This Actor’s Seen It All--in the Second Act of ‘Oil City Symphony’

The craziest things have happened in “Oil City Symphony” during the second act.

Currently at the Pasadena Playhouse, the musical spoof focuses on a concert given by a quartet of thirtysomething musicians for a typical small-town high school reunion. In the second act, the cast picks an older woman from the audience to be their former high school music teacher and to whom they pay tribute.

Mark Hardwick, who plays the momma’s boy pianist Mark, recalls opening night at the Playhouse they chose a woman who was Cuban “and didn’t speak very much English. Of course, we had no idea. She didn’t know what was going on. But she handled it well.”

In President-elect Bill Clinton’s Little Rock, Ark., they inadvertently picked a woman who was a local celebrity. “She was the first woman lawyer in Arkansas. She was 84. She stopped the show. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, and she got up out of her seat and sang a song. She brought the house down.”

When the show was playing Off-Broadway, another woman interrupted Hardwick during a segment in which he tells the audience not to take drugs and be sweet. “She stood up from her seat and added, ‘Practice safe sex.’ Of course, we were flabbergasted.”

Hardwick, who co-created “Oil City” as well as the popular musical “Pump Boys and Dinettes,” hails from East Texas and says “Oil City” hits “frighteningly close to home.” He admits some audiences, though, don’t know it is a satire. “But the people you would really see in a town like that, I am not boasting, they couldn’t do what we’re doing (musically),” Hardwick says.

The day after “Oil City” closes, Hardwick and fellow “Oil City” creator and co-star Mike Craver head to Little Rock to begin rehearsals on their new show, “Radio Gals.” “It is a little more theatrical. It has more of a plot, but everybody has to play (instruments). That is our rule.”