A very, very long intermission

The cast for Ripcord was two weeks away from starting rehearsals when the world stopped.

Relegated to Zoom, they waited and waited for the pandemic to pass, but as weeks became months and months and months gave way to more months, they began to wonder whether they would ever perform live.

Still, they kept at it, reading lines and going over the script virtually for David Lindsay-Abaire’s 2015 comedy set in a senior living facility, bi-weekly, if not more often.

“We started doing Zoom just for fun, we got a little more purposeful,” said director Teresa Pond. “Last night (Oct. 13) we met with the whole cast and design team live.”

The Cyrano’s audience will get a chance to see the fruits of this extreme amount of rehearsal when the play opens Nov. 5.

“We never really had weeks when we could play with the text so it was really a luxury to have that, just to be able to dive in and try things a million different ways,” said veteran Cyrano’s thespian Gigi Lynch, who plays the role of Marilyn. “You don’t always have the opportunity to do that, so thank you, pandemic — I guess.”

Lynch’s Marilyn plays the bubbly naive assisted living resident opposite her roommate, the cantankerous Abby, who, played by Linda Benson, commands the stage throughout with her powerful negativity. Benson said all the extra practice time is bound to make Ripcord a different experience for the Cyrano’s audience, too.

“A lot of times people go to the first weekend and then the last weekend and will find that they’re different plays because the actors have gotten to explore the run of the show,” Benson said. “But I don’t think it will be with this. You might see the same show the first as the last.”

Set in an assisted living facility, Ripcord introduces us to Abby, who does not care much for people and does not want a roommate at all. The sunny Marilyn is assigned to be her roommate and with her naivete appears almost immune to Abby’s barbs and general dissatisfaction with life. Stuck between the two is Scotty the orderly, played by Kenny Horton.

“Abby wants the room to herself, but she can’t get it so she tries to drive out Marilyn and poor Scotty is the pinball bounced around between them, just trying to help everyone have a better life,” Pond said. “So they enact a wager that if Marilyn can make Abby scared — because nothing bothers Abby — then Marilyn will get the bed by the window. If Abby can make Marilyn angry then Marilyn will leave and go to another room. You get to see through a surprising series of events the heights the women will go to win the bet — far beyond what sweet little old ladies in a senior living facility should be doing. It makes us took another look at our elders; what we assume about them and what we shouldn’t. The fact is, they’ve got a lot of life left.”

Nelson gets in touch with Abby’s core by reminding herself of all the unfortunate things that have happened in her character’s life to the point.

“In the play she mentions her son who has done nothing but disappoint her; a drug addict who drained her of money. Her husband died, she was fired as a teacher.. All these things have gone wrong,” Nelson said. “But my character changes from the bitch you see in the first act to, perhaps there’s hope for me.”

Lynch said her character Marilyn changes throughout the story, too.

“At first blush she seems very kind of carefree, but as it goes on we realize she definitely has had some downs in her life and she can be quite devious,” Lynch said. “It’s interesting going back to the text work, the little clues you see and if we didn’t have all the time we had I might not have discovered that. But reading it, it’s like, ‘damn, I’m devious.’”

Pond said the scope of development of both characters is central to the play’s meaning.

“We make a lot of presumptions about people who are elderly and we do diminish the scope of their world a lot. I don’t think we mean to but I don’t think we live in a culture that celebrates our elders a lot,” Pond said. “I was raised by strong, fierce, smart, older women and both of these ladies (Lynch and Nelson) are dear friends of mine outside the theater. I’ve always been attracted to these types of women; the women who know what they are and who they are. They have wonderful qualities; they’re strong, smart and they speak their mind, which is why I was probably attracted to the play.”

Ripcord launches on Nov. 5 and runs through Nov. 28, each Thursday through Sunday, except for Thanksgiving. Tickets are available at cyranos.org or at the theater box office.

“People who come will laugh their ass off and also be very touched,” Lynch said. “I think in a way that they did not expect.”

The cast also includes Anthony Lounsbury, Danielle Rabinovitch amd Jim Haacke.