By Tajlei Levis
Photo above: A jolly troupe of performers at one of the Willburton Inn’s famous murder mystery parties; by Cricket Polis
“Meinen damen und herren,” I bellowed from the stage of our family home. “Mesdames et messieurs…”
I was dressed in a repurposed dance recital costume, introducing my 6-year-old sister, Missy, and her best friend, Lisa, both of whom would sing solos. Neighborhood kids filled out the chorus. I had cobbled together a cabaret of our favorite Broadway songs, taught everyone the choreography, and sold tickets to our parents. I was not yet 8 years old, and already a producer.
Theatricality, and a fondness for show tunes, ran in the family. Our grandmother, Lola Wasserstein, took Broadway jazz dance classes and encouraged her progeny with the intensity of Mama Rose. Our mother was one of three smart, funny, theater-loving sisters. And, for a few years in the mid-1970s, all three lived in Connecticut.
Aunt Sandy was at that time a pioneering marketing executive at General Foods, and bubbly Aunt Wendy was enrolled at Yale Drama School. Our mother, Georgette, nicknamed “Gorgeous,” had been a modern dancer in college, and was even invited to join the June Taylor Dance Company. Instead, she married our father, an intellectual Greek psychiatrist, and moved to our leafy New Haven suburb where she built us a proper stage on the ground floor of our home.
We sought out all the theaters within driving distance. Goodspeed, Westport Playhouse, Shakespeare in Stratford, to name a few. At the Long Wharf, we watched serious plays and argued about them all the way home. We relished summer productions at Williamstown Theatre Festival and the Weston Playhouse, countless classic plays and late-night cabarets. At one memorable Williamstown production of The Greeks, starring Christopher Reeve as Achilles, we met the director Nikos Psacharopoulos, and invited him to our living room musical production of The Odyssey. (Alas, he did not come.)
In those years, Aunt Wendy was writing her thesis play, Uncommon Women and Others. We got to know her talented friends at Yale: playwright Christopher Durang; costume designer William Ivey Long; Ed Kleban, who had just written the lyrics to A Chorus Line. We were invited to all sorts of shows, including the Eugene O’Neill Theatre production of Uncommon Women that sent Aunt Wendy on her path to success. The mature language and feminist ideas sailed over my 10-year-old head, but lodged in our hearts. “When we’re 11,” I whispered to my sister, misquoting the play, “we’ll be pretty fucking amazing.” Given Lola’s expectations for her offspring and the next generation, we had no choice.
The author (left) and her sister Melissa (right) as young performers; The Wasserstein sisters: (left-right) Wendy, Georgette, and Sandy
My family moved to Vermont, where we discovered new stages. I was cast as a lost boy in the Dorset Theatre Festival’s production of Peter Pan. Every night, my heart caught in my throat as Peter returns too late and finds that Wendy has, in fact, grown up. We all do.
Later, our father’s impulsive purchase of The Wilburton Inn, a grand historic estate where we’d dined for his 50th birthday, launched our mother into a career as an innkeeper. She was unexpectedly good at running a hotel and restaurant, delighting guests with her wit and funny stories. The historic mansion came with a grand piano. My sister and I resurrected our cabaret act, feather boas and all, in the enormous living room.
When Wendy’s play, The Sisters Rosensweig, opened on Broadway in 1993, my mother responded, as one does, with a parody murder mystery. The Brothers Rosenblood was staged in the inn’s living room. The show was fast-paced, goofy, and a sold-out hit. Murder mystery events became a new family tradition.
Wendy’s play was a valentine to brilliant Aunt Sandy, but the character of Dr. Gorgeous, fun but practical, was inspired by the real Gorgeous, our mom. When Madeline Kahn won the Tony Award for her portrayal of Gorgeous, my mother was as thrilled as if she’d won it herself. Through the play, the wise and witty voices of the sisters Wasserstein live on, immortal.
My sister and I continued putting on shows, which turned into careers in musical theater. My jazz-age Edith Wharton musical, Glimpses of the Moon, began at the Algonquin Hotel in New York and played at regional theaters around the country. My sister became a cabaret chanteuse, created songs for children, and now writes songs of mid-life empowerment. Show tunes did not appeal to our brothers, Oliver and Max, though they both became musicians and songwriters in their own style. Oliver now produces global music concerts with hundreds of people dancing on the lawn of our Vermont home, which is now Earth Sky Time Farm.
Fifteen years ago, my mother asked me to take over the writing of the Wilburton murder mysteries. I agreed, but transformed them into immersive musical comedies based on Vermont history. Twice a year, the living room is filled with guests in vintage costumes, and a cast singing old songs with new choreography. My siblings are sometimes in the show, along with professional actors. My mother and her sisters, represented in a floor-to-ceiling poster of The Sisters Rosensweig in the inn’s living room, watch over every performance.
The author (front right) with her sister, parents and grandparents
