Don't Forget the Ketchup

By Kevin McDonough

Have you ever shot a rocket to the Moon? Impressed members of the Royal Shakespeare Company with your acting skills? Taken a photo you never thought you would regret? Neither has the author. "Don't Forget the Ketchup" is the latest collection of essays by Kevin McDonough, who explains in "Rocket Science" why his phony Fuel Theory in a university's Physics class failed to get his rocket "Impending Doom" to the lunar surface (Spoiler Alert: Gravity for one, and a complete lack of understanding how a rocket works). In "Line?" even with his inability to remember anything other than his own name and phone number he strutted onstage in bathrobe and slippers in front of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, performing a scene from King Lear. Enjoy these and other stories that remind us that behind every cloud is another cloud. But if you wait long enough, the sun will peek through.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kevin McDonough
• Release date: Apr 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463207062

Kevin McDonough

Sit back and enjoy as the author recounts personal nightmares of performing Shakespeare in front of members of the Royal Shakespeare Company while only knowing his opening line, or calculating how to shoot a rocket to the moon in order to graduate, but having no ability how to get it there, "Don't Forget the Ketchup" recounts these and other stories that leaves the reader with that warm and fuzzy "Thank goodness that wasn't me!" feeling.

Book preview

Acting Out

I was studying the university’s Schedule of Classes when Eric from upstairs walked in. How might you be incorporating the school's Humanities requirement into your present curriculum? Eric’s grammatical phrasing made the simplest question a linguistic Rubik's Cube.

Eric, you come down here, you have to speak English, I said, not looking up from the catalog

Would you like to take a Shakespeare class with me? The answer was so obvious that I didn’t bother answering. When I looked up half an hour later he was still waiting for an answer. Long pauses don't bother him; he waits in contented silence.

I'll find something else, I said. Undaunted, Eric described the class. The professor was Homer Swander, a renowned Shakespearean scholar who was tight with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Each year five members of the RSC left rainy London and came for a year’s residency in sunny southern California.

They would perform scenes in the classroom, help us with the text, and we would get preferential seating for their performances on campus. Since Eric had taken the class before, he could pull some strings, strings surely best left unpulled. Even with all the bells and whistles I wasn’t interested.

Eric stared at the wall as if watching a fly read War and Peace. Eric, I'm not taking a Shakespeare class, and there's nothing you can say to change my mind.

There’s no final exam...

My first day in Shakespeare class I watched several students quote lines from the Bard’s plays. The class was technically in the English department, but it’s popularity had spread to the Drama Department, so it was peppered with ham bones. That’s okay, I thought, the RSC will help me out.

Dr. Swander boomed into the classroom. He was quite a sight; faded blue jeans, moccasins, Buddy Holly horn-rimmed glasses, and a shock of frazzled white hair. He acknowledged Eric, but studied me sensing, I think, profound disappointment. He talked about the plays we would study; Macbeth, Two Gentlemen from Verona, Hamlet, A Midsummer’s Night Dream, The Tempest, King Lear and others.

We opened our texts to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ Swander recited a passage. I was amazed to not only understand it, but enjoy it. Eric nudged me and flashed an I told you" smile.

Then five members of the Royal Shakespeare Company entered. I expected a bunch of stuffed shirts looking down their noses at us hippie students. I could not have been more wrong.

They bounced into the classroom with such energy it blew us back in our seats. They walked down the aisles shaking our hands, welcoming us into the world of Billy Shakespeare. One of the members had an imposing bald head, giving him an air of royal authority.

He gently led a pretty blonde to the front of the class. He knelt before her and recited a passage as Romeo, declaring endless love for his fair Juliet. She responded with her vow of eternal love for her dashing Romeo. It was short, impromptu, and beautiful beyond words. I was hooked. On Shakespeare, not her. Okay, her too.

The actor was Patrick Stewart, well-known in London theater circles, but unknown in the States before rocketing to stardom as Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Leaning against the chalkboard, watching with father-like amusement at all this love flying around the room was another RSC member. Far from his rainy England, he had jumped into the southern California lifestyle with both feet. He was deeply tanned from sailing the Santa Barbara channel, his hair in stylish disarray, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and sandals.

It was Ian McKellen, years before his star turn as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. There was Tony Church, the elder statesman of the London stage, and another man and woman whose names, as you’ll see why shortly, I can’t remember.

Swander read a passage from Hamlet, and McKellen ran with it. Not to be outdone, the others joined in. Before long we had a mini-production, each actor taking on several roles. And then the bell rang. Ninety minutes passed like ninety seconds. My other college courses were always the other way around.

I looked forward to each class. With explanations from Swander and the RSC, learning was easy. It was staggering all the phrases we still use today, not just something’s rotten in Denmark from Hamlet or this is the long and short of it from The Merry Wives of Windsor, but also For ever and a day from As You Like It, and The