‘The Great Leap’ Tackles Bigger Issues Than Basketball 

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Tyler Simahk, Barlow Adamson, and Gary Thomas Ng in The Great Leap at Lyric Stage

By Shelley A. Sackett

Award-winning playwright Lauren Yee has skin in the game with her play, ‘The Great Leap,’ now making its Boston premiere at Lyric Stage Company. Her father, a rare 6’1” Asian-American basketball player, was part of the 1981 team the US sent to China for a “friendship game” between Beijing University and the University of San Francisco. The Americans were demolished during the exhibition games.

Yee suspects the team, composed of non-NBA, non-college players, was hand-picked by the Chinese so the Americans would lose. Her father, who recounted his experiences to her as she wrote her play, was very helpful. “On stage, you’ll see a version of my father; it’s not pretending to be him,” Yee says in the program notes.

She sets her drama in 1989, a year that saw rising demonstrations for political and economic reform in Tiananmen Square. Using humor, spicy vernacular and some actual on-stage dribbling sequences, she weaves together an absorbing story while making some astute points about the intersection and consequences of politics, cultural identity and human foibles.

The plot is pretty straightforward.

It is 1989. Manford (an outstanding Tyler Simahk), “the most feared basketball player in Chinatown,” is a pushy and single-minded 17-year-old. The play opens with him confronting the San Francisco University basketball coach, Saul (a first-rate Barlow Adamson), demanding that Saul put him on the team he is taking to China to play in an exhibition match against Beijing University on June 3 and 4.

Saul has heard of Manford, ”the only guy who got thrown out of a game for fighting with his own teammate.” Manford knows a thing or two about Saul, too, and wastes no time striking at Saul’s Achilles’ heel. With an 8-20 losing record, his career is circling the drain. A loss to a Chinese team would finish him. Only Manford can rescue him from this fate.

“I am the most relentless person you ever met,” Manford taunts.

Turns out Coach Saul was at the helm of the team that traveled to Beijing in 1971 to advise a politically appointed amateur, Wen Chang (an outwardly cardboard but inwardly emotive Gary Thomas Ng) about the American game of basketball. This was at the height of the ferocious Cultural Revolution. Wen’s assignment was more about his Communist “rehabilitation” than a perfect job match.

Jihan Haddad, Adamson

Eighteen years later, Saul is headed back for a rematch against Wen. Manford’s mission is to convince Saul that the Americans will lose unless Manford is on the team. He’s better than any point guard Saul has on his SFU roster and he knows what Saul will be facing when he returns to Beijing. “Eighteen years ago, you went as their guest. You’re going back as their enemy,” he warns.

Manford has another reason he needs to return, and that hidden secret drives the ending’s delicious plot twist and would be an unconscionable spoiler to reveal. He has just lost his mother, who fled Beijing before he was born and whom he claims he didn’t really know (she spoke only Chinese). His father was never in the picture. He now lives with the family of his “cousin” Connie (a terrific Jihan Haddad), a 25-year-old graduate student and Manford’s cheerleader and True North.

The rest of the almost two-hour (one intermission) production flips back and forth between 1971 and 1989, filling in the gaps in the storyline and fleshing out its four characters. The flashbacks to 1971 (wonderfully costumed by Seth Bodie) contrast the brash, arrogant Saul and Wen, the hollowed-out victim of a regime he hates but resignedly obeys. Eighteen years later, their positions and perspectives have shifted. Wen is on top of his game and is chomping at the bit to give Saul a taste of the medicine he dished out in 1971.

Yee tackles many big-ticket issues in her play (the human cost of the Cultural Revolution, taking a stand vs standing still, living an authentic life, and cultural identity) and by its end, we understand her four characters and what makes them tick. Although overlong and in need of some editing, “The Great Leap” is greatly satisfying and its ending alone is worth the price of admission.

For tickets and information, go to:www.lyricstage.com

The Great Leap – Written by Lauren Yee. Directed by Michael Hisamoto. Scenic Design by Baron E. Pugh. Costume Design by Seth Bodie. Lighting Design by Michael Clark Wonson. Sound Design by Elizabeth Cahill. Presented by Lyric Stage Company of Boston through March 19, 2023.

A film about an opera written at a Nazi concentration camp on screen in Beverly

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“The Kaiser of Atlantis” director Sebastián Alfie adapted charcoal sketches made by Terezín prisoners for the film’s animated sequences./COURTESY PHOTO

By Shelley A. Sackett

Argentine filmmaker Sebastián Alfie saw the opera, “The Kaiser of Atlantis,” by chance. He was visiting his hometown Buenos Aires in 2006, and happened to get tickets to the Teatro Colón, where it was playing. He was amazed by the music and the story surrounding it.

Composer Viktor Ullmann’s chamber opera, with a libretto by Peter Kien, was written in 1943 while they were imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camp Theresienstadt (Terezín). It tells the story of the Emperor of Atlantis, a tyrant bent on waging endless war. It was rehearsed in 1944, but never performed at Terezín because that October, most of the musicians were deported to Auschwitz, where Ullmann and Kien were killed.

The manuscript, however, survived, and through a series of lucky coincidences, ended up in the hands of London-based musician and arranger Kerry Woodward, who conducted the world première of the piece in Amsterdam in 1975.

Alfie researched the opera and its history, and discovered no one had told its remarkable story, but at that time he lacked the resources to film it. Seven years in the making, his documentary, “The Kaiser of Atlantis,” tells the remarkable journey of the opera from its creation in 1943 to its large-scale staging at Madrid’s Teatro Real nearly 80 years later.

The film will have its U.S. première as part of Salem Film Fest on Sunday, March 26, at 2:30 p.m. at The Cabot in Beverly. Alfie will join viewers for a live, post-screen Q&A. The film has been selected by festivals in over 20 countries and has so far won nine awards.

“Kaiser” intertwines several narrative threads, from the opera’s collaborative origin to Woodward’s own deep connection to its composer and his work to the newest production in Madrid by the late stage director Gustavo Tambascio and conductor Pedro Halffter. It took Alfie two years to edit his film, “cleaning” what wasn’t moving the story forward.

There is even a mystical strand, involving Woodward’s connection to Rosemary Brown, the late English spiritualist, composer, and pianist who claimed that dead composers dictated new works to her. Respected in her time, even Leonard Bernstein sought Brown’s counsel.

“I think this is the first time that a medium takes part in a Holocaust documentary … as far as I know,” Alfie said by email from Spain, where he is now based. Woodward maintained that he was able to connect with Ullmann through Brown to address questions regarding the original score.

Alfie included music and animation to great artistic effect. He found inspiration for the animated sequences in actual drawings made by prisoners who used pieces of charcoal to sketch on the back of Nazi registration forms. These were adapted by the film’s animators.

“I needed to explain the plot of the opera, and animation was the perfect tool to do it,” Alfie said. He also needed to fill in the gaps about parts of the story that had been lost forever. There is almost no photographic record of Viktor Ullmann, for example, and animation was a good way of representing his biography.

When Alfie interviewed Dagmar Lieblova, a Czech Terezín survivor who appears in the film, he was deeply affected. Until her death in 2018, and well into her 80s, she was a tireless lecturer at Terezin, conducting classes with students of all nationalities. “Meeting her was the most emotional part of the entire filmmaking process for me,” he said.

Alfie hopes audiences will leave the film with greater understanding of the sacrifices Ullmann, Kien, and their friends made and the role art can play when fighting for what we think is just. The film’s dire warning about tyrants is as relevant today as it was in 1943.

“If we don’t learn from the mistakes of the past, we are condemned to repeat them. When rulers play with war in order to gain popular support, they are playing with fire and putting us all at risk,” he said. Θ

The Salem Film Fest runs from March 23 to April 2. For information and tickets, visit salemfilmfest.com.

Author to tell Golda Meir’s story through a feminist lens at JCCNS

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Pnina Lahav, author of “The Only Woman in the Room”

By Shelley A. Sackett

MARBLEHEAD — There is no dearth of books about and by Golda Meir, the Israeli politician, teacher, and kibbutznik who served as the fourth prime minister from 1969 to 1974. Yet, as far as Pnina Lahav was concerned, Meir’s real story was still untold.

The former law professor and member of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies at Boston University last September published, “The Only Woman in the Room: Golda Meir and Her Path to Power,” which looks at Meir through a feminist lens, focusing on her recurring role as a woman standing alone among men. The meticulously researched book is chockful of anecdotes that flesh out Meir’s full identity as a woman, Jew, wife, mother, and Zionist leader who was one of the founders of Israel.

On Tuesday, March 21 at 7 p.m., the Jewish Community Center of the North Shore in Marblehead will sponsor “An Evening with Pnina Lahav,” where the Israel-born scholar will talk about her new book with this Journal correspondent and answer questions from the audience. The event is part of the Israel at 75 series and will be followed by a dessert reception.

The idea for the book emerged as Lahav approached retirement and found herself reflecting on her career and what had most resonated with her over the decades. In 1998, she wrote her first biography, an award-winning book about Shimon Agranat, the third president of the Supreme Court of Israel. She had enjoyed both the process and the positive reviews and prizes it earned.

While searching for a special retirement gift to herself, she came up with the perfect idea: She would write another biography and return to the topic that had held her interest for half a century, since she published her first article in 1974 titled, “The Status of Women In Israel: Myth and Reality.”

“I decided to explore how Golda, the most successful Israeli politician of the 20th century and the fourth and only woman prime minister, functioned between the myth of equality and the reality of misogyny,” Lahav told the Journal. The title is both a play on the famous statement, attributed to David BenGurion, that Golda was ‘the only man in the room,’ and a tip of the hat to the fact that Golda surrounded herself with men. She made sure she was indeed the only woman in her political room.

Lahav’s biggest challenge was covering the entire history of Israel through a gender-oriented lens, from the Second Aliyah (1904-1914) to the Yom Kippur War (1973). She hopes today’s Jewish woman learns a lesson of perseverance from reading about Golda’s life story.

“If you want something with all your heart, try to get it, try to do it all, and do not fear criticism. At the end, you will be a happier person.” Lahav said. Θ

The event is free to JCCNS members, $10 for the community. To register, visit jccns.org.

‘Boulevard of Bold Dreams’ Shines a Light on Hattie McDaniel and Her 1940 Oscar

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Samantha Jane Williams, Michelle Fenelon, and Stewart Evan Smith in ‘Boulevard of Bold Dreams’ at GBSC. Photos by Nile Scott Studios

By Shelley A. Sackett

Playwright LaDarrion Williams has cherry-picked a dramatic moment in history to explore in his well-crafted ‘Boulevard of Bold Dreams.’ The date is February 29, 1940, the night of the Academy Awards. The setting is Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel bar, outside the grand ballroom where the awards will be presented.

Before the ceremony even starts, this year’s Oscars have made history. Hattie McDaniel is the first Black actor to be nominated for an award. She is up for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance as Scarlett O’Hara’s ‘mammy’ in the Civil War era blockbuster, “Gone With the Wind.”

Working in the sumptuous Art Deco lounge (kudos to set designer Rachel Rose Burke) are Black employees Arthur Brooks (Stewart Evan Smith), a bartender, and Dottie Hudson (Michelle Fenelon), a chambermaid. The two banter as comfortably as rivalrous siblings. In the course of their intimate conversation, the audience picks up that they have been friends since they were two years old. Together, they left rural Alabama for Hollywood to follow their dreams. Dottie, a talented singer, is waiting for her big break. Arthur dreams of becoming a film screenwriter and director. He even has a title for his first project: ‘The Boulevard of Bold Dreams.”

Williams, Smith

Their big dreams, however, run smack into the reality of 1940s California, where most working-class Blacks are relegated to subservient positions and racism is less violent but no less virulent than the version they lived with in Alabama. While waiting for their dreams to come true, they work day jobs they hate.

The silver lining is they work in the same hotel and get to hang out. A lot. They talk about everything under the sun. This evening, Hattie McDaniel is topic number one. The white hotel owner just directed Arthur to set up a table for her in the back corner of the theater, out of sight of the white guests. Allowing her in the hotel at all is a major concession in this whites-only establishment; sitting with her castmates would be out of the question.

The two debate the double-edged sword of the evening and whether McDaniel should attend or not. McDaniel’s nomination for the movie industry’s highest honor is a milestone breakthrough and achievement for Blacks everywhere. “She came out here with nothing but $50 and a dream. She’s a credit to our race,” Arthur says.

Fenelon, Smith

Dotty, on the other hand, thinks McDaniel should strike back at the white establishment that has used and abused her, and refuse to attend. Dotty chafes at the Mammy role that practically venerates slavery and has McDaniel “shucking and jiving for those white folk.” On top of that, and most unforgivable, is the fact that McDaniel was not even allowed to attend the movie’s premiere with her fellow castmates because it debuted at a whites-only theater in Atlanta.

Their hypothetical debate turns real when Hattie McDaniel (Samantha Jane Williams) herself wanders into the bar, seeking a moment alone while she wrestles with the very issue Dotty and Arthur have been discussing. For her, the matter is far more pressing. She has decided she won’t attend the awards ceremony under her agent’s conditions (the studio has even written her acceptance speech, not trusting her to speak on her own ). “What’s the point if I’m not treated like a human being? All I want is to sit with my cast,” she says sadly.

Arthur and Dotty have only minutes if they are to convince her otherwise.

McDaniel describes the negative reaction that has worn her down. Even the NAACP, criticizing the part as “a disgrace to colored folks,” urged her to refuse the role. “My own worst enemy ain’t the white folks. It’s my own people,” she explains.

Over drinks and stories of hardships and dreams, the three reveal their experiences with a racist system designed to keep them down. Arthur tries to convince McDaniel of the importance of the day for Blacks everywhere. Dottie ferociously attacks McDaniel for her part in perpetuating the myth of Blacks with her roles playing happy maids and slaves. She accuses her of being the worst kind of sell-out.

“I’d rather play a maid in the movies than be one in real life,” McDaniel finally fires back. She takes on these maid roles with “pride and responsibility,” she explains, as an homage to Black women and their sacrifices. She wants to show the human value of caregivers like her own mother, a former slave, who made a living mothering the children of a white family who acted like she didn’t exist. “I took those roles for me. I’d play a thousand maids to show people my mother’s worth,” she says. “I made you see them. You know them now.”

Fenelon, Smith, Williams

Eventually, McDaniel’s ambivalence about attending the ceremony wanes. She attends and (no spoilers here) wins, beating out cast mate Olivia de Havilland. The show’s closing scene projects her actual acceptance speech onto a vintage black and white TV along with speeches of ten Black actors who won Oscars since, a clever touch. Especially poignant is hearing Mo’Nique, best-supporting actress winner 70 years later for “Precious,” declare, “I’d like to thank Miss Hattie McDaniel for enduring all that she had to so that I would not have to.”

Williams’ script does an excellent job of bringing us into the hearts and minds of his fictionalized characters while also conjuring up McDaniel’s conflicted viewpoint. At 100 minutes (no intermission), the play both flows and informs. Yet, given the personal pain and humiliation that accompanied her trailblazing triumph, we can’t help wondering how the real Hattie McDaniel, armed with 20-20 hindsight, might truthfully answer Dotty’s question: Was it worth it?

‘Boulevard of Bold Dreams’ — Written by LaDarrion Williams; Directed by Taavon Gamble; Scenic Design by Rachel Rose Burke; Lighting Design by Corey Whittemore; Costume Design by Klara Escalera; Sound Design by James Cannon; Property Design by Emily Allinson. Presented by the Greater Boston Stage Company at 395 Main St., Stoneham, MA through March 19.

For tickets and information, go to https://www.greaterbostonstage.org/

A.R.T’s ‘Wife of Willesden’ is a Pleasure with a Capital P

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Clare Perkins in ‘The Wife of Willesden’ at the A.R.T. Photo Credits: Marc Brenner

by Shelley A. Sackett

Whether by design or chance, the slightly tardy start to “The Wife of Willesden” gifted the audience with a few bonus minutes to soak in the vibe of Robert Jones’s magnificent set while seat dancing to disco party tunes. The stage, meant to represent a pub in Willesden (a multi-racial part of North London’s Brent) feels more like a holy shrine to drink and camaraderie. Six triple-case bays are filled floor to ceiling with glimmering bottles. A disco ball sparkles from above. A barmaid cuts fruit while local revelers mill about. Members of the audience sit at small tables on the stage, further breaking down the fourth wall. The effect is, well, intoxicating.

And then boom! The play starts.

Enter Author (Jessica Murrain), an undisguised stand-in for playwright Zadie Smith, who profusely apologizes for the play we are about to see and introduces us to the pub’s lively, diverse clientele. “If there is a person in Brent who doesn’t think their life should be turned into a 400-page story, I’d like to meet them,” she declares.

Based on Chaucer’s 1392 “The Canterbury Tales,” Smith’s raucous modernized reworking has the pub’s motley group of locals gathered for a story-telling competition with the prize of a full English breakfast to the winner. The first few stories are told by pompous men, who drone on about themselves with misplaced over-confidence. Lurking in the background is Alvita, the Wife of Willesden. Finally, fed up with the men’s yawning yarns and itching for center stage, she grabs the imaginary mic and never puts it down.

Marcus Adolphy, Perkins, George Eggay, and Andrew Frame

As Alvita, Clare Perkins is a category 6 hurricane. Poured into a scarlet body-hugging dress and shod in weapon-grade stilettos heels, she bursts into the spotlight and commands it for the rest of the evening. Brash and boozy, fierce and wise, Alvita has a story to tell, a folktale about an 18th-century Jamaican soldier and a life-changing lesson he learned. But first, she needs to introduce herself and provide a little context. By way of prologue to her actual tale, she recounts her romantic history of five marriages with full Monty unapologetic focus on sex, pleasure, and her rapacious libido.

“The shock never ends when women say things usually said by men whether today or 600 years ago,” she says with a wink. Alvita is a consummate narrator. She imitates, animates, and intimidates, bringing her history to life with the help of her husbands, who happen to be at the pub. They are her willing props as she details their virtues and vices, defending her right to marry as many times as she pleases. She is utterly devoid of regrets and chafes at anyone who dares to judge her. Her philosophy of life defies conventions and rules, be they religious, political, or matrimonial. “What you call laws, I call advice,” she tells her strict, churchgoing aunt. “I think God likes variety.”

Most of all, Alvita is an unashamed pleasure seeker. She wears her libido on her sleeve like a badge of honor. “I demand pleasure,” she half growls, half purrs. “I’m all about what feels good.” Eventually, (and just in the nick of time, as the prologue begins to feel more like a reprise), Alvita launches into the meat of her story — the Jamaican folktale. A young 18th-century soldier is sentenced to die for raping a woman. In the spirit of restorative justice, the benevolent Queen Nanny agrees to spare his life under one condition. He has a year and a day to comb the earth and discover the answer to the same question Alvita poses rhetorically throughout the play: What do women want?

The folktale’s answer echoes Alvita’s feminist refrain— women want to be free of fear, to be happy, to follow their own path of their own making, and, most importantly, to be deliciously, eternally, and completely satisfied sexually. She looks at the men around her and the power they claim as rightfully theirs and basically says, “I’ll have what they’re having.”

Perkins’s performance cannot be overpraised. She doesn’t steal the show; she IS the show. Her charismatic Alvita may present as part stand-up comic, part Tina Turner, but beneath that flashy exterior beats a tender heart with a sage message. Perkins effortlessly melds Alvita’s contradictory traits into a single nuanced and likable character.

Kiln Theatre Artistic Director Indhu Rubasingham brings a playfulness to the 95-minute (no intermission) production, changing mood, time, and place with, for example, a simple gold tray behind the head to represent an apostle or bar rags to represent togas. The superb ensemble cast doesn’t seem to be acting when frolicking on stage; they are thoroughly enjoying themselves.

Claudia Grant, Ellen Thomas, Scott Miller, and Frame

Finally, there is Smith’s ambitious and smart play. Although the cast’s uneven Jamaican, Nigerian, and North London accents and rapid-fire delivery made some of the lines impossible to decipher, Smith’s rhyming couplets in today’s vernacular evoked Chaucer’s Middle English in rhythm and meaning. That is no small feat. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is an uptick in interest in the original as a result. Or in Smith’s award-winning novels.

Though not without flaws, “The Wife of Willesden” is clever, fast-paced, and beautifully produced with a timely message and, above all else, the magnificent Clare Perkins in a role she was born to play. Although studying Chaucer is hardly a prerequisite, a cursory google search would enhance appreciation for Smith’s remarkable talent while scattering a few breadcrumbs to make following its path easier. For tickets and information, go to: https://americanrepertorytheater.org/

‘The Wife of Willesden’ – Adapted by Zadie Smith from Chaucer’s ‘The Wife of Bath’ from The Canterbury Tales; Directed by Kiln Theatre Artistic Director Indhu Rubasingham; Design by Robert Jones, Lighting Design by Guy Hoare; Composition and Sound Design by Drama Desk Ben and Max Ringham. The Wife of Willesden is a Kiln Theatre Production and is presented in association with BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) at the Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle St., Cambridge, MA through March 17

‘Seven Guitars’ Is August Wilson – And Boston Theater – at Its Finest

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Cast of Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s ‘Seven Guitars’. Photo by Ken Yotsukura Photography. 

by Shelley A. Sackett

It’s hard to know where to begin praising Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s production of August Wilson’s ‘Seven Guitars.’ Jon Savage’s urban backyard set, with its backlit city side panels, gardens, make-do furniture, and hints of multiple interior spaces, combines simplicity with depth. Amanda E. Fallon’s lighting, Dewey Dellay’s pitch-perfect musical compositions, and Abe Joyner-Meyer’s toe-tapping sound design complete the immersive capsule. We are indeed time travelers to a 1948 rooming house in Pittsburgh’s Hill District.

Maurice Emmanuel Parent’s intimate and sensitive direction elicits a natural rhythm from the cast of seven first-rate actors who miraculously coalesce as an ensemble without diminishing their unique bright lights. And then, of course, there is Wilson’s multi-layered, music-infused drama, with dialogue the actors imbue with lyricism and individuality.

Regina Vital, Johnnie Mack, Valyn Lyric Turner, Maya Carter

The play opens in the rooming house backyard right after the funeral of its main character, Floyd “Schoolboy” Barton, a young blues guitarist (played by the exceptional Anthony T. Goss) who was killed just as his dream of stardom was about to come true. His murder remains unsolved.

Wilson has a knack for gathering strangers, putting them under the same roof, and creating a convivial family unit through which a complete social picture materializes. Small talk is never small from this playwright. There is a living power that pulses with every word.

The solemn scene of mourning quickly turns playful, as we meet the residents and witness the warmth and ease with which they address each other. “He almost make it where you want to die just to have somebody talk over you like that,” says Canewell (Omar Robinson), one of Floyd’s musician friends and band sidemen, about the Reverend’s eulogy.

Anthony T. Goss, Carter

Vera (Maya Carter), Floyd’s girlfriend, observes she saw six angels dressed in black carrying Floyd away into the sky. Louise (a spirited Regine Vital), the lively boardinghouse owner, her tenant, Hedley (Johnnie Mack), a Bible-thumping elder, and Red Carter (Dereks Thomas), another of Floyd’s musician sidemen, round out the group. (Ruby (Valyn Lyric Turner), Louise’s pregnant niece will arrive late in Act I. All but Louise also saw the angels whisk Floyd away.

From the get-go, the characters’ quirks and reflections on life, loss, and the history and burden of being Black in white America pepper their conversations, bonding these folks in a natural and kindhearted way. Family, in all of Wilson’s plays, is not defined by biology; it is defined by fate and choice.

The rest of the play is through flashbacks that retell the story leading up to and including, the murder. Floyd explodes onto the stage, freshly released from a 90-day stint in a workhouse detention and ready to kickstart his paused career and love affair with Vera. His plans to return to Chicago and pursue celebrity hinge on convincing Vera and sidemen Red and Canewell to return with him.

Johnnie Macks, Dereks Thomas, Goss, Omar Robinson

Floyd has an uphill battle on his hands. He left Vera for another woman when he went to Chicago the first time, and convincing her that he’s on the up and up will take all the swagger and charm he can muster. Likewise his bandmates, who were burned by their first experiences in the Windy City and the wily ways of the white record industry.

While “Seven Guitars” satisfies its audience with a plot-driven narrative, it is through its seven characters and their conversations that Wilson’s underlying messages surface. These seven are a microcosm of the ways in which racism and its oppressive economic and legal system have stacked the deck against the Black man. Yet, despite these shackles, there emerge layers of folklore, superstitions, family traditions, and shifting dreams that paint a broader, deeper social picture.

Wilson interweaves big ticket topics — male/female relationships, police brutality, the danger of being black in a white land — organically through his characters’ conversations and monologues, giving each their moment in the spotlight. Even the occasional existential soapbox riff – thanks to Wilson’s light and shrewd pen –  blends naturally with banter about recipes and family histories.

Carter, Goss

Each character has their moment, and the actors glow without showboating. All sinew and kinetic energy, Goss brings a riveting physicality to the charismatic, angry Floyd. In his hands, even a hat becomes punctuation. Carter embodies Vera, centering the play’s melancholy and grace with her calm and passion. Vital is wonderfully entertaining as the chatty Louise, whose gossip takes on the gravitas of living history. As Hedley, Wilson’s resident seer, Mack underplays the character, lending a gentle touch that tempers his apocalyptic rants. Robinson (Canewell) and Thomas (Red) round out and individualize the band members, while Turner brings nuance to the mantrap Ruby.

Though “Seven Guitars” clocks in at 2 hours 45 minutes (with one intermission), the pace and quality of the play and its staging never lag. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and winner of the New York Drama Critics Award for Best Play, it is fifth in Wilson’s theatrical saga of “The Pittsburgh Cycle,” ten plays set in a different decade of the 20th century. Wilson remains one of the most important voices in modern American theater, his life-size dramas drawing audiences wherever they play.

Don’t miss the chance to see Actors’ Shakespeare’s Project flawless production of this infrequently staged play. It is a must-see bases-loaded home run! For tickets and information, go to: https://www.actorsshakespeareproject.org/

‘Seven Guitars’ by August Wilson. Directed by Maurice Emmanuel Parent. Scenic Design by Jon Savage; Sound Design by Abe Joyner-Meyers; Original Music Composition by Dewey Dellay; Lighting Design by Amanda E. Fallon Presented by Actors’ Shakespeare Project, Hiberian Hall,182 Dudley St., Roxbury through March 5. Photo by Ken Yotsukura Photography. 

The Huntington’s ‘The Art of Burning’ Smolders and Sparks

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Adrianne Krstansky, Michael Kaye and Rom Barkhordar in The Huntington’s ‘Art of Burning’
Photo Credit: T Charles Erickson

“The Art of Burning” by Kate Snodgrass. Directed by Melia Bensussen. Scenic Design: Luciana Stecconi; Lighting Design: Aja M. Jackson; Sound Design: Jane Shaw; Costume Design: Kate Harmon. Presented by The Huntington, Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA, 527 Tremont Street, Boston through February 12.

by Shelley A. Sackett

Patricia (Adrianne Krstansky), a frumpy middle-aged painter, opens Kate Snodgrass’ ‘The Art of Burning’ mid-conversation with her friend Charlene (Laura Latreille). “Sometimes we have to kill the things we love to save them,” she announces seemingly out of the blue. Charlene adds critical context. The two have just seen a production of “Medea” and are debriefing outside the theater.

In the ancient Greek tragedy by Euripides, Medea takes vengeance on her unfaithful husband Jason by murdering his new younger wife as well as her own two sons, after which she escapes to Athens to start a new life. To Charlene’s discomfort, Patricia not only sympathizes with Medea, she praises her.

“She saves her children,” Patricia explains. “She doesn’t want to but she has to. The world will make their lives miserable and she doesn’t want that. She loves them.” Patricia may look mousey, but she is a mouse that roars.

Under Melia Bensussen’s fast-paced direction, the audience is quickly brought up to speed as the brilliantly designed (Luciana Stecconi) and lit (Aja M. Jackson) set morphs into a conference room. This is the divorce war room. Patricia’s husband Jason (groan…) has – you guessed it! – left her for a younger woman (Vivia Font). Jason (Rom Barkhordar) has enlisted Mark (Michael Kaye), a family friend and Charlene’s husband, to mediate their contentious divorce despite glaring and unethical conflict of interest.

Adrianne Krstansky, Michael Kaye and Rom Barkhordar

While waiting for Jason to arrive, Patricia continues her tribute to Medea, much to Mark’s discomfort. The more Mark squirms, the more Patricia rhapsodizes. Adding to the slow burn are these facts: Patricia recently torched Jason’s antique desk on their front lawn and their divorce hinges on who will have custody of their 15-year-old daughter Beth (Clio Contogenis). As the animosity and toxicity of their marriage is revealed, the audience feels increasingly sorry for the teenager who must choose between these two. “Custody” in this context feels more like incarceration than protective caregiving.

Through Patricia’s unhinged tirades, Snodgrass seems to want us to wonder whether she is grandstanding or has become so untethered that she imagines herself a 21st century reincarnation of the Greek cuckolded princess. Unfortunately, the characters are too undeveloped and the play too full of clichés and tropes to create the kind of tension required to pull off this level of subtle, emotion-driven drama. Instead, the audience is served up a contemporary look at conflicted, flawed characters who are doing the best they can, more of a slow roasted marshmallow than daring flambé.

Which by no means suggests that the 85-minute intermission-less play should be ignored. Snodgrass raises important issues and the cast capably rises to the occasion. She adds meat to the play’s bones through the interactions between mediator Mark and Charlene (played with comic spunk by a splendid Latreille), who are going through their own marital bumps. Their scenes together bring a chemistry and ease that underscore the tedium of Patricia and Jason’s cardboard, rancorous  communication.

As Patricia, Krstansky delivers her pithy lines with a deadpan earnestness and impeccable timing that hints at the blaze raging inside her. The more controlled she appears, the more hysterical her character reads. Kudos to the talented actress for pulling off this marvelous feat.

Clio Contogenis, Krstansky

Her scenes with daughter Beth (Contogenis brings a welcome multi-dimension to the role) are among the most meaningful and poignant. Beth tries to explain to her mother that her anxiety and discomfort go way deeper than reactions to her parents’ divorce and normal teenage growing pains. She is that Gen-Z “woke” teen who viscerally feels the existential crisis of the world with every pulsating neuron in her body. She lives in a constant state of fear and disgust and marvels at the psychological trauma inflicted upon her by her clueless parents’ irresponsible childrearing.

Poor Beth, it seems, is the fulcrum of her parents’ dysfunctional marriage. How and why the two ever got together, let alone thought they could parent, becomes even more a mystery as Beth fills in the gaps.

Unlike Jason, Patricia finally listens — and really hears — her daughter after a pivotal interaction where she faults her Beth’s outfit for provoking sexual date abuse. “Guys never get blamed, Mom. You don’t know. You don’t get anything!” Beth cries. All Patricia can demurely offer is a heartfelt, “I’m just trying to help.” By the end of the play, the path these two bravely forge together is the most inspiring and meaningful of all the characters’ relationships, and the coals post-theater discussions love to fan. For tickets and information, go to: https://www.huntingtontheatre.org/whats-on/the-art-of-burning/

Swampscott’s former Poet Laureate is always ready for inspiration

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Lee Eric Freedman / SHELLEY A. SACKETT

By Shelley A. Sackett

SWAMPSCOTT — The path of Swampscott Poet Laureate Emeritus Lee Eric Freedman’s life journey has been paved with happy accidents.

These stepping stones span more than 40 years. While attending Hadley School, his fourth-grade teacher (Mrs. Barrett) opened his eyes and ears to poetry. Her class had to memorize a Robert Frost poem, sparking a young boy’s lifelong love affair with poetry. To this day, Freedman can still recite “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” and Frost remains his favorite poet.

Later, when his high school best friend started a basement band, he listened to them play a song they had written. Freedman decided he could do better. His first poem was a song for them, a “rip-off” of Robert Frost and a new-wave band.

“I thought it was pretty good and that I could just keep writing poetry,” said Freedman.

While a biology major at Salem State, he worked as general manager of its radio station. There, he met the editor of the school’s literary magazine, “Soundings East,” who encouraged him to submit one of the many poems just sitting in folders in his dorm room. It was accepted, and he was invited to give a student reading.

“I thought I was the greatest poet ever,” he admitted with a shy grin.

It was the first time Freedman had wielded a microphone, sharing words he had penned with a live audience, and the headiness he experienced electrified him. He was hooked.

He started frequenting open mics in Salem, Marblehead, and Lynn and wrote for Salem’s Deacon Giles Café’s “This Magazine.” He is a charter member and current president of Tin Box Poets, a poetry workshop group that still meets once a month at Panera in Swampscott. “I’ve become such a better poet through them,” he said of the group he helped start in 2017. He remains active in the North Shore poetry scene, performing regularly at the Lynn Walnut Café’s Speak Up and other venues.

Freedman’s love for live readings and for his native Swampscott would soon share common ground. In 2017, ReachArts, Swampscott’s new artistic hub, signed a two-year lease with the town for the former senior center on Burrill Street. When a board member reached out to him about starting an open mic, Freedman jumped at the chance. He has hosted the monthly First Friday Open Mike Night since 2018.

Which leads to Freedman’s most recent “happy accident” and COVID silver lining: The expansion of his open mic from its community audience to a global network that recently included 31 participants from India, Denmark, Greece, Singapore, Scotland, Canada, and the United States. Like most in-person gatherings, ReachArts open mic had to transition from live to virtual meetings after March 2020. Although mastering the ins and outs of running Zoom gatherings was a challenge, Freedman is overjoyed by the rewards.

“We went from this tiny local thing to a global thing,” he said. Freedman has attended open mics in other countries around the world, making connections that yielded additional rewards. His poems have been published in anthologies in Bangladesh through an Indian publisher he met online.

Freedman is no stranger to accolades; the three-time Naomi Cherkofsky Memorial Contest winner has been published in magazines, anthologies, and curated poetry quarterlies. When asked what he’s proudest of, he doesn’t hesitate: being Swampscott’s Poet Laureate.

The brainchild of educator and Swampscott resident Sami Lawler, the town’s Poet Laureate program was launched in 2014. Lawler became aware that many towns in Massachusetts had Poet Laureates and, as an elementary school teacher in Swampscott, wanted to support and encourage her students to enjoy writing while also recognizing community writers.

“Our town was noted for its fine athletic programs and Marblehead was known for its support of the arts. I felt that writing was also a gift many of our own residents possessed,” she said.

Candidates for Poet Laureate would submit three poems that a panel of three judges would rank. Lawler approached the town selectmen and received approval for both an adult and K-4 student Poet Laureate. For the first few years, the winners would open Town Meeting by reading their poems. Freedman, who, as a Pisces, attributes much of his inspiration to Fisherman’s Beach, read, “Fisherman’s Beach Wet.”

Lawler was happy when Freedman was chosen by the panel in 2016. “Aside from his dynamic and versatile poetry writing, Lee Eric is a vital town poetry organizer and supporter through his oral poetry and leading the Tin Box poets,” she said. “Lee Eric’s dedication to the art and expression of poetry makes him a perfect town poetry representative.”

She and Freedman worked together after his Poet Laureate tenure to keep poetry at the forefront in town. Freedman also ran poetry workshops in Lawler’s classes, where the students would create poems and then read them out loud. “It was a blast,” he said.

Growing up, Freedman and his family (parents Norma and Sherman and brothers Gary and Brad) attended Temple Beth El in Swampscott, where he continued his post-Bar Mitzvah education through confirmation. Although Freedman describes himself as “not religious,” his Jewish identity is important to him and crops up from time to time in his poetry.

Freedman is not one of those disciplined poets who set specific times and places to write. “I can’t follow a rule. It doesn’t work for me,” he said. Instead, he waits for inspiration to strike. He has taken lots of notes during his current job as a school crossing guard, and might mine that trove for future poems.

“It’s just the luck of the draw. I don’t plan it. I can’t help it. It’s just the way I work,” he said.

For more information about ReachArts and First Friday Open Mic Night, visit reacharts.org

Lyric Stage’s Genre-Defying ‘Preludes’ Is A Trip

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Cast of ‘Preludes’ at Boston Lyric Stage

by Shelley A. Sackett

I readily admit I am one of those theatergoers who enjoys plot, dialogue and purpose. You can throw in all the special effects, time warp gimmickry and non sequiturs you want, but they are the icing, not the cake. You can give me experimental, but don’t leave out the context.

So it took me some time to figure out exactly what was going on in ‘Preludes.’ In fact, it took me until intermission when I both googled a synopsis and read the playbill’s fine print.

The setting of Dave Malloy’s mash up of musical and drama is inside the mind of Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. The play opens in 1900 Moscow. “Rach” (Dan Prior) is having a bad day. In fact, he’s had a bad three years’ worth of bad days, starting with the ruinous premiere of his “First Symphony.” Critics viciously panned the piece (and the drunk conductor), leaving Rach in a creative void, wondering if he would ever write again.

Dan Prior and Aimee Doherty

He also fears that his wildly successful “Prelude in C-sharp Minor,” which he wrote as a 19-year-old, was the sum total of his career. Does he have talent or only luck? Was that the best piece he will ever pen? And most importantly, how did he do it?

At the urging of his frustrated fiancée, piano teacher Natalya (Kayla Shimizu), Rach visits hypnotherapist Nikolai Dahl (Aimee Doherty) for help clawing his way out of this black hole of asphyxiating self-doubt and paralyzing writer’s block. Dahl puts him into a trance and, with the audience in lock step, Rach takes a tour of every trauma that paved his path to the present.

Although this is no yellow brick road, the journey is peppered with its own version of winged monkeys, wicked witches and ruby red shoes. People float in and out of Rach’s internal world of jumbled stream of consciousness and disorienting ordeals. Chekhov Tchaikovsky and Tolstoy (all played by the always fabulous Will McGarrahan) show up, offering varying degrees of encouragement and torture. Where does art come from? they ask unhelpfully.

Prior, Kayla Shimizu

Against the gossamer confusion of Rach’s mind are shimmering tidbits of actual plot. His impending marriage to his first cousin Natalya requires the permission of the Czar, and the two discuss and plan their audience with him. Rach’s personal and professional struggles are likewise real and earthbound.

And then there is the brilliance behind Malloy’s use of music and musicians as integral parts of his theatrical vision. A Liberace-worthy white piano occupies center stage. Dan Rodriguez (also Musical Director), in formal attire, plays a combination of Rachmaninoff, Malloy and Rachmaninoff/Malloy hybrid pieces throughout the two hour (one intermission) production. (Thank goodness the volume was lower during the second act. It drowned out the actors during the first half, adding to audience frustration).

A heartbeat like rhythm is a cloud cover for the stage. The use of classical, electro-pop and musical loops lend an excitement and wildness. The 13 musical numbers give Malloy and the actors a chance to show their musical chops. Every duet is resplendent, especially those with Prior and Shimizu. Anthony Pires, Jr. is a showstopper as Chaliapin, his movements as lithe as his baritone is full-bodied.

Although ‘Preludes’ floats in the metaphorical ephemeral, it also celebrates Rachmaninoff’s music, legacy and determination to find his own creative agency. Malloy and Lyric Stage Company have given us an opportunity to expand our theatrical horizons, loosen the reins and just go with the flow, and for that we thank them. For more information and tickets, go to: https://www.lyricstage.com/show-item/preludes/

‘Preludes’ — Music, Lyrics, Book and Orchestration by Dave Malloy. Directed by Courtney O’Connor; Music Direction by Dan Rodriguez; Scenic Design by Shelley Barish; Costume Design by Rachel Padula-Shufelt; Lighting Design by Karen Perlow; Sound Design by Andrew Duncan Will. Presented by The Lyric Stage Company of Boston, 140 Clarendon St., Boston through February 5.

Fablemeister Spielberg Spins Gold With ‘The Fablemans.’

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Gabriel LaBelle stars in “The Fablemans.” COURTESY OF UNIVERSAL PICTURES

By Shelley A. Sackett

According to Tolstoy, all happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Since his cinematic directorial debut in 1974, Steven Spielberg has explored that notion with “The Sugarland Express,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,” and more. He is arguably as known for capturing the slow burn of internal stories about broken families as he is for thrilling with his explosive, external, blockbuster special effects of sharks, UFOs and ferocious dinosaurs.

With “The Fablemans,” Spielberg turns his master storytelling camera inward and recreates his own Jewish middle-class upbringing. Through his films and in countless interviews, he has made no secret that his parents’ divorce when he was 19 left an indelible mark, and that comes through loud and clear in the film. Yet, in inimitable Spielberg style, this fictionalized autobiography seamlessly fuses a child’s wide-eyed, tender sentimentality with an adult’s unblinking eye that pierces through the gauzy coziness to reveal an underbelly of dysfunction.

This being a movie – cowritten with the brilliant Tony Kushner – by and about Spielberg, it begins at the exact place and moment where he considers his life began: at the movies. It is 1952, and 8-year-old Spielberg stand-in Sammy is being dragged to his first film by his father, Burt (Paul Dano) and mother, Mitzi (the always luminous Michelle Williams). That film, Cecile B. DeMille’s epic “The Greatest Show on Earth,” ends with a spectacular train crash that was created with miniatures.

Sammy is speechless, which his practical, computer engineer father and imaginative, classically trained pianist mother interpret according to their temperaments. Burt, who assumes Sammy is frozen with fear, scientifically explains about persistence of vision and 24 frames per second. Mitzi, tuned in to the magic and mysteries of life, gets why Sammy is thunderstruck. “Movies are dreams,” she knowingly whispers in his ear.

Sammy remains obsessed with the train crash, and for Hanukkah receives what he has unambiguously requested – a model train set. Burt is delighted his son has taken an interest in something mechanical. That delight evaporates, however, when Sammy unveils the real reason behind his request: He wants to recreate the finale train crash sequence over and over again.

In the first glimmer of family tension, his parents react in different ways. Infuriated, Burt chides Sammy for not appreciating “nice things.” Mitzi encourages her son’s creativity and suggests he shoot the train crash with Burt’s Kodak movie camera so he can rewatch it as many times as he wants without pummeling the trains into dust.

Sammy shoots his film with the multiple, dynamic angles and innate editing skills that Mitzi recognizes as genius and that will set the trajectory of his life’s passion and profession. One can’t help wondering what Spielberg’s career might have looked like if his first film had been “High Noon,” “Monkey Business” or “Singin’ in the Rain,” also 1952 mega releases.

When the film switches gears and decades and enters the Fablemans’ home in New Jersey, we are introduced to the rest of the tight-knit family through teenage Sammy’s eyes. Played by the sensitive and understated Gabriel LaBelle, he now has better filmmaking equipment, which he uses to chronicle the clan and their unguarded interactions.

Burt’s kvetching mother, Hadassah (a spot-on Jeannie Berlin) is sharp-tongued, immune to boundaries and insightful. She is a toxic foil to her daughter-in-law’s mercurial ways. Williams plays Mitzi, the heart and human dynamo of the film, with open translucence and an uncanny ability to channel her emotions onto her face. Burt (Dano) is exquisitely subtle – decent, stable and boring – and is no match for his wild-child wife. Filling that role is hale and hearty Bennie (the affable, huggable Seth Rogan), Burt’s work friend and an honorary Fableman. Only Hadassah, who is also part soothsayer, picks up on the chemistry between Bennie and Mitzi, foreshadowing the trouble to come.

Burt’s promotions take the family (and Bennie) to Arizona, where Sammy continues to hone his skills and figure out the power his movies can have to placate, manipulate, woo, glamorize and humiliate. His introduction comes when Burt demands he postpone shooting a scheduled war film and instead make a film about their recent camping trip to cheer up Mitzi, whose mother just died. “You’ll learn how the editing machine works,” he coaxes, adding as an irresistible kicker, “It’ll make your mother feel better.”

While editing, Sammy uncovers indisputable proof of the intimate relationship between Bennie and his mother, unleashing what he recognizes will be gales of destruction rather than the gentle winds of healing his father envisioned.

Shortly thereafter, Burt moves the family to California (this time without Bennie) and the film shifts gears and focus, becoming more plot-driven as Sammy navigates life as the only Jewish kid in a school dominated by antisemitic jocks and Mitzi tries – and fails – to navigate life without Bennie.

Scene-stealing cameos by David Lynch (as movie director John Ford) and Judd Hirsch (as Mitzi’s circus performer and storyteller Uncle Boris) play to a crowd Spielberg already has eating out of his hand.

More than a stroll down one man’s memory lane, however, “The Fablemans” is also a magical mystery tour about life and its inherent beauty and messiness. It’s about figuring out who you are, what makes you happy, and then going for it, full steam ahead. “Art will give you crowns in heaven and laurels on Earth. But it’ll tear your heart out and leave you lonely,” warns Uncle Boris. “Art is no game.”

Luckily for his gazillions of fans, Spielberg was up to the challenge. He recognized his own talent and followed his passion, leaving his mark on his own brand of cinematic gold in crowd-pleasing films – like ‘The Fablemans’ – that leave audiences sated, entertained. and smiling through their tears. Θ