Gloucester

Jewish Americana band Nefesh Mountain will light up the Shalin Liu stage for Hanukkah

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Doni Zasloff and Eric Lindberg (with mandolin) and their band, Nefesh Mountain. NEFESHMOUNTAIN.COM

By Shelley A. Sackett

Doni Zasloff has always felt like a “spiritual cowgirl.”

The songs she and her husband, Eric Lindberg, write and sing for Nefesh Mountain – the band they co-founded – draw from Jewish history, tradition, and religion, but they work in a musical idiom that wouldn’t seem at all Jewish – bluegrass.

It all started in 2010, when Zasloff met guitarist and banjo player Lindberg. Raised in Brooklyn, he attended Hebrew school and synagogue. He also spent summers with his father’s relatives in North Georgia, playing music with his uncles and learning their southern traditional styles, like Appalachian, bluegrass, and blues.

Jewish music was a big part of Zasloff’s traditional Jewish childhood in Philadelphia, where she attended synagogue, Jewish schools and camps. She joined all the theater productions from her Jewish youth groups and learned to chant from the Torah and lead services at a very young age.

In 2010, the two started playing music together and Lindberg opened Zasloff’s eyes and ears to the beauty and depth of old time Americana music. They see their music as the perfect expression of their love and identity as American Jews.

“For us, these are all fragments of who we are as Jewish Americans,” Zasloff said by phone from her Montclair, N.J., home during a break from the band’s busy tour schedule. “It’s our story of wanting to be authentic and honest while putting love out into the world.”

Since 2016, Nefesh Mountain has released four albums: “Nefesh Mountain” (2016); “Beneath The Open Sky” (2018); “Songs for the Sparrows” (2021), and “Live From Levon Helm Studios: A Hanukkah Holiday Concert” (2021).

On Nov. 29, they will illuminate the Shalin Liu Performance Center stage in Gloucester with the kickoff concert for their 2022 Hanukkah Tour.

The tour grew out of the couple’s desire to stay on top of their careers as musicians during the pandemic lockdown of late 2020. They wanted to live-stream an event into people’s homes, and Hanukkah seemed like a good time to do it.

“Hanukkah is a celebration, and we wanted to bring some light into a very dark year and dark time for everybody,” Lindberg explained by phone.

The band got together at the Levon Helm Studio in Woodstock, N.Y. After their live presentation, they had all the audio recordings. “We thought, ‘Let’s just get it out there,’ ” Lindberg said, and they imprinted a CD and started streaming it on Spotify and other social and music media. In 2021, they took the album on the road with their first Hanukkah Holiday Concert Tour, which also opened at the Rockport venue.

“Touring is harder now than even before the pandemic, but it’s the only way to make a sound living as a musician,” Lindberg said, referring to the financial impact of streaming on artists. The model, he says, hasn’t changed in 100 years. “You come up with an album, go out on the road and meet people, and it becomes part of your career.”

Their repertoire (and the album) includes “Donna, Donna” and several by American folk singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie – who penned the music to a “baker’s dozen” of Hanukkah songs. “We’re kind of an Americana folk band, and it’s fun to bring this music to life within the context of what we do,” Lindberg said.

Lindberg specifically recalls recalled one Hanukkah from his youth when his parents played Harry Belafonte’s 1959 Caribbean version of “Henei Ma Tov” right after they lit the Hanukkah candles. He remembers listening to this song, watching the candles and feeling “this otherworldly thing. Wherever music transports us to is a place I feel lucky to go,” he said. “Donna, Donna,” based on an Eastern European Yiddish folk tale, has that same spirit that, to Lindberg, “fits the vibe of Hanukkah.”

Their 2012 album, “Songs for the Sparrow,” also evolved out of the couple’s shared experiences and Jewish heritage. American Songwriter described it as “arguably some of the best bluegrass ever made.”
In 2018, Zasloff and Lindberg took a trip to Poland and Ukraine, visiting many of the cities and towns where their ancestors had lived and met violent deaths during the Holocaust.

At the cemetery where Lindberg’s great-grandfather was buried, a huge swarm of sparrows suddenly flew overhead. “There was something in that moment that we thought about until we got home. The song, ‘A Sparrow’s Song’ is for them – the lives that were lost, the voices silenced,” Zasloff said.

A few months after their they returned home, a gunman walked into the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and murdered 11 people. The next morning, Lindberg, still shaken, woke early and started working on a melody. Zasloff joined him, and “Tree of Life,” a somber banjo song that ends with the words, “Oh sweet spirit hear my prayers/help these words heal someone out there,” poured out of them. The song also appears on the album.

“We’re not politicians. As musicians, this is what we do,” Zasloff said.

The Nefesh Mountain website, nefeshmountain.com, calls their music “the place where American bluegrass and old-time music meet with Jewish heritage and tradition.” Zasloff chafes at attempts by others to label their music as Jewish Bluegrass, “Jewgrass” or other mash-ups.

“There’s no kitsch in our music,” she said. “It’s our truth.” Θ

Visit rockportmusic.org/nefesh-mountain.

Gloucester Stage Company’s ‘Gloria’ Provocatively Asks, “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?”

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Cast of Gloucester Stage’s production of “Gloria” by Branden Jacob Jenkins. Photos: Shawn G. Henry

by Shelley A. Sackett

‘Gloria’ takes us on a ride inside the rollercoaster that is the essence of a 2010s Manhattan cultural magazine’s editorial assistant bullpen subculture. (Its playwright, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, worked at The New Yorker for three years). These players are unapologetic and clear about their singular goal: to leave their dead end stepping-stone jobs, climb out of the low prestige depths of editorial assistantship and secure a book deal before turning thirty. Each is constantly on the backstabbing prowl in search of that tipping point moment that will catapult them out of their murky office pit.

Reminiscent of the long-running television hit, “The Office,” the first act of ‘Gloria’ is an entertaining mash-up of deadpan humor, smart and provocative language and near slapstick-caliber physicality. The dialogue is full of wit, sarcasm, social commentary and sharp insight, delivered at breakneck speed. Competitive malice is the glue that binds these folks; shredding insults is their common language. No one is happy and no one is to be trusted, from the Harvard intern (Miles) who wears headphones as a decoy to the jaded almost-30 closet memoirist (Dean), the acid-tongued spoiled shopaholic narcissist (Kendra) and the spiritually eviscerated factchecker (Lorin) and over-educated, underpaid receptionist (Ani) .

Yet, in their individual and collective ways, this motley crew of wannabes somehow endears themselves as they bare their fangs, souls and vulnerabilities. They become like family — with all its good, bad and ugliness —and we accept and appreciate the way they unapologetically let it all hang out. Bryn Boice’s thoughtful and affective direction exposes their naked underbellies, yet still elicits our caring and empathy.

Into this mix enters Gloria, a pathetic and classic spinster loner who has dedicated her life to the magazine. An editor, she is the butt of more than one cruel joke and the object of the bullpen’s venomous envy. The night before, she threw herself an extravagant birthday party, complete with DJ and catered food. She invited the entire staff of the magazine; only one editorial assistant showed up, adding salt to an already unhealable wound.

Michael Wood, Ann Dang

The repercussions of this slight go beyond hangovers and lame excuses, but it would be truly criminal to reveal what they are. Suffice it to say that Act I’s ending guarantees that no one is likely to leave during intermission.

Act II shifts gears so dramatically the audience is at risk of whiplash. Eight months later, the same characters are still front and center, but as individuals leading separate lives away from the magazine. All are dealing with the aftermath of a shared trauma that each exploits their own way. Gone is Jacobs-Jenkins’ spicy, electric-paced dialogue, replaced by the dull and relentless thrum of boundless, humorless ambition.

Jacobs-Jenkins does not hide the ball. His message — that we live in an age of exploitation that has no bottom — weighs heavy and depressingly without the fleet-footed wit he brought to his first act, and it’s a weary audience that welcomes the play’s end.

Ann Dang, Theresa Langford, Michael Broadhurst

Despite an uneven script and inconclusive ending, Gloucester Stage’s production is definitely worth seeing. Small touches add a lot. Props such as Asus and Toshiba laptops (remember those?) and a sound track of J. S. Bach: Mass in B minor ground us in the moment. The cast is terrific, and does its best to articulate Act I’s rapid-fire monologues clearly (strong standouts are Michael Wood as Dean and the talented Teresa Langford as Ani; Michael Broadhurst’s meltdown as Lorin gives Peter Finch’s classic “Network” stiff competition). Esme Allen brings an unpretentious ease to Act II’s Nan. And Boice misses no chance to add meaningful touches; under her direction, even changing sets becomes an opportunity for whimsical choreography.

‘Gloria,’ a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2016, raises important issues for this era of continuing confusion and division over what constitutes news and how it should get disseminated. Should writers only create their own stories, or is it okay to co-opt someone else’s? Whose story is a shared event to tell and who decides what the “true” version of that story is? What are the differences between storytelling as catharsis, opportunism and exploitation and does it even matter anymore? Do those lines still exist?

Perhaps Lin-Manuel Miranda summed it up best in his peerless “Hamilton” when he wrote, “You have no control, Who lives, who dies, who tells your story.”

‘Gloria’ — written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. Directed by Bryn Boice. Scenic Design by Jeffrey Petersen; Costume Design by Rachel Padula-Shufelt; Lighting Design by Aja M. Jackson; Sound Design by David Remedios. Presented by Gloucester Stage Company, 267 East Main St., Gloucester through June 26.

For more information and tickets, go to: https://gloucesterstage.com/

Gloucester Stage’s ‘Baskerville” Is A Literal Breath of Fresh Air

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By Shelley A. Sackett

Texan Sir Hugo Baskerville (Julian Manjerico) consults with Sherlock Holmes (Alexander Platt) and John Watson (William E. Gardin). All photos by Jason Grow

Nothing could be finer than to be at theater-en-plein-air in Rockport on a clear and balmy summer evening carousing with the brilliant cast of the spectacularly entertaining Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery. Penned by Ken Ludwig, the Tony-award winning playwright of Lend Me A Tenor, this fast-paced comedic melodrama is a riff on the quintessential detective, Sherlock Holmes, and his faithful sidekick, Dr. John Watson.

This time, the dynamic duo is called upon to crack the case of “The Hound of the Baskervilles” before a family curse dooms its newest heir. Along the way, they encounter a motley crew of eccentric characters, hair pin plot twists and turns and red herrings galore. The 2-hour-15-minute (including one intermission) production flies by as five spectacularly talented actors play more than forty characters whose slapstick gestures and hyperbolic speeches they perform with impeccable pacing and precision. Couple this with stellar set, lighting, sound and prop designs, and theatergoers are in for a rollicking evening of good old-fashioned fun.

The play opens with Watson (William E. Gardiner) setting the stage by narrating what he and Holmes (Alexander Platt) know and what they need to learn about the mysterious deaths of the Baskerville heirs. Although the actors look and emote like their iconic cinematic predecessors, Basil Rathbone (Holmes) and Nigel Bruce (Watson), they each bring additional layers to the onion, remaking the characters as their own.

Gardiner’s Watson is a blend of subtle contradictions — confident, yet cautious; anxious, yet reckless; compassionate, yet unquestioningly loyal. Platt’s Holmes is delightfully quirky — blind to his worst foibles while perseverating over imagined transgressions; jumping up and down and squealing in delight one minute, while dispassionately describing a victim’s gory fate the next. Platt uses his height and leanness to bring spot on physicality and humor to his character. They are both up to the task of anchoring the play, both as its namesakes and as the two actors who play only one role.

The other three are maestros of quick change: character, costume and accent. Among them they play more than 40 characters with a style that would be at home in a Victorian melodrama. Anna Bortnick is a standout as she glides from character to character, morphing from a Scottish nurse to a severe, humorless Swedish caretaker to an older, maternal housekeeper to a scrappy Dickensian urchin boy (in whose skin Bortnick particularly shines).

Anna Bortnick and Alex Jacobs as messenger boys.

Alex Jacobs is superb as he flows from Stapleton (a seemingly geeky butterfly lover who conceals a psychopath within) to Barrymore (the mournful caretaker of Baskerville Hall) to Milker (the other scrappy Dickensian urchin boy) to Lucy (the loving wife of Wilson) to Dr. Mortimer the elegant, friendly and passionate.

Julian Manjerico rounds out the trio with versatility and verbal and physical nimbleness as he hops from Sir Hugo Baskerville (a brutal, cruel Cavalier) to Wilson (the exuberant, hearty head of a messenger office), to Sir Henry Baskerville (a young Texan relation to Baskervilles, open-hearted, earnest, ready for adventure and to fall in love), to Inspector Lestrade, a cocky police inspector.

They are all aided by Miranda Kau Giurleo’s flawless costume design, Erica Tobolski’s dialect coaching and Robert Walsh’s expert action consultation. Director Jim O’Connor utilizes Janie E. Howland’s efficient, moveable set and Dewey Dellay’s original music and sound design  to maximum advantage in creating a thoroughly satisfying theatrical experience.

Windhover Center for the Performing Arts is a hidden Shangri-la of a venue with a horseshoe shaped seating arrangement encircled by a grove of protective and comforting trees. The effect is intimate, organic and charming. For tickets and info, go to gloucesterstage.com/baskerville/.

‘Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery’ – Written by Ken Ludwig. Directed by Jim O’Connor. Set Design by Janie E. Howland; Lighting Design by Marcella Barbeay; Original Music/Sound Design by Dewey Dellay; Costume Design by Miranda Kau Giurleo; Props Design by Emme Shaw; Dialect Coach – Erica Tobolski; Action Consultation by Robert Walsh. Presented by Gloucester Stage Company at the Windhover Center for the Performing Arts in Rockport through July 25.

Gloucester violinist helps keep the sound of Yiddish music alive

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Klezmer violinist Abigale Reisman recently received a grant from Club Passim’s music fund. Photo: Bryce Vickmark

by Shelley A. Sackett

Abigale Reisman was a 19-year-old undergraduate at The Manhattan School of Music when she fell in love. The classical violin performance major was listening to a lot of Russian composers such as Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky, but something was missing. She yearned for the Jewish music she grew up with in synagogue and Jewish day school, and the special place it had in her heart.

A friend suggested she check out a genre of music she had never heard of – klezmer – and for Reisman, it was obsession at first listen. Luckily, she lived in New York City, home to some of the leading klezmorim. She booked a private lesson with violinist Alicia Svigals (co-founder of the Grammy-winning band The Klezmatics), and attended KlezKamp – a yearly Klezmer music and Yiddish culture festival – in the Catskills.

“It was a beautiful introduction to the klezmer world and I never left,” Reisman said from her Gloucester home.

Almost 15 years later, the Atlanta native is a violinist, composer, and educator. She wears many musical hats, from klezmer and classical to experimental and pop. She is a cofounder of Thread Ensemble, an experimental trio that creates music out of interactions with their audiences; a member of Tredici Bacci, which was featured in Rolling Stone’s “10 Artists You Need to Know: November 2016;” and a composer, arranger, and performer in the International Jewish Music Festival award-winning band, Ezekiel’s Wheels Klezmer Band.

Although Reisman doesn’t have a favorite musical genre (“I love it all in different ways”), she plans to focus her energy on recording a series of videos that explore the treasures of the Jewish violin, thanks to a grant from Club Passim’s Iguana Music Fund.

Her purpose is two-fold: To create and release her own interpretation of the music she loves so dearly, and to reveal to the average Jewish music listener the complex history of the violin in East European Jewish music.

“The fidl [Yiddish for violin] truly mimics the human voice, especially the cantorial sound,” Reisman said. “It speaks in Yiddish sentences and gestures. It plays pieces full of bubbling trills, moans, slides, and specifically Jewish phrasing.”

The grant money will ensure the sound and video qualities of her recordings will capture these subtleties.

Since 2008, the Iguana Music Fund has awarded gifts annually to musicians for career building projects and for those that provide community service through music. Abby Altman, Club Passim manager, said Reisman is known for being part of great ensembles. Her application stood out because it focused on her as a solo artist working in a genre she is passionate about.

“We’re excited to see what she creates when she is in complete control of the material,” Altman said.

Reisman’s target audience for her videos is both the casual Jewish music listener and the next generation of serious klezmer violinists. Although most contemporary audiences think of the clarinet as klezmer’s dominant melodic instrument, for hundreds of years the violin was the epicenter of Eastern European shtetl music. Reisman wants to introduce this fidl-centric music to those whose only exposure has been to the 20th century jazz-influenced clarinet-centric version of klezmer.

She also wants to provide serious klezmer violinists with 21st century videos that contain both archival repertoires and clear views of the technical aspects of playing klezmer. Reisman recalled she didn’t know where to turn to when she started to play klezmer fidl. The only archival recordings she found were scratchy and difficult to decipher. She wants her videos to make it easier for violinists to get an immediate sense of the music they could play. “I also want to lure them into listening to the archival recordings,” she said.

Ashkenazi Jewish culture has played a large part in Reisman’s life since she was a child. “It creates a beautiful community and gives me a familiar access point to spirituality, morality, and kindness,” she said. She remembers feeling especially connected to Judaism as a young Jewish day school student. “I liked following rules and they had a lot of rules,” she said with a chuckle.

COVID-19 has been hard for her and her musician husband, Charles Clements. Although Reisman lost a lot of summer gigs (weddings, outdoor festivals, etc.), she has been able to teach and perform virtually and has helped create an online global klezmer community.

She’s also been able to slow down and think about the future of her career and the important, constructive role artists play in safeguarding our humanity. “This is why I’ve finally been able to conceive of the start of this project that has been in the back of my mind for so many years,” she said.

To learn more and listen to Abigale Reisman’s music, visit abigalereisman.com.

Gloucester Stage Company Serves Up Full-Bodied Blues in ‘Paradise Blue’

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by Shelley A. Sackett

There’s a raw poetic cadence to the dazzling dialogue of playwright Dominique Morisseau’s final play in her trilogy set in different decades in Detroit. It’s 1949, and the downtown Blackbottom entertainment district is home to many black-owned jazz clubs, including the Paradise Club. Director Jackie Davis sets the tone immediately. Against an opening montage of black and white period photos and a pained, bone-melting trumpet solo,  we hear a single gunshot. This film noir trope is a perfect entrance into ‘Paradise Blue’ and an introduction to the complicated passions that drive its five characters.

Although a structurally imperfect play, Morisseau has served up a piece of theatrical pie rich in language, character development and emotional impact. Despite the virtual production (done zoom-like with seated actors who address the camera full on), the superb cast delivers the caliber of performances that suck the audience right in, dissolving the cyber barrier.  Davis uses a stage direction reader (Aimee Hamrick) to keep the production moving. Hamrick’s “just the facts-ma’am” efficient and unobtrusive narration adds another layer of Sam Spade noir. Once again, Gloucester Stage Company has gifted its theater-hunger fans with a satisfying and innovative armchair experience.

All the action takes place in the Paradise Club, a jazz and drinks joint that both exalts and entombs Blue (Ricardo Engermann), its owner, bandleader and tortured trumpeter. Although lean and small boned, Blue casts a long shadow and his moodiness hangs like an ominous dark cloud over his head. His club is staffed by his affable and hardworking girlfriend-cook-housekeeper Pumpkin (played with confidence and self-effacement by Meagan Dilworth) and his bandmates, piano man Cornelius (Cliff Odle) and drummer P-Sam (Omar Robinson). The topic at hand is how to keep the music going in the absence of the group’s bassist, whom Blue fired after getting into a row with him.

To make ends meet, Blue decides to advertise a room for rent. When the sultry, sexy Silver (Ramona-Lisa Alexander) shows up to answer the ad wearing a red hat and carrying a wad of cash, a loaded pistol and a steamy look that could liquefy lacquer, the play’s pulse quickens. Although Alexander is seated throughout the reading, her voice and gestures spellbind the audience with their overwhelming sensuality and physicality. She is unmistakably a woman used to using her charisma and beauty to charm men into doing what she wants them to do. In Alexander’s exceptional hands, she is indeed a black widow, drawing us into her web every time she looks our way.

Although the 2hour24 minute production gets off to a slow and stilted start, once Silver shows up, there’s an uptick that is sustained until the end. This play is not plot driven; rather it is a snapshot glimpse through the keyhole of five multi-dimensional lives in Black Detroit in 1949. Morisseau’s gifted dialogue lets her characters’ layered stories slowly unfold through their rich and intimate conversations and confrontations with each other. It’s a treat to be a fly on these walls.

Pumpkin, the literal heart of the play and its moral compass, is sensitive and caring. She even carries a book of poetry which she is intent on memorizing just because of its beauty. Despite Blue’s depression and habit of manhandling her, Pumpkin only sees the goodness in him. “A woman’s job is to ease a man’s troubles. This man has a gift. Makes me feel like somebody just to be close to it,” she tells Silver.

Silver couldn’t be a starker contrast. She is aggressive, suspicious and competitive. She is also heartbreakingly sensitive, seeing demons everywhere, from the white world in which a Black man struggles to exist to her own barren womb. “I’m cursed. What’s a woman if she ain’t bearing fruit?” she confides to the sympathetic, compassionate Cornelius (whom she takes as her lover).

Although the three males are less clearly delineated, their portrayers do a splendid job of bringing them to life. Engermann plays Blue with a Denzel Washington fluid and easy delivery, his voice like caramel with a dusting of sandpaper. His and Alexander’s (Silver) phrasings, cadences and pauses are breathtakingly spot on. Odle as Corn is accessible and gentle, a wise and wizened elder statesman. Robinson does the best he can with the thinly drawn P-Sam.

While Morisseau excels at teasing out the nuances of personal relationships, her structural shortcomings in three important areas diminish her audience’s ability to appreciate her artistic intent: (1) Detroit Mayor Albert Cobo’s platform promoting urban gentrification and the buying of black businesses to cure “urban/black blight” is essential background information only obliquely referenced; (2) as the play’s principal character, Blue is underdeveloped; we need more of his backstory told by- not about- him, and (3) the ending feels out of step, strained and jarring.

Notwithstanding, ‘Paradise Blue’ is well worth the stamina required to watch and highly recommended for its superb acting, fabulous soundtrack and inspired production. Once again, Kudos to Gloucester Stage Company for raising the virtual bar yet again.

‘Paradise Blue’ — Written by Dominique Morisseau; Directed by Jackie Davis; Produced by Gloucester Stage Company at Oneline/Virtual Space, as part of its 2020 Never Dark Series. Streaming online October 1-4 at https://gloucesterstage.com/battle-not-begun/

Fact, Fiction or Something in Between? ‘The Lifespan of a Fact’ Asks But Doesn’t Provide Easy Answers

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(Lindsay Crouse in Gloucester Stage Company’s ‘The Lifespan of a Fact – Photos by Jason Grow)

By Shelley A. Sackett

 

Every so often, a play so resonates with its time that the audience can’t stop thinking and talking about it for days afterwards. “The Lifespan of a Fact,” at the Gloucester Stage Theatre through September 22, is such a work, and theatergoers should flock to see it for its thought-provoking, razor-sharp script and spot-on production.

The premise is simple enough. It is three days before a magazine’s publication deadline. Emily Penrose (Lindsay Crouse), its ambitious and demanding editor-in-chief, has just received a cutting-edge story about a teenager who committed suicide by jumping off the roof of a Las Vegas casino. She wants to bump the planned cover story (a humdrum piece about Congressional wives) and replace it with this for two reasons: to raise the prestigious but stodgy magazine’s profile (and boost sales) and to safeguard her job. First, however, it must undergo fact checking and there is only the weekend to do it.

Enter Jim Fingal (Derek Speedy, who really did just graduate from Harvard University), a young, equally ambitious intern and recent Harvard grad. He attacks his assignment like the future of journalism depends on it. His dogged tenacity would impress Sam Spade. Before long, he has amassed binders and exhibits that look more like a Perry Mason criminal trial notebook than fact checking for a 13-page essay.

(Mickey Solis, Crouse, Derek Speedy)

The ticking clock does not diminish Fingal’s resolve to dot every i and cross every t. His phone attempts to clear up inaccuracies with the author, John D’Agata (Mickey Solis) only get him a lecture on the difference between an “essay” (where D’Agata believes there’s wiggle room to alter the facts to fit the “rhythm” of the writing) and an “article” (which Fingal believes embodies the holy journalistic trinity of accuracy, truth and integrity).

D’Agata sees the world as gray. By calling his piece an essay, he assumes he has free rein to cast a wide net around the facts. “You have to stop treating me like a journalist. I am an essayist. I nudge the facts,” he declares. To Fingal, there is a bright line between black and white. Every discrepancy, no matter how trivial, is a journalistic capital offense. “I won’t alter the facts to fit some music you hear in your head,” he parries.

Penrose watches Fingal’s progress (or lack thereof) via a shared drive and her anxiety increases as the hours until publication decrease. When D’Agata calls her from his Las Vegas home to inform her that her fact-checker is asleep on his couch, she drops her laissez-faire attitude and catches the red eye out there to literally take these two bulls by their horns.

(Solis, Crouse)

By the time she arrives, the groundwork has been laid for the play’s second half, where the characters’ personalities, motives and principles clash. Their divergent positions about whether the piece as written should be published reflect the fault lines of their interests: creative freedom (D’Agata), commercial value (Penrose) and journalistic integrity/accuracy (Fingal). Their diatribes are thunderous and run the gamut from comic to passionate to preaching. These interchanges are the meat of the production and the questions raised is the stuff that will swirl long after the curtain has come down.

Is there such a creature, for example, as “creative fiction?” Where is the line between editing and fact-checking? Which dictates: story or accuracy? Does “not correct” equal “wrong?” What constitutes “good faith effort?” Are facts negotiable? Where do ethics come in? And editorial judgment? Is credible the same as true? Is there an acceptable margin of error in journalism? If so, what is it?

(Crouse, Speedy)

Weisman’s direction equally milks the comic and the profound and the set and sound lend a slick contemporary feel. The three actors remain in character throughout the 90-minute intermission-less performance. Speedy, as Fingal, quietly controls the pace as his nerdy fact-finder eventually bares his teeth and shows his nettle. His ease and grace on stage is reminiscent of Matt Damon’s nuanced performance in “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” Solis is all bristle and sinew as D’Agata, wildly and combatively confrontational.  Crouse, the weakest link among the trio, plays Penrose as strident but without depth. It’s hard to tell whether this is intentional, and her character suffers credibility as a result.

At the play’s end, the trio may not have reached consensus about whether the essay should be published, but they have managed something that is sorely lacking in today’s polarized and venomous environment: they have listened to each other, they have understood each other, and they have respectfully agreed to disagree. What a concept.

‘The Lifespan of a Fact –Written by Jeremy Karaken, David Murrell and Gordon Farrell based on the book by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal; Directed by Sam Weisman; Lighting Design by Marcella Barbeau; Costume Design by Gail Astrid Buckley; Props Design by Lauren Corcuera; Composer/Sound Design by Dewey Dellay, Scenic Design by J. Michael Griggs. Presented by Gloucester Stage Company, 267 E Main St., Gloucester, through September 22.For tickets and information, visit: https://gloucesterstage.com/

Gloucester Stage’s ‘Ben Butler’ Is Much More Than A Historical Comedy

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L to R: Lieutenant Kelly: Doug Bowen-Flynn; Shepard Mallory: Shane Taylor; Major General Benjamin Butler: Ames Adamson. All Photos by Jason Grow.

By Shelley A. Sackett

On May 23, 1861, smack in the middle of the Civil War, the citizens of Virginia voted overwhelmingly to secede from the United States. The next day, General Benjamin Butler, commander of Union-held Fort Monroe, VA, finds himself in an unusual moral and legal pickle. Three escaped slaves have showed up at the fort’s doorstep seeking sanctuary. Under the Fugitive Slave Act, settled federal law since its 1850 enactment, General Butler is required to return them to their owner.

Yet Butler wears more than just his military hat. A silver-tongued lawyer with a reputation as a champion of labor, abolition and naturalized citizens, he is reticent to follow the letter of the law and send the slaves back to the Confederacy. Are they not, after all, people seeking asylum from an oppressive regime? For Butler, this goes way beyond issues of legal or military might; it is a matter that goes straight to the core of who he is (or, is not) as a moral human being. At the same time, he is understandably reticent to rock the boat and sink his own career. Even scarier yet is the idea of leaving his fingerprints all over an incident that could affect the outcome of the war.

 

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L to R: Lieutenant Kelly: Doug Bowen-Flynn; Major General Benjamin Butler: Ames Adamson

 

The complicated matter becomes even more so when Butler actually meets Shepard Mallory, the slave who has demanded an audience to plead his case in person. Despite the stark black and white differences in their skin, station and status, the two soon realize they have more in common than not.

Both are expert verbal sparrers, and recognize in the other a familiar spunk and intellect. Both are, at their core, compassionate and humanistic. And bought are caught in the razor-sharp teeth of the cog that fuels the madness that has torn the United States in two.

If this sounds like the stuff of a heart-wrenching, angst-laden script, think again, for playwright Richard Strand has turned the tragic on its head. His lively comedy drives home all the important messages – that slavery is evil, that all humans are created as equals, and that war is bad, for starters – but clothes them in clever repartees and endless rounds of (mostly) delightful verbal gymnastics.

For it turns out that Shepard Mallory is no ordinary man. The runaway slave is literate, literary and able to run legal circles around General Butler who, in truth, is much more of a lawyer than military man. As they joust and brawl, they are shocked and then delighted to discover that they have each finally met their match.

 

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L to R: Major General Benjamin Butler: Ames Adamson; Shepard Mallory: Shane Taylor

 

And this is where Strand’s script – flawed and bloated though it is – is both brilliant and brave. As Butler and Mallory get to know each other, the world’s artifice that separates them melts away. They become kindred spirits, united in their revulsion at the perversity that is at the rotten core of slavery. Strand shows the audience what “all men are created equal” really looks like. This is infinitely more effective and more powerful than a chest-beating diatribe against racism could ever be.

A fast-paced comedy about slavery is dependent on the caliber of its actors, and the Gloucester Stage production rises to the occasion. As Butler, Ames Adamson (who originated the role at the New Jersey Repertory Company and again Off-Broadway at 59E59TH Theatre) is clearly having the time of his life, practically chewing the scenery. He is the eye of the storm and both the audience and his cast mates know it. Shane Taylor holds his own as Mallory, delicately walking a fine line between enlightened erudition and bondage. And Doug Bowen-Flynn, as the by-the-book West Point graduate Lieutenant Kelly, is a perfect foil for Butler’s more nuanced version of life. His transformation from knee-jerk bigot to color blind humanist is masterfully graceful and poignant.

 

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L to R: Lieutenant Kelly: Doug Bowen-Flynn; Shepard Mallory: Shane Taylor; Major General Benjamin Butler: Ames Adamson

 

Some might chafe at the idea of a subject as serious as slavery being handled with a light comedic touch, and in another playwright’s hands, they might be right. In the case of ‘Ben Butler,’ however, Richard Strand has brought home the very serious point that racism is evil and immoral, and let us have a jolly good time nonetheless.

‘Ben Butler’ –Written by Richard Strand; Directed by Joseph Discher; Scenic Design by Greg Trochlil; Lighting Design by Russ Swift; Costume Design by Chelsea Kerl; Props Design by Lauren Corcuera; Sound Design by Joseph Discher. Presented by Gloucester Stage Company, 267 E Main St., Gloucester, through August 25. For more information or to buy tickets, visit https://gloucesterstage.com/

RESCUES Manual for Commercial Fishing Industry Unveiled

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Compilation of best practices for fishermen, families and communities

By Shelley A. Sackett

 

 

 

Over fifty people packed the standing room only Gloucester Coast Guard Station last Thursday for the unveiling of RESCUES, the long awaited first-ever comprehensive guidebook on dealing with a crisis in a fishing community.

 

“This is an exciting day, but it is also a sad day,” said Angela Sanfilippo, the President of both the Gloucester’s Wives Association and the Massachusetts Fishermen’s Partnership, who also served as master of ceremonies. As a fisherman’s daughter, wife and mother, she has first hand experience of the pain and trauma suffered by families and communities when a fisherman is lost at sea.

 

She told the story of the night of the 1992 “perfect storm” when she and many others slept at the Gloucester Coast Guard Station. “The captain said, ‘We need to start training fishermen in how to save themselves,’” she recalled. That planted the seed that would eventually grow into the RESCUES manual.

Mayor and Sanfilippo

Gloucester Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken addresses the group as Angela Sanfilippo looks on.

 

The acronym stands for Responding to Emergencies at Sea and to Communities Under Extreme Stress.

 

“We all get numb to the dangers of the fishing industry, but there are widow’s walks and porches named for families who paced, hoping their men would come home,” said J.J. Bartlett, President of Fishing Partnership Support Services. He said that if public school teachers died at the same rate as fishermen on the job, over 400 teachers would die of work-related injuries each year.

 

“The idea is that, when a crisis occurs, folks in our fishing ports will be able to consult this manual and know right away how the Coast Guard and other authorities are responding, and where to turn for reliable help and support,” Barlett added.

 

Gloucester Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken spoke of her own family tragedies over fishing accidents and their aftermath. “You can take the fisherman out of the ocean but you can’t take the ocean out of the fisherman,” she said. “We’re fortunate in Gloucester because we have a team in place to put this kind of book together so now you know where to go” for help, she added, noting that although there is no safety book that will prevent loss of life at sea, “this book can help.”

 

The Mayor praised the Coast Guard. “They risk their lives for the sake of the fishermen,” she said. Captain Robert Lepere, commanding officer of the Gloucester Coast Guard Station for the past three years, returned the compliment. “I’ve been in the Coast Guard for 20 years, and never have I seen a community pull together like this,” he said. Captain Claudia C. Geltzer, commanding officer of the Boston Coast Guard Station and Captain of the Port of Boston, praised RESCUES as a very important milestone. “This manual will make any fisherman who reads it better prepared at sea,” she said. “In the heat of a crisis, we all revert back to our training.”

Hall-Arber and Sanfilippo

Madeline Hall-Arber

 

Madeline Hall-Arber, an anthropologist at the Sea Grant College program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Ann Backus, of the Harvard University School of Public Health, were the principal investigators on the lengthy project that produced RESCUES. They interviewed fishing community leaders, Coast Guard personnel, fishing vessel safety trainers, clergy, social service agencies, fishermen and their families, business owners, insurance companies and attorneys. Kristina Pinto of the Fishing Partnership Support Services is the third co-author.

 

Hall-Arber described how she first became interested in undertaking the RESCUES project. “I met a fisherman who didn’t know how to swim. ‘Why prolong the agony?’” he asked. She remembered thinking it might be an interesting research project to find out what fishing industry standard best practices were before an accident, at sea and if disaster occurred. “People in the industry were astoundingly enthusiastic,” she said.

 

The RESCUES manual focuses on what interviewees shared as being critical to know before, during and after an incident. It contains a wealth of material, including contacts for services in Gloucester and New Bedford.

 

Its five main sections focus on essential information to help prepare individuals, groups and entire communities for a crisis affecting members of the commercial fishing industry, such as the sinking of a boat or the search for crew members lost overboard at sea.

I wanted people to be able to skim the manual, get useful information, and then go back,” Hall-Arber said.

 

For example, chapter 1, “Integrative Preparedness” (before leaving the dock) includes an easy-to-follow checklist of essential safety training and communication plans for the vessel owner, crew and families. “Emergency” explains what the Coast Guard does during an emergency and outlines communication chains of command. “The Aftermath” and “Longer-Term Outreach and Counseling” addresses situations after a loss is confirmed. Appendices incorporate maintenance checklists, Coast Guard contact information, community crisis support organizations and useful websites.

 

One of the surprising facts Hall-Arber learned was that many family members didn’t know which boat their loved one was on or what kind of fishing he might be doing that day. Backus, whose expertise is in occupational safety and health in the fishing industry, likewise discovered that vessel captains usually didn’t know about crewmembers’ medical histories or their contact information. She and Sanfilippo have since developed and distributed scores of refrigerator magnets for fishermen’s families to keep handy with information that the Coast Guard would need in an emergency. “Families should know where important documents are,” Backus said.

 

Paul Vitale, 43, a fisherman who has lived in Gloucester his whole life, thinks some of these common sense suggestions will be extremely helpful. “Lots of time people don’t know which boat they’ll be on. Not everyone owns their own boat,” he explained.

 

Fishermens wives Statue

 

Sanfilippo, who was instrumental in bringing to fruition the decades-long dream of Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association to create a Fishermen’s Wives Memorial, is equally determined to bring RESCUES beyond Boston, the South Shore and Cape Cod. “We will be bringing this up and down the entire coastline. Today we open that road,” she said to resounding applause.