What’s happening Leavitt Theatre?

Ogunquit, Maine

43.250562403104105, -70.59949656243548

An artifact has been found, not fully intact but nearly glowing with intrigue.  There, upon a firestrobe in this Southern Maine theatre/common house, rests a smashed wedding portrait.  The photo is pedestrian within the domestic landscape, say on a friends mantle or among a family collage lining your mother in laws stairwell.  But here.  There’s something deliciously mysterious in finding someone’s wedding photo here, resting like placed car keys in a makeshift lost and found.  And in this condition.  The tranquil marriage snapshot is contrasted by the displaced shards of glass seemingly frozen in time in the aftermath of a Tyson left and imbedded into the frame like broken teeth.  What happened here? I asked myself, unzipping my pants.  This could be the remnants from a mere accident; a weak nail met with a haphazard elbow.  Or it could be the remnants of happenings much more dramatic.

The underrated pleasure of breaking the seal washed over me as I began to reverse engineer from the avaliable evidence.  I admired the unknown, but most recent handler’s choice of location for the item in question.  Practically speaking, the placement was high enough to protect young hands from the broken glass, and was indiscreet enough, that one couldn’t help but notice it in the mirror while stepping up to the john.  But, where is the rest of the missing glass?  There is no evidence of it on the floor.  One can deduce this picture either met its demise much earlier or at least somewhere else, maybe both.  A quick survey reveals no apparent damage to the walls or vacated hooks.  Washing my hands, I purpose to take a closer look at the happy couple pulling out my camera to document the scene.  The subjects are raw, real, and candid. This rules out a stock photo that would have come with a new frame. The inspection also dispatches with any celebrity couple that I can recognize, though they did strike a familiar New Englander look about them, folks you might meet lingering around an open bar or scalping tickets outside of TD Garden.  

What a strange and personal picture to be using as décor, and its belonging to this elegant establishment does not move the little grey cells at all.  Much more alluring is the possibility that such a damaged display of a wedding couple was purposely vandaled and disregarded in a whiskey fueled rage by one of the very owners depicted.

  Yes.  It conjures the scene of this sentimental frame stolen from the bedside under duress, and smuggled within an inner pocket of the conflicted man, a recent, unwilling cuckhold say, drowning his sorrows at the bar and reeling from the aftershocks of a blunt reality collision.  The curtain falls with a last shot of gut rot and a symbolic, while also very corporeal, punch to the image.  Our tragic hero abandons both it and the pub in a reckless stumble towards the ocean.  Surely the Atlantic’s salt is made up in part by men beset with such romantic anguish.  

I imagine this man’s name is Tyson.  After his departure, some unknowing local picks up the shattered remains and leaves it on display here in the bathroom, for what else are you to do with someone’s keepsake that you find?  

Or maybe it is one of those couples who are famous for doing the on again off again routine.  In this case, Tyson would sooner or later return with regret, looking for the photo. So, a tolerant Samaritan perched it in a common place at such an elevation that no drunken rabble rouser would easily interact.  

This being Ogunquit, a vibrant LGBTQ community, there could be a third, fourth, or even fifth hand to count with the visage of this shattered seemingly heterosexual couple.  The possibilities are endless really. Leaving suspended the possibility of any transitioned actors in the plot line, we may have a same sex triangle to factor.  Or rather, a coming out complete with this prior life event being discarded like an old shed skin.  Not only is there no need to retain the portrait with the grouse that is to be Tyson’s ex-wife, why not make a spectacle out of it.  Perhaps there were flyers to celebrate at the bar and ceremoniously smash the memento to mark their triumph and after, leave the remains as proof?  If this last case were true, any Tom, Dick, or Nancy is viewing the trophy placed on high every time they take a piss.  As a source of inspiration, it promises that complicated affairs do have happy endings…for some, at least for a season.  

These are the totally natural and completely normal thoughts that turned over in my churning concrete truck mind as I approached my party at the bar, rejoining the land of the satisfied bladders.

“It is good to be empty” I announce like a catechism call that no one knows the response to.

I am here with my sister Barney, my brother-in-law Tadds, and my wife L.  Each reflect a look of seasoned longsuffering, and an unwillingness to engage with this bid. 

 “It is grand to be drained” I continue devoutly to my blank congregation, filling in their line.

The look from our neighbors tells me that I may be talking loudly. And also, that they think they might get it…but maybe not at all.  Feeling extroverted, I muddy the waters further by pointing down at my lap as I scootch into the highchair.  I’ve found the eyes of a winter capped gal and her friend and whisper talk “balls” to them before flashing an alien grin.  This has the immediate effect of turning them away with uncomfortable smiles.

“Dudes” I begin.  “Why is there a random wedding picture in the bathroom?”  After describing the details complete with my own theories thus far, L decides the third hand is best: the love triangle. Only she muses it’s two women and the left behind husband, oh, and tequila instead of whisky that brought the crazy out. Her theory suddenly got better “This could have been his regular haunt.  They could have left it here for him to find on their way out of town to Tahoe, to pour salt on the wound.”  

Barney likes the poetry L is weaving.

“If this was his bar, he could be here right now” I observe.  Over the next few moments, we all intuitively looked around the bar for a forlorn Tyson in our midst.  No such character seemed to fit the profile.

“Doesn’t this bring us back to scenario 1? Where the dude is drowning his sorrows after his marriage has fallen apart?” Tadds exclaims, making his upper body into a shrugging question mark, which in turn solicits a long point in his direction from me as I raise my lager.  “Yes, it could be the scorned husband smashing it in defeat after the wife ran off lickity-split!”  L slaps my arm to keep me from furthering my amusement.

Barney cuts through “Hold up.” Her finger is raised.  “Why does it have to be the couple?  Could it not just as easily be a disgruntled child? Wait, wait, wait!” she was preemptively shoeing away what must have been private specters.  “The kid is upset at the divorce, but also given to embellishing displays of dramatics?”  

She tries to drink through a smile of contemplated success,as she lets her offering sink in.   She has to wipe her chin of some escaped gin and tonic. 

The thought is an interesting one. At first. Until its own sets of problems leap out at you.  The bar makes this a 21+ establishment for starters, how did a child end up here?  Though we can image a bloke lost in adolescent dynamics well into a drinking age, it’s still unlikely to manifest in such a dependent and immature way.  But more troubling, the motive.   At any age, why smash the image of parental love if you are against its undoing?   A child would likely treasure such a picture of times gone by when her parents at least feigned a happy home for her sake.  The possibility may have legs, but the body one must build for the theory to work would need better support to stand. 

More data was required to unravel this nutshell, and more booze.  Perhaps the clues could be found in the cliental attracted to the aesthetics of this bar.  The bar top was a colonial copper, and its reflections were mainly the muted turquoise of the walls and ceilings. The grand bar displayed glassware hanging, bathed in gleaming warm light, and framed in by walls cladded in a wooden English style.  The tiles overhead were made of metal and even the washroom resisted the sight of drywall with grey and white wallpaper.  In the main room, Edison bulbs dangled artfully, and elegant garland and red ribbons offered holiday cheer.  Most patrons were couples, casually though neatly dressed men most often.  An underlit bar and ivy plants cascading their tendrils from various high points affords the place an air of smoothly modern sophistication, while comfortable and inviting as well.  The Leavitt Theatre actually has a full theatre at the end of the hall with 500 wooden chairs.  Even during these off hours, the doors are not barred, though the lights are off.  Mustering a little ambition, I had glimpsed the space, swallowing a nagging feeling you are doing something naughty or about to walk in on those who are.

“I’ve got it” announced L “It’s simple really.  I think we already overlooked it in fact.  It has to be the owners of the establishment.  Someone knocked it off the wall by accident and set it up there on the fire strobe to be fixed instead of fessing up to it.”  She then curtly slapped the bar like she was ringing a service bell and then shifted back in her chair in glory.  

The circling nature of the detective mind void of the stimulations of tobacco and coffee, and in its place, conjecture, what ifs, and bourbon with beer back may fatigue the mind.  Among friends, a harassing loopiness may even develop, and one may positively succumb to the ecstasy of a solution previously discarded.  After all, humans have an obscene habit of over complication.  Often enough, it is the simple cause that produces the troubling effect.  

An owner would account for the odd couple entering the commercial sphere, this is a common practice.  Having been caught up in the elegance of the hypothesis, I scrambled off my chair to a display of bended knee right then and there.   I took L’s hand in mine and proposed my unending love and dedication and  formally asked her hand in marriage.  She laughed and accepted graciously with a follow-up smooch.  Barney rolled her eyes.

Our neighbors again were giving us their attention when I turned to announce, “she said YES!”

L’s head dropped to the left and she was producing her ring hand. She held it gently up to show them that we were already wed.  Every good comedy team has a straight man you know.  Not straight sexually mind you…often not in fact, as is the case of the beloved Jeeves, Dan Levy, and quite possibly Bert (and Ernie) to name a few under the pride banner, but rather straight as the contrast to the funny man.  This role can be handled nicely by a sexy female, as L is in my case.  For their sacrifice, in a comedy routine, this member is usually named first and paid a higher sum as compensation for not generating most of the laughs, something like a 60-40 split.  I’ll have to make sure to pick up the bill tonight especially since my straight man never signed up for the job.  Interestingly, the contrasting character is more generally known as a foil, as in, aluminum foil used to back gems to make them shine more brightly.  The vaudevillian comedy duo such as Laurel and Hardey is just one type which uses this dichotomy.  Modern sitcoms use foils who often employ deadpan humor, and are commonly a favorite to the whole enterprise, such as Jim Halpert of the office or Michael Bluth of Arrested Development.  Notable straight /funny man comedians range from the Abbott and Costello, to Shrek and Donkey, to Tick and Arthur, Kermit and Fozzie, Farley and Spade, Kate McKinnon and whichever guest she breaks who’s trying to play the straight man.  Of course, a solo standup, or a comedy duo is just the start of comedies various diversions along its evolutionary path.  A dynamic like Seinfeld models a fluid role sharing dance.  In similar mimic of this art, a good friend group knows when to feed and when to eat, to make shared moments a beautiful, private sitcom.    

Perhaps it was the drinks, or the redemption of this love torn photo into the saving grips of reason, but I felt bulletproof. Playfully mischievous. Mainlined into the random flow state of humor.  When you are “on”, a comedic frenzy turns everybody into your stooge, just feeding you lines as if you are of the ilk of Lucille Ball or Robin Williams.  Of course I was not, or at least our neighbors did not see me in such a light.  While my antics felt like Chaplin level physical gaggery to me, I found my extended audience once again, awkwardly looking away.

Who cares.  “Barkeep”  I said in a rising bourgeoise accent as she arrived to her station opposed.  “Was there once a pictuuure…” then flatly in a normal voice “wait.”  then again with a rising intonation “do you happen to knoooow, the owner’s likeness?” 

Barney didn’t allow the poor barkeeps eyebrow to go up to full mast before she cut it.  She was all normal voice, fully deadpan.

“There’s a broken picture in the bathroom, and we were wondering if it came off the wall or who it is?”  

“Oh, maybe it’s a shrine to a fallen fire fighter” Tadds interjected, nodding yes to help the thought catch on.

“Well, unless it’s a picture of the Claytons, it’s not the owners.  This has been a family run operation since the original Leavitt’s sold it in the 70’s.  It’s coming up on 100 years in operation, one of Maine’s oldest movie theatres.”  

Barney had her phone out, definitely not a Clayton she reported with a vocal fry of a valley girl.  Wow, Max has made a lot of changes to this place since taking over in 2017, listen to this.

First, he installed a bar and converted the balcony into a comfy art deco lounge. The theater now offers specialty cocktails and food that patrons can enjoy during free movies. 

Four nights a week, The Leavitt has live music after the films. They have a live comedy series and a silent movies series where an organist accompanies the movies that would have played at the theater in its infancy. 

In the fall, they have a haunted movie theater tour, and they put on a four-day music festival called LeavittFest. Every night after the movies, the theater continues to offer some kind of entertainment.  Clayton says his hard work is paying off. Tourists frequent the mostly-free movies (they do charge for certain films) that kick-off at 7 p.m. nightly, while people who work late in Ogunquit and locals come by for the music and bar that stay open until 1 a.m.  source

“I’m on their site too, The centennial is April 2025, quite a feat!  It lists jazz, drag, comedy, concerts, and everything in between as events that occupy the stage.” 

“What do you want to bet it’s a prop from one of the improv shows?” Tadds said sardonically.

“Oh my God, yes!” was the consensus from even the barkeep who trotted off with a contented smile.  

The curiosity was only briefly sated for me.  “Of course this doesn’t solve anything.  It’s like saying God made the universe…ok, then who made God?  We haven’t explained anything, only added another question from where we started.”  

Tadds was looking at me cross, “what do you mean you plum?  It was a prop for a show, that’s where it came from.”

“Yes, but where did the improv show get it??  It’s still the wedding picture from someone real.  Did it come from a thrift store? And if so, why did it end up there? From someone’s house?  Why were they willing to use it in the theatre and not collect it afterward?”

I squinted and tapped my temple.

“I’m so over it” Barney said dryly.