I dined with Matt, his wife Rachel, and some of our friends at the Eurasian Eatery, just down the street, across from the Count Basie Theater. Pretty great place with novel taste combinations e.g., Macadamia nut snapper.

When I got back to the theater, it was about ten after seven (curtain time at eight). Most of the cast was already in costume, looking very clean and sharp, and virtually every one was in the midst of a cell phone conversation with a loved one. I wonder what actors did before cell phones. From what I’ve read, they drank.

I wished everybody well and dropped Paul (Banquo) a thought about how his “instruments of darkness” line; Paul has a wonderful, thoughtful depth and is easy to discuss this kind of thing with. I peeked in on Ian and Cody in their dressing room. They were laughing about the insanely great noises Kenny had been making by whacking his new instrument with a hammer.

Backstage, Duane and Wayne were on ladders, still adjusting the final placement on Thom’s new dagger light. This was like one of those Mickey Rooney movies where everybody gets together to put on a show and save the orphanage, and people are painting the scenery till seconds before the curtain goes up.

Kenny and Rich (the percussionist playing the score) were in the percussion cage. They had managed to cram the gutted piano against one end wall. The guys ran picks up and down the strings. I thought: Such great sounds; I’d love to hear them tonight, but we shouldn’t surprise the actors during a performance.

A performance! Tonight I get to watch a performance from a real seat, like a real patron.

I went into the lobby and looked outside. In the parking lot the theater had a trailer with four searchlights sweeping the sky. There was a red carpet leading to the front door. Beside it a bagpiper in full Scottish regalia was wailing away.

I took my seat in the auditorium, just behind the founders of the theater, Robert and Joan Rechnitz. The Two River theater owes its existence to this couple, true patrons of the arts. This is one of the best designed theaters I’ve ever entered, and the programs put together under Bob and Joan’s auspices are a smart balance of commerce and art. Bob and Joan looked eager and excited. They’ve seen the show again and again, in all its various stages from first reading through dress rehearsals and previews. I hoped they would be pleased with the final product. It would never have come to pass without them.

Richard Frankel, who produced P&T off and on Broadway was sitting with his family in the row in front of me. To my left was Andrew Martini, production director, who has taken wonderful care of me throughout this experience. To my right, Devon Painter, costume designer, beaming. Everyone else in the room was a paying customer, except, perhaps, the reviewer for the New York Times.

Tonight I will take no notes. This may be the last time I get to see the show here in New Jersey. I want to enjoy what we’ve made.

Clarity. That’s my first impression. Amazing clarity. Nothing about the story is confusing or muddled.

Laughter. More humor in this production than in most Shakespearean comedies. Eric Hissom is terrific as the Porter, but there are laughs all the way through, and not just at jokes or gags. We laugh at the madness of the situation, at Macbeth’s reactions to the bizarreness of his life. There are laughs as people recognize themselves in the relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Macbeth. There are laughs at Shakespeare’s glorious word choices.

Magic. There are the moments of sheer, raw amazement that one can feel ripple through the crowd. Laughs and gasps over Banquo’s ghost’s unexpected comings and goings (which we do in a tricky way that reminds the viewer how vulnerable we all are to misdirection). Gasps at the horrible beauty of Lady Macbeth’s nightmare. And the magic fits. It doesn’t jump out or feel grafted on. It is, I believe, exactly what Shakespeare had in mind.

Tragedy. When Macduff, the brave soldier, hears of the death of his children, my breath caught in my throat. My eyes got teary when Macbeth curls into ball like a hurt child and thinks about the “troops of friends” he will never have because he’s screwed up his life. I felt a chill when Lady M. walks off into the darkness on her way to suicide, saying in a small voice, “To bed…to bed…to bed….” And when Macbeth hears of his wife’s suicide and tells the bitter truth about “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” to his teenage page Seyton, well, it was like a stab to the heart.

Wildness. At the final fight, when it’s clear that Macbeth is going to die, and he lays into the fight with a maniacal laugh, after we’ve watched the hero become a villain, become a terrorist, then suffer the consequences, plunge to the bottom of despair and come out fighting – well, I’ve never seen a story more thoroughly thrilling, sophisticated, and now.

So there it was after nearly fifty years of dreaming. Radiant onstage in three dimensions, unpretentious, funny, scary, amazing, touching and most of all: incandescently clear. Incomparably better than my adolescent dream.

Afterwards we saw friends in the lobby. Everybody was kind and complimentary, and I’m grateful. But even if they had hated it, I would have been happy.

When dreams come true, they require no affirmation.

The theater held its official opening night party at a fine joint across the street. Nothing too raucous, just moderately loud music, beverages and elegant snacks served from trays by attractive wait-folk.

I knew how much I loved the cast and crew and staff, but tonight it hit me hard how much they seemed to love me.

I’m a cold fish, you know, in many ways. I have my mother’s bluntness. I believe “the play’s the thing” and set my sights on getting it right, not keeping my co-creators happy. Of course, I try to stay polite, and I certainly praise excellence when I see it. But I care, I’m afraid, more about the product than the process.

This has gotten me in trouble often. I’ve lost good colleagues by not being more tactful or respectful. But here Aaron had established such an atmosphere of camaraderie, and had gathered a team so talented and no-nonsense and resilient that my monomania was turned into an asset.

I wandered the party. Richard Frankel and his family were there and in particular his wife Kate (a popular name in this show) seemed sincerely enthralled. Matt (his arm around his wife Rachel) said, “We did it. We really did it.” Thom was smiling: his dagger light had worked, and the whole show came alive under his lights. Dan Olmstead, who plays Duncan, told me “you’re really an actor’s director; you know how to put things in terms of motivation.” I was flattered and puzzled – I guess some of Aaron rubbed off.

Ian and Cody and Scott Kerns seemed downright merry – I could easily imagine them standing Will a butt of sack at the Mermaid Tavern after a show at the Globe. Kate Eastwood Norris beamed at me with a bit of a tear in her eye and said, “You’ll be right here on my shoulder,” and pointed as though to an imp perched beside her cheek. She hugged me. Everybody hugged me and held on for a long time.

The backstage crew and the tech staff greeted me with a kind of joyful relief; I think they had anticipated that – coming from the world of stage magic -- I would look down my nose at first-time magic makers; but instead they saw how blown away I was by how beautifully everything came out.

And Kenny – you recall I’d asked Kenny to wait to try the new sound for the door knock? – well, Kenny had ignored that direction and put this magnificent new sound into the show and tonight it pulled the whole score into one world. So Kenny was beaming so brightly, his glasses sparkled like headlights.

I talked and joked and ate cookies with Bob and Joan Rechnitz and the sponsors from Monmouth University. Bob had wanted to do Shakespeare for several years and said that when Aaron had proposed “Macbeth” Bob had asked himself, “Why can’t he pick something nice like ‘Midsummer’ instead of horrible ‘Macbeth,’ a grim, gory tragedy?” But Bob listened to our pitch and trusted Aaron and – partnering up with the Folger folks – had gambled on the most ambitious and expensive production the theater had ever mounted. So Bob was celebrating. He loved the show, but equally important to the well-being of his theater, “Macbeth” came in nearly on budget and has already sold better than any show in the theater’s history.

Amidst all of this love-fest, I sneaked off with Aaron for a few moments to discuss a few other improvements. I can’t stop myself. And, I suspect, this process will go on with the show till its final closing night in Washington.

The party wound down around 1:30, and Aaron gave me a lift through the rain to my hotel. Several of the cast had migrated to the hotel bar and I got more long hugs on my way through the lobby. I’d done most of my packing the night before. So there wasn’t a lot to do, but it took an hour or two to wind down. Two hours later, my alarm went off. It was no accident. My plane for Vegas was leaving at 8:30 in the morning. I had a show at the Rio that night.

As I flew home, I could not write. I was still feeling like an electrified cat. I read a little more on my Kindle – I’m reading The Devil and the White City, a history of the Columbian Exposition of 1893 and the serial killer H. H. Holmes. I dozed and watched an episode of “Monk” on my iPod. I leafed through the “Macbeth” program. Every name was connected with a face.

On the title page, I noticed: Yes, as I requested, they had dedicated the show to Rosey, my high school mentor, who had clinched my love of Shakespeare and with whom I’d developed the theories of magic that have underpinned my career. I looked out the window at the reddening clouds. Rosey would, I think, have been pleased.

Teller

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