse and a barn, a little cottage and a pond. And we bought
it.
"Benjamin had worked straight through as an actor
until he was eleven. Then he lost that little-boy cuteness. It was time to focus
on school. So he and my mom moved up to the farm and I would go up there every chance
I got. We have a lot of animals running around up there, including six cats,
whom I study all the time. They each have their own personality. We don't have a
Bombalurina.
"Then, in November 1989, we were in the house and
a neighbor comes running up the driveway shouting, 'Your house is on fire!' We
had done some work on the house, but had not yet replaced the old roof. Some
ashes around the fireplace had caught and there were flames all through the
house. I ran around like a madwoman and tried to save things. It's amazing the
strength you summon up under extraordinary circumstances. I dragged a sideboard
full of china out of the house by myself. But this is country, and the fire
department didn't get there for twenty minutes. By then we had lost nearly
everything.
"We've been rebuilding the house little by little ever
since. We make a little progress and I run out of money and then I save a little
money and we make some more progress. We should be ready to get back inside
within a year. I just hope the show plays long enough for me to finish. i think
it will.
"And then? well, Benjamin's graduating from high
school this year. And I do have one more dream. I want a place in the islands...
and the means to get there.
"Then I'll have everything."
Epilogue:
Last October, Marlene Danielle celebrated the tenth anniversary of Cats,
and it appears as if she and it will be together for an eleventh. The basement
and top floor have been rebuilt and she is now saving up to finish the two
floors in between.