Last Thursday night a few minutes past 7 at the barn-like Robert Frost, we were waiting for the figurative curtain to rise on “Urinetown, the Musical,” when in strolled Pam Magee, the poker-faced principal of Culver City High School.
The empathy I felt for her was shortly overcome by my creeping journalistic curiosity.
As the chief administrator of the school, she had to make an appearance at a ballyhooed socially hot event when the woman she canned six weeks ago, Creative Director/drama teacher Sheila Silver, was making her comeback debut before a panting, adoring audience.
What dark and perhaps slightly lighter thoughts were rumbling forth and back across Ms. Magee's doubtless turbulent mind? This might have been a night to step out incognito, say, as Groucho Marx?
I hold a grudging admiration for Ms. Magee. She strikes me as the exact opposite of carefree Our Miss Brooks of my last-century childhood. I don't dial 1.800.m.a.g.e.e when I am shopping for yucks.
From my observation post, she is a splendid model for arrow builders, the shortest distance between two points. She is precisely what Culver City High School needs.
Do You Subscribe to Coexistence?
But can the two women co-exist in the same environment after what has gone down? Isn't that like co-habiting with your ex-wife? I had such disgusting experiences at the Evening Outlook and at the Jewish Journal with bosses who were better suited for cave-dwelling. Maybe that is why they behaved so anti-socially.
Everybody in town loves Ms. Silver — count me among her admirers — and except for a couple of stubborn holdouts on the School Board, nobody is toasting Ms. Magee or hosting any pity parties for her.
Unless she is made of something that has not yet been invented, at least one or two corners of Ms. Magee had to be writhing in a spot of anger because two weeks after she dispatched Ms. Silver last month, the School Board reversed her.
I trust those natural, proper impulses were leavened by the sensational performances by Ms. Silver's three dozen gifted charges. She sat one row behind me, and I really wanted to ask her, candidly, what she thought.
Every time I glanced over, she was wearing her poker face. I mean, what should she have done, boo while the crowd was roaring with delight?
Instead, I kept my seatbelt buckled while I thought about the cartoon version of a mind divided: Your mother-in-law zipping off a cliff in your new car. Do you cheer or cry, or do each, one eye at a time?
I wonder if they teach that exercise in a smarty-pants aerobics class.
As one who has tangled with bosses, I understand Ms. Silver's desire to quietly return to what she may do better than anyone in town, teach a checkerboard of teenagers how to perform like Lunt and Fontaine instead of the mouthwash (ma)Sheen.
Can we get on with life without a serious breach in the fabric?
