Councilman-Actor Finds First Play a Hard Act to Follow

If you were not at the Organic Theater Greenhouse on North ClarkStreet Saturday night - and I know most of you weren't - you missedwhat was probably the farewell stage performance of one of our mostcelebrated actors.

Well, our most celebrated alderman-actor, anyway. Our only one,actually, if you don't count the histrionics in the City Council.

Thespian-Alderman Berny Stone of the 50th Ward brought down thehouse in his starring role as Cliff, a skinflint retired dentist andfather of three dizzy daughters in "Three Sisters Not By Chekhov."

He also bought the house - putting up about $1,300 to buy all 75tickets for Saturday's closing performance.

Which put him in the art-for-art's sake hole financially sincehis "first paycheck as an actor" totaled only $25 for his three-nightrun.

Back in the workaday world of City Hall on Monday, Stone told mehe's not sure he wants to do another play. It's tough work"memorizing all those lines," said Stone who is 67, and, "It getsharder as you grow older."

He still hopes, though, to be discovered by the movies, or maybeget some parts in TV commercials as has the woman who played his wifeGrace in the play and also has appeared in some Empire Carpetcommercials.

Stone, as you may know, started taking acting lessons at theCenter Theater at Devon and Glenwood only weeks ago and his role in"Three Sisters," a "light, frothy comedy," as he calls it, marked hisstage debut as well as his apparent goodbye to the boards.

"I don't know about anybody else," he said, "but I had a goodtime."

Actually he did pretty well. Didn't blow any lines that Inoticed, though he was concerned enough about that happening that hewrote on his invitations to Saturday's performance, "Be nice to the`old man' if I forget my lines."

Stone did get a lot of laughs, took two curtain calls (he wasreally great in his bows to the audience) and was presented withthree bouquets of flowers.

Of course he knew everyone in the audience, which included suchCity Hall friends as Aldermen Bob Shaw (9th), Ed Smith (28th), GingerRugai (19th), Building Commissioner Cherryl Thomas and former CHAexecutive Graham Grady.

Unfamiliar with life behind the footlights, Stone said hecouldn't see anyone beyond the first row. But even in the dark herecognized Shaw's laugh.

What the play is about is that just as Cliff and Grace aresettling into retirement and planning a trip around the world, theirthree offbeat adult daughters suddenly all move back into the house.

(The whole cast Saturday night were understudies so their nameswere not in the program. Stone was the only alderman among them.)

At one point Cliff, a sweet old guy except for being so cheap,had to carry one of the daughters, who sleeps all day, offstage. Onemember of the audience worried out loud that "Berny could get ahernia."

Stone got his biggest laugh when, with Grace nagging him to takeher to a sexy new movie, he asked, "Why should we pay $16 to watchother people doing what we can do for nothing at home?"

Grace, though, got an even bigger laugh from Stone's friendswith her line about there being "nothing worse than a cheap sexmaniac."

In the City Council, where he's been performing for years, Stonesaid, "I can always ad lib" speeches and get away with it. But onthe stage, he said, "If I ad lib my lines the other actors don't gettheir cue from me."

All that memory work is too much for him, Stone said Monday.Which is why he'd rather work in movies or TV, where "you get to dotakes over and over again if you foul up."

He's already had an offer to do another play, Stone says, buthe's also losing his enthusiasm for working for next to nothing, likethat $25.

"I want something that'll pay a couple bucks," he said.

Is Hollywood ready for Berny? I don't know. But Berny's readyfor Hollywood. Just ask him.