Almost, Maine -- Love Glows in the Northern Lights at Palm Beach Dramaworks

 

 

Yet another consequence of the unreal times in which we live: planning anything seems to be impossible.  Due to Omicron there was no official Palm Beach Dramaworks opening night of Almost, Maine; the theatre wisely delayed their first few performances of the play.  Because of scheduling, I am now reviewing the play more than a week after the run began. 

 

Ah, the play.  All those Hollywood adjectives apply, heartwarming, touching, a bittersweet combination of happiness/sadness.  In lesser theatrical hands it’s an easy slope into corny, but both the playwright and Palm Beach Dramaworks guard against that and instead this production aspires to an uplifting view of the human condition with all the things we share, especially the serendipity and vulnerability of love, reaching a kind of nobility characteristic of great American romantic comedies, literature, and drama.

 

Place and the people who have lived their entire lives among each other tie this series of nine vignettes together, all action arising during the same ten minutes on a dark Friday night and set in the mythical unincorporated town of Almost, Maine which is so far north it might as well be in Canada.  They talk a little funny, they are idiosyncratic, but they share the magic realism of the Northern Lights which keep appearing in the tales.  The play is a descendant of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town and the citizens of Grover's Corners.  As a collection of stories it shares some of the rhythm and poetry of the short story collections of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology, and the isolation one senses in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio.  The common thread of all is small town America, with the universality of its major themes applying to the human condition.

 

The sum of the stories is greater than its parts and its homespun wisdom shines.  Expect the unexpected as you would in an O’Henry short story, and be prepared to shed a few tears, not being sure whether they are ones of joy or sadness or just tears that we are alive.  As Sondheim says, life is Company.  We are on the same journey as these people.

 

The success of this play totally depends on its expert execution.  Here Palm Beach Dramaworks excels.

 

Veteran Palm Beach Dramaworks director, J. Barry Lewis, orchestrates this production like a fine piece of chamber music, tying together the tender romantic themes while balancing them with the comedic touches exactly as the playwright, John Cariani, intended.  Lewis enhances those moments with split second comedic timing.  In lesser hands this play could slide into sentimentality but the Director guards against that.

 

There are four highly experienced professional actors playing 18 different roles in eight scenes and a Prologue, Interlogue, and Epilogue (those three sections tying the scenes together): Niki Fridh (Woman 1), Brandon Morris (Man 1), Irene Adjan (Woman 2), and Shane Tanner (Man 2).  Adjan and Tanner are PBD veterans, while Fridh and Morris are newcomers to the theatre but fit right in with the PBD vibe.  It seems to me that these actors were relishing playing multiple parts from different perspectives, not being bound by issues of character development and being able to show their wide range of acting skills and comedic abilities.  There are several great comic lines, but the physical comedic moment of “They Fell” when Randy (played by Shane Tanner) and Chad (played by Brandon Morris) “fall” for each other is special.

Brandon Morris and Niki Fridh photo by Tim Stephien

 

Set design for a play of this type where all the actions are mostly outdoors involves presentational sets that can be quickly employed against a minimalist stage meant to denote the outdoors and the possibility of the Northern Lights.  PBD Set Designer, Michael Amico comes up with his usual functional and attractive sets such as the doorway to the “Moose Paddy” the “local hangout” bar of the “Almostians.”  The attention to detail of the set design, such as the snow where the background meets the stage, enhances the production.

 

Outstanding lighting design by Kirk Bookman not only follows the action but sets the deep emotional tone when the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights appear, or when the stars shine brightly against the cold dark sky.

 

How does a theatre company successfully differentiate so many characters being played by only four actors?  Answer: costume designs by Brian O’Keefe.  There are the requisite Bean boots, jeans, flannel shirts and flap-eared caps, gloves, mufflers, and puffy down vests, all of which could come out of an L.L. Bean catalogue, a different outfit for every scene.  The one thing in common is they’re dressed up to the neck, except in “Seeing The Thing” when Rhona (Irene Adjan) and Dave (Shane Tanner) hilariously strip layer upon layer of O’Keefe’s costumes down to their long johns to consummate their long “friendship” finding love in the dark woods of Almost, Maine on a Friday night around 9.00 pm. 

 

The props are particularly significant, the ice skate falling from the sky in “Where It Went” and the “bundles” of love Lendall (Brandon Morris) had given Gayle (Niki Fridh), juxtaposed to the tiny package of love Gayle had given in return in “Getting It Back”.  These props and many others make for delightful, surprising moments in the play.

 

Sound design by Roger Arnold captures the mysterious and mildly threatening sounds of the woods at times and provides transitional music between scenes, a mix of country, blues, new age music that does not distract from the production but provides cover for those brief interludes.

 

There are two lines in the play Chad delivers to Randy in “They Fell” which encapsulate the “heart” of the play: “all  I could think about was how not much in this world makes me feel good or makes much sense anymore, and I got really scared, ‘cause there’s gotta be something that makes you feel good or at least makes sense in this world, or what’s the point, right?...But then I kinda came out of bein’ sad and actually felt okay, ‘cause I realized that there is one thing in this world that makes me feel really good and that does make sense, and it’s you.”

 

Palm Beach Dramaworks, well known for producing classical drama, has served up a welcome change of pace during these very disturbing times.  Pause, reflect, and bask in the glow of the Northern Lights, professionally staged and magically delivered on the north side of Clematis Street, West Palm Beach.

 

Farewell, Jim and George

 

I learned of two friends’ deaths last week, Jim Mafchir who I’ve known since 1964 and George Moffett who we met with his wife, Suzanne, when we were living on our boat soon after I retired.  Although I didn’t see Jim or George on a regular basis, we were part of each other’s lives.

 

I wrote about George a few years ago after he had fought back from his first stroke.  I admired his tenacity and what I wrote about him then could serve as a eulogy.  

 

We had boating in common and I’ll always remember him soldiering up the dock each morning, with his lunch pail, on his way to work which, at that time, was doing faux paintings for some well-known clients in Fairfield County such as William F. Buckley, Jr.  George was a renaissance person, developing creative skills such as music and painting, and my entry details those accomplishments.  Our hearts go out to his wife, Suzanne. 

 

Although I have mentioned Jim in this blog, I never dedicated an entry entirely to him, so he deserves more detail here.  Jim and I had a relationship dating back to 1964 when, out of college, I met him in New York City at the production department of Johnson Reprint Corporation.  I was assigned to Jim who had printing and production experience; and was a graduate of the NY School of Printing.  With my liberal arts background, I lacked any technical expertise and initially he was my mentor and we became friends.

 

In fact I lived with him for a while in the East Village after my divorce in the late 1960’s.  Those were different times; we were still in our 20s, Janis Joplin still rocking the Fillmore East, only blocks away.  Jim had a motorcycle and I was a frequent companion on the back and we planned an adventure to Fire Island for one weekend, leaving the bike at the ferry pier and taking our back packs, hoping to find a place to bed down in a house.  (Ann, who I hardly knew at the time, shared a vacation home on that section of the Island.  That was not her weekend to be there, and unfortunately even had she been there, there was no room in her house for two extra guys, so we bedded down in our sleeping bags on the beach with dune buggies occasionally coming precariously close.)  He moved to the southwest in the early 1970s.  I hadn’t seen him for at least 20 years until we visited Santa Fe in 2008 and spent time with him and Judy and had a close email relationship with him ever since.

 

Even though we were geographically separated, our careers had a degree of parallelism.  While I was running a publishing company in Westport, CT., he established Red Crane Press and then Western Edge Press, imprints that focused on Southwest history.  He was an adventurer; in spite of fighting cancer for the latter part of his life; he was a mountain climber and a skier, taking him to various parts of the world to pursue his passions.

 

Professionally, he contributed to two of my publishing projects as he was a talented graphics designer.  I didn’t have to ask him; he volunteered, designing my first piano CD cover, Sentimental Mood, and my first published book, New York to Boston.

 

More detail on Jim can be found on legacy.com.  Jim, old friend, rest in peace.  You are missed.

 

 

 

A Ground Hog Day New Year

Happy New Year. One feels apologetic after addressing someone with that greeting, now needing to qualify it, saying this New Year has to be better than the last.  In the spirit of self analysis, or criticism, I once again look at my writings over the past years.  I’ve always said that writing this blog is not an act of self promotion, there is no advertising, no dialogue invitation (other than my email address if one wants to write me).  It is an exercise in accountability and remembrance.  I’ve joked with friends that it provides an alternative memory bank, particularly when it comes to books, cultural events, and travel destinations, the details of which are too easily forgotten as time inextricably moves on.  

We all have our opinions and our passions.  For nearly 15 years I’ve guardedly worn my heart and mind on my sleeve, and while looking back there are things I regret saying, but for the most part I’m satisfied.  Sometimes, I’ve even been prophetic, and now I’m alarmed by some of the things I write and think, those going to a dark, dark place.  Perhaps that direction is to be expected as I age, and feel its physical and psychological impact. 

However, most of all I fear that the “American Experiment” is beginning to look like the creation of Victor Frankenstein as we slip from democracy, to anacrocy, to oligarchy, destination autocracy.  We have abandoned the concept of “the common good” and are in a civil war, the polarization of just about every major issue.  This has been mostly played out in a grand political charade but incidents such as Charlottesville, and the attack on Congress last January 6 foreshadows where this might go as a hot war.  The proliferation of guns almost ensures some kind of armed conflict, most likely that very kind of guerrilla warfare.

We can’t even see eye to eye about COVID, extremists exploiting the issue as one of individual freedom.  I have written about this and our ex-President; the thought of his being the leader of our country could have been the punch line of a joke not very long ago.  His popular support ironically is not what he’s done for his followers but instead his giving voice to his follower’s hatred of the virtues of where we thought we were moving, into a more tolerant, ethnically diverse, educated society. 

It is bad enough if we only had to be concerned about the Trumpublicans mastery of propaganda and Gaslighting.  The liberal press writes much about the evils of Gerrymandering and I agree.  But, worse than Gerrymandering is the recent attempts to appoint local election officials, or representatives to the out dated, unnecessary, democracy-threatening Electoral College who are “sympathetic” to Trumpublican causes.

This sets up the real possibility that fair elections can be overturned as being illegitimate.  Then we will be a banana republic.  If election fraud does not work there are always guns.  Is it no wonder I am in a dark place?

At least a cultural light was on in this blog for a long time, but with COVID, many of the theatre and the musical performances which we used to attend in the past, and I enthusiastically wrote about, have been discontinued or migrated to Zoom (not the same).

My reading life has been disrupted by the chaos of our times and although I still try to escape in reading, I find myself less motivated to write about what I read.   Similarly, the piano: still working on improving my skills, but writing about it right now is a different matter.  (Stephen Sondheim’s death in 2021 was a shock and I will write about Sondheim eventually; what he has meant to me musically and personally).

Travel has been shut down, or dangerous, as the civil war plays out, the unvaccinated, the unmasked, claiming their “freedom” transcends everyone else’s. Thus trips I might have written about are no longer to be experienced.

As a society we’ve politicized everything and consequently progress with managing COVID has been disrupted. Years ago we were able to eliminate most smoking in public places which is clearly a danger to the non-smoker, but that took decades for “freedom-loving” smokers to accept, and the Covid issue is even more volatile and equally consequential. 

They accept the licensing of motor vehicles, but not of guns, again equally dangerous if in the wrong hands, or being military grade. I have written more than 30 entries over the years on the need for sensible control of automatic weapons, and covering incidents such as the recent Kyle Rittenhouse murders as examples of the consequences of no congressional action.  Even since the horror of murders of children at Sandy Hook in Newtown, CT, now almost ten years ago, we’ve done nothing other than recite the hollow words, “thoughts and prayers.”

It’s open shooting season on the soil of our once sacred nation, each and every one of them intolerable, destroying spirit.  I’ve written to our so called elected representatives who answer with form letters or emails extolling “freedom and the sacredness of the 2^nd amendment” as if it was handed down from heaven.

I am getting to my point.  Every year I seem to write less.  The definition of “banging one’s head against the wall” is “to attempt continuously and fruitlessly to accomplish some task or achieve some goal that is or seems ultimately hopeless.”  Yes that is where I am at with “freedom lovers” be they of guns, ignoring science, pursuing conspiracy theories, or undermining the very essence of our laws.

Ah, laws.  Another bête noire.  Here we are at the 1^st anniversary of one of the ugliest days in American history, and our Justice System moves in glacial slow motion.  Of course we must be thorough, but at the expense of never bringing the masterminds who are responsible to Justice? 

When I wrote my 100^th entry in this blog I posted a playful entry “How is my driving?”  Now that I;m posting my 726^th entry, I no longer ask that question.  A better one would be, “why am I driving?” I am struck by my first entry from last year ironically beginning “Could we have a worse start to a year that follows the worst year in memory?”  Talk about déjà vous.  I include that entry below as the same themes reverberate:

Saturday, January 9, 2021

The Revoltingly Horrid Year Continues….

 

Could we have a worse start to a year that follows the worst year in memory?

 

A quote President unquote, whose name I cannot even speak, continues behaving like an unhinged mobster boss.  His attempts to coerce the Georgia Secretary of State to throw their lawful election is just one more manifestation of his never-ending quest not to be labeled a loser, which he is and has always been.  His behavior then was criminal, impeachable.

 

But wait, that has been forgotten now as this deranged man stood safely behind a bullet proof shield and urged his slavish rabble to storm Congress just as it was ratifying the Electoral College Vote to name Joseph Biden the next President.  He yelled, Stop the Steal!  He promised he’ll be there with them every step along the way.  He didn’t clarify that he meant that metaphorically, as neither he nor his followers know the meaning of the word.  Instead he retired to the security of his White House Media Room with family members and sycophants to enjoy the siege of his insurrectionists in what we would consider a coup attempt if we were watching a 3rd world government.  It was like a Super Bowl party to them as they watched his minions do his dirty work.

 

Criminal, inciting sedition.  This by a sitting President.  Unthinkable.  Punishable, impeachable,

 

So his job of demolishing the last vestiges of democracy and decency is complete.  He is a deluded anarchist and by pandering to that base he has created a populist persona with a dedicated following, ready to die for him.  It could have been a greater loss of life during the siege had those pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails been detonated.  Perhaps the deep rumble of explosions and their accompanying terrifying bright lights was what he was waiting for.

 

We’ve all seen this coming and with every despicable act we (and many elected representatives) have given him more and more latitude.  After all it has been reasoned, he doesn’t understand the consequences.  He doesn’t understand how government really works….

 

How easily the behavior of one tragically flawed person can obfuscate so many serious issues which are tossed by the wayside, the pandemic and distribution of the vaccines, the climate, racial issues, gun control, voter suppression, and a national debt from which the nation might not recover.  Meanwhile Bitcoins and the stock market rage on while the nation burns, and we wake up each morning, fearing the next disaster du jour.

 

Good riddance to our Mobster President who, unfortunately, will still be part of the cancer that erodes our society from within, no matter the degree of his exile.  Mar a Lago may be his Elba.

 

 

 

 

‘The People Downstairs’ – Ordinary People Caught in Extraordinary Times

 

The ghost light is off.  The theatre once again comes alive.  It is not as if there is an on-off switch.  Reopening after nearly two years is like opening a new theatre, further complicated by Covid protocols. Through it all, Palm Beach Dramaworks persevered, fully committed to its mission statement, Theatre To Think About. 

The reopening debuts a fully developed play, The People Downstairs by Michael McKeever, commissioned and workshopped by the theatre company.  While the Diary of Anne Frank (the play and then the movie which was based on the Diary) is filled with gathering dread and the inevitability of the “resolution,” one doesn’t really think much of that other side of the story, the impact on the lives of the “people downstairs,” the ones who made a conscious choice of risking their own lives to keep these people alive until the expected joyful day of the Allied liberation, which tragically came too late.  The topic is as relevant today as the period in which The People Downstairs is set.  If politicians are not concerned about the erosion of democracy and the threat of fascism, the arts are on guard.

So while we know of the travails and terror endured by Anne Frank and the seven other occupants of their tiny hiding place from her Diary, what could life have been like for those who chose to hide them and keep them supplied and safe?  The real life character of Miep Gies was one of their lifelines.  She played a minor role in the Diary of Anne Frank play, but the major one in The People Downstairs.

As a refresher, the antecedent play opens with Miep and Otto Frank.  It is the end of WW II.  Mr. Frank is disheveled, says he’s leaving Amsterdam.  No she protests, this is your home.  But there are too many memories for him.  Frank: Miep, I’m a bitter old man.  I shouldn’t speak to you like this…after all that you did for us…the suffering.  Miep: No. No.  It wasn’t suffering.  You can’t say we suffered.  Mr. Frank: I know what you went through, you and Mr. Kraler. I’ll remember it as long as I live.  Miep hands him the diary.  It is then a memory play.

Anne from her diary:  “It’s the silence of the nights that frightens me the most….The days aren’t too bad.  At least we know that Miep and Mr. Kraler are down there below us in the office. Our protectors, we call them. I asked Father what would happen to them if the Nazis found out they were hiding us. Pim said that they would suffer the same fate that we would…Imagine! They know this, and yet when they come up here, they’re always cheerful and gay as if there were nothing in the world to bother them.

Yes Imagine!  Playwright Michael McKeever has done just that: it makes for an ominous play to open after the theatre was shut during the pandemic.  Think how things have changed during this period.  We emerge a country which should have pulled together, but pulled apart.  Can fascism happen here?  The People Downstairs watched in that context speaks to our present times.

 

The setting is the office of Travies and Company a wholesaler and makers of spice, the award-wining scenic designer, Michael Amico, creates the perfect functional space for the play’s action and in faithful keeping with what it might have looked like in 1942 Amsterdam.  Stage left is the stairway that leads to the secret small annex which housed eight people for more than two years and stage right is the doorway that leads down a stairway to the street or to the factory/warehouse where the workers are (two of whom make appearances in the play).  They are there during the working day except for lunch hour.  They believe, as Otto Frank planned, that the Frank family has fled the Nazis and are living in Switzerland.  So it is during that hour or after work that the people downstairs can enter the annex upstairs to deliver provisions and speak to the people they are attempting to save among whom are their beloved manager, Mr. Frank and his family.

All the actors in the play are Palm Beach Dramaworks veterans.  It opens as a memory play as well, Miep stepping across the fourth wall to address the audience directly, as she does with every scene.  Played by Amy Miller Brennan, she is the most complex character developed by the playwright.  She is in virtually all the scenes, is the audience’s guide to the day and year and developments, revealing her inner thoughts to us directly and is central to the action as well.  I loved how she delivered her monologue about hating herself for reveling over the German defeats in Stalingrad with 250,000 German soldiers dying.  Is it no wonder?

Bruce Linser as Henk and Amy Miller Brennan as Miep, Alicia Donelan Photography

 

Brennan successfully carries the load and accomplishes these multiple responsibilities, as well as engaging in what is the love story with her husband in the play, Henk, who, to her dismay, joins the underground.  Henk is played by one of the most versatile actors at Dramaworks, Bruce Linser, showing his deep love for his wife, and some fissures in the marriage created by the stress of the circumstances.

A veteran of so many PBD plays, Dennis Creaghan, is the modest and loveable Mr. Koophuis, Creaghan reaching deeply to entreat the audience’s sympathy for his resolve and his health.  His interaction with Mr. Visser is colored by frustration and love. 

Playwright Michael McKeever’s acting portrayal of Mr. Visser, the one character who he imagined, is the perfect foil for who else would know this character so intimately?  McKeever saves a lot of the humor in the play for Mr. Visser, so desperately needed to offset the weighty subject.  But his is also the role of creating the conflict in an office resembling a family fundamentally tied by love and respect.  In that regard it is a complicated role.  He is jumpy, questioning the wisdom of what they are doing, predicting (accurately unfortunately) the ultimate end, and even struggles with himself over reporting their actions to the Nazis, knowing, really, he can’t do it, but thinking it might spare them all from Nazi reprisals.  That ambivalence is profoundly communicated by McKeever in his emotional portrayal.

In a sense the ballast of the people downstairs’ mission is Mr. Kraler steadfastly played by Tom Wahl, the man who suddenly finds himself being cast into the role as leader of the company when Otto Frank and family and friends go into hiding.  He must keep the peace among his colleagues.  He insists they pretend every day is just an ordinary day.  Wahl’s strong performance is central to the play’s reality.

Bruce Linser, Amy Miller Brennan, Dennis Creaghan, Michael McKeever, Tom Wahl

Matthew W. Korinko, and John Campagnuolo carry multiple roles, small but critically essential parts for the workings of this play, ranging from downstairs workers (one of whom the office thinks might be an informer) to the Green Police, responsible for finding and rounding up the Jews in Amsterdam.

A special appearance is made by the well known South Florida actor, David Kwait, as Otto Frank, in the play’s bittersweet coda, a prequel to the play circa 1933 when he first meets and hires Miep.  Kwait’s Frank brims optimism and enthusiasm about the future, for his children and for Miep – she’ll even learn to make the jam that contains pectin, their major export!  It is a heart wrenching conclusion.

The play also succeeds because of the expert technical support.  Brian O’Keefe’s costume designs are exacting for the period from Miep’s lace collar on her dress to the men’s three piece suits and period overcoats.  Over the time of the play those become more disheveled and threadbare, the men no longer displaying their expensive pocket watches, presumably traded for fuel or food on the black market.  Miep, who is on the stage practically all the time, makes visual changes to mark the passage of time.

Sound Design by Roger Arnold and Lighting Design by Kirk Bookman work hand in hand to establish the look and feel of the times and the play’s elements, from the ticking clock, the resounding church bell marking the passage of time, and at dramatic moments, the blasts of bombers overhead, and the flash of fire bombs.  The omnipresent sirens of the Green Police heighten the anxiety along with the sounds of wood being smashed with the final apprehension of the occupants of that tiny space.  One can feel being there, immersed in these sensual elements.

A particularly disconcerting “sound effect” at one point is an emotional speech by Hitler on the radio, Koopuis and Miep listening.  With that sound in the background Koopuis says the following about the German people: They’re afraid of what’s foreign to them, of what they don’t understand. And he feeds into it. He feeds into their fear of others. Their fear of what’s different. He articulates all the horrible thoughts that are in their heads. He gives them voice. He screams these thoughts - these horrible thoughts - out loud and wraps them up with a pretty bow of national pride. And people love him for it.  It is a very sobering moment for the audience, enhanced by the sound of Hitler’s ranting and worse, the cheering of the adoring crowds. 

Producing Artistic Director, William Hayes, not only conceived of the play’s premise, but sought out Michael McKeever to write it and worked tirelessly with the PBD Workshop to perfect it.  Hayes also directed the play and had as significant an impact on shaping the characters as McKeever did in writing them.  Directing a new play is vastly different than the typical revival.  Hayes leaves his imprint on the pacing and the integration of the technical elements and together, with the playwright, explores the basic question: can “ordinary people” make a difference in extraordinary times?   How many moments in history have we failed to recognize the characteristics of rising racism and xenophobia, demagogues appealing to nationalism and emotion?  Can fascism happen here, or is it already happening right in front of us?  In this respect the play has a didactic message, but it must in this day and age.

Perhaps audiences will heed the hope of Miep as she clutches the Diary at the end, to cherish the words and memory of Anne Frank and the millions of Jews who perished at the hands of a sociopathic leader.

This play reminds us that there is an inherent goodness in people, people such as the “people downstairs” who did everything to keep eight Jews in hiding for two years.  This is a drama which should be required viewing.

 

“A country that tolerates evil means- evil manners, standards of ethics-for a generation, will be so poisoned that it never will have any good end.” ― Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here

 "I'm a Holocaust Survivor….It feels like 1929 or 1930 Berlin….Things that couldn't be said five years ago, four years ago, three years ago—couldn't be said in public—are now normal discourse.”― Stephen B. Jacobs, Buchenwald Concentration Camp Survivor