Category: Art & Theater

The Bridges of Madison County musical in Manchester

Even though it won Tonys for Best Original Score and Best Orchestrations, The Bridges of Madison County opened on Valentine’s Day in 2014 and closed in mid-May. Dr. Alan Kaplan, the founder and artistic director for the Manchester Community Theatre Players, has an inkling about why this happened and will apply his ideas in an upcoming production of the musical.

“This is a play I’ve been interested in for many years,” he said in a recent phone interview. Kaplan has read the novel, seen the Clint Eastwood-directed movie, and watched the first staging of the show in Williamstown, Mass. He even conversed with Jason Robert Brown, who wrote the Tony-winning music and lyrics.

The story centers on a fated couple and the decisions they must make when their connection becomes undeniable.

Francesca Johnson (Susan Schott) is a beautiful Italian woman who married an American GI as World War II was ending to escape her ravaged country. Twenty years later she’s preparing for a rare stretch of solitude on her Iowa farm while her family is away at the State Fair. Her reverie is interrupted when photographer Robert Kincaid (Don LaDuke) pulls into her driveway, asking for directions to a bridge he’s shooting for a National Geographic story.

The songs are varied and evocative, as good as anything to come from Broadway. “What Do You Call a Man Like That?” is an operatic waltz that perfectly captures the reticent housewife’s growing desire, while “Another Time,” an echo sung by Robert’s former wife, has a folky, Joni Mitchell feel. Sung by Francesca’s husband Bud (Dan Arlen), “Something From a Dream” is an aching ode to a marriage that, unknown to him, may be slipping from his grasp.

Though the music is powerful, it’s the story that brings power to the show. Hovering over forbidden love is the question of what might have been. In Francesca’s case, the man she left in Italy for glamor across the sea that never materialized, and for Robert, a driven nature that left little room for human connection.

For Kaplan, it was this element that attracted him most to directing The Bridges of Madison County.

“Usually with a musical, the music carries the show; the acting should be reasonable, but the music can cover it,” he said. “This is a musical where the actors have to really be on their game, and it gave me the opportunity as a director to really pull the most out of a cast in terms of acting ability.”

One of the challenges in presenting the play is conveying a sense of place and distance. Much of the action happens during phone calls between Francesca and her husband, Bud, as she struggles with her newfound love for Robert and how it might change her future. Some critics found the Broadway staging jarring.

“All the set pieces were on stage all the time,” Kaplan recalled, and juxtaposing cast members hundreds of miles apart was another problem. “You may have a bridge in the middle of a kitchen, or a refrigerator in the middle of an outdoor scene. It was confusing.”

Outdoor scenes more easy to accomplish in a movie were harder to do theatrically. So Kaplan took cues from Eastwood and placed a big screen at the rear of the stage to project scenery. A videographer was commissioned to capture locations in Iowa, and there is footage of Naples, Italy, and the cities Francesca imagined visiting in America.

The main set, Francesca’s kitchen, is on wheels and can be moved as the action demands. It’s an elaborate production for a community theater. That’s something Kaplan tries for whenever MCTP mounts a play, but it was particularly urgent in the case of this show, one so close to his heart.

“We didn’t want to just repeat something that only had a hundred performances on Broadway and then closed after four months,” he said, “I think that the reasons for it, as I mentioned, were pretty obvious. So the hope here is that we have improved on it.”

The Bridges of Madison County
When: Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. through May 4
Where: MCTP Theatre at North End Montessori School, 698 Beech St., Manchester
Tickets: $20 for adults, $18 for seniors, $10 for ages 18 and under at mctp.info

Featured photo: The Bridges of Madison County. Courtesy photo.

Book recounts the roots of Manchester Airport

By Michael Witthaus

[email protected]

Charles Lindbergh’s historic solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927 was followed by a surge of interest in aviation. This so-called “Lindbergh Boom” inspired construction of a pair of runways on what’s now Manchester-Boston Regional Airport. A hangar and administrative building were added in the 1930s, and it became an Army base as World War II approached.

Today few physical traces of this history remain. Leah Dearborn, an Associate Director at Aviation Museum of New Hampshire, set out to find and document memories of Grenier Field, as the facility came to be known. Grenier Air Base: A Beacon on the Home Front was published late last year.

Dearborn will talk about her book and take questions during an April 18 appearance at the Bookery in Manchester. In a recent phone interview she shared her motivations for writing it, along with some of the fascinating things learned during her research.

“It’s an interesting era in history, and also one that’s slipping by us very quickly,” she said. “I think part of this project was driven by the urgency of some of this history. If we don’t do something about it right now, the remaining people who can tell us about it might not be able to in the near future.”

The story begins with a humorous twist: Civic rivalry is a big reason why the airfield came to be in the first place.

“Charles Lindbergh was doing a tour across the United States, and when he got to Manchester there wasn’t an airport,” Dearborn said. “So he had to skip Manchester and go to Concord. That spurred the movement for Manchester Airport to be built; I like to call it a spite airport.”

Many of those interviewed for the book were children during the war years, and their recollections were surprising. Flying was still relatively new, and accidents were frequent. In fact, American fatalities in flight training were significantly higher than those sustained in air combat.

“By 1943, there were six fatal training accidents per day,” Dearborn said.

Many crashes happened at Grenier, she continued. “Local kids would bike out to them, just out of curiosity … and they’d pull little souvenirs off the plane. Just learning about the childhood of these local kids who spent all their time at the base or around it, watching from afar, was pretty interesting.”

The base was named for Second Lieutenant Jean Grenier, a Manchester native who crashed in Utah while scouting a flight route. He was one of many Army pilots who quickly took over commercial mail delivery following the so-called Airmail Scandal in 1934. A rapid handoff of responsibilities, coupled with a brutal winter, resulted in many flying deaths.

“This was being done mainly by pilots with very limited experience, in open cockpit aircraft, in some of the worst weather in decades,” Dearborn said. “A lot of them lost their lives in the few months that this was planned, and Jean Grenier was, unfortunately, one of those.”

As Dearborn researched her book, a group of museum volunteers were engaged in reprocessing the archives. “When they found something in their effort that might connect back to what I was doing, they would leave it on my desk,” she recalled. “I’d walk in in the morning and find this stack of paper … that was really helpful.”

Among the valuable finds was a trove of newspaper clippings spanning the war’s early years to the 1950s. “Somebody at Grenier in the military was keeping tabs on the war abroad,” Dearborn said. “Anytime a New Hampshire soldier … made the news, somebody at a desk was taking a pair of scissors and cutting these out.”

At the Bookery, Dearborn will dive into favorite Grenier memories and display some photos. However, the best moments frequently happen after her presentation.

“People come with their own stories, and sometimes that’s where I get the best leads for new writing projects,” she said. “I ended up talking to a man who fought during the Battle of the Bulge for this book, and that’s exactly how I met him. I gave a talk on the history of ballooning, and a friend of his came up at the end and said, ‘You really ought to talk to this guy, he witnessed the Hindenburg fly over New England.’ Stuff like that is pretty invaluable.”

Grenier Air Base: A Beacon on the Home Front w/ author Leah Dearborn

When: Friday, April 18, 5-7 p.m.
Where: Bookery, 844 Elm St., Manchester,
Tickets: free; reserve at bookerymht.com

Featured photo: Leah Dearborn. Courtesy photo.

Glimpse in Concord readies new show

By Michael Witthaus
[email protected]

For its inaugural show in February 2024, Glimpse Gallery featured four artists hailing from the South, along with two New Hampshire painters and another from Vermont. Glimpse owner Meme Exum always intended for the space, tucked down an alley by the Capitol Building in Concord, to reflect her home region, but knew it would take time.

A little over a year later the seeds Exum and curator Christine Landry-Boullion planted to entice New England artists and buyers to Glimpse are coming to fruition.

“The trajectory’s been just straight up, positive, wonderful,” Exum said recently. “I now have a lot of folks submitting their work, and it’s giving me more flexibility with how I can create the shows.”

The choice provided by a deep well of talent allows for shows weighted between up-and-comers and established artists like Robin Whitney Fairclough, who anchored a successful show in October. It also allows for thematic balance, as with an upcoming exhibit of seven New England artists that includes the colorful abstracts of Rosie Wolf Williams alongside darker works by Talia Dinger. Williams’ paintings suggest prairie impressionism, such as the colorful movement in “Breaking Free” and “Lion and the Mouse,” an Aesop’s fable-inspired piece glowing with childlike energy.

Dinger’s mixed media works focus on monochromatic subjects and explore topics like alienation in “I’ll Miss You” and the frailty of hope in “Holding On To You,” which depicts a person hanging by a thread over a pool of lava or something equally threatening. Her three-dimensional pieces are particularly impressive, such as “Out of Time,” an eyeball-shaped, working clock spilling an acrylic tear, and the abstract chest X-ray, “Golden.”

Matthew McCain uses gray scale and shadow compellingly in “If You Go, I’ll Stay,” a foreboding work depicting either an interrogation or an illuminating moment. The main subject’s posture is ambiguous; the artist leaves interpretation up to the viewer.

“I love how people can see different things while looking at the same image, and I really try to exploit that in my artwork as much as possible,” McCain writes in his bio.

A few of McCain’s pieces are adorned with butterflies to convey nostalgia for a bygone time. Similarly whimsical are the line and circle drawings of Amy Moffett. Their simplicity is underscored by her creative process; each is begun with eyes closed, so Moffett can feel the shapes before seeing them. The works are colorful and affordable — all cost under $100.

Mark Ruddy has shown at the Glimpse Gallery before, but as with other shows, this exhibit will feature all new works.

“Every time it has to be completely different, because I don’t want people to see the same thing ever,” Exum said. “Every show has to be its own new art and the energy that it carries.”

A series of three Ruddy paintings is hung for the upcoming show. Two are of vintage pugilists, arranged around a close-up of the recently renamed Gulf of Mexico on a map. Each picture is covered with multicolored polka dots, a motif he’s used in other works to juxtapose a serious subject with something lighter.

Brenda Wilbert is both a mixed media and fine art digital artist. “A Moment of Bliss,” a treated photograph of a woman in a river drinking water from her hand, is an example of the latter. Her riotous collages employ a wide range of textures and colors, from metallic pen lines to painted fabric, watercolors and ink to stunning effect.

The works of Lakes Region artist Benjamin Archibald are a blend of realistic portraits of wildlife, such as the peacock in “Glory,” along with patterned portraits done for charity. For the latter, donors purchase one or more fingerprint spots on a piece like “Heliosa,” which welcomes patrons at Glimpse’s entryway.

“I love what he’s doing,” Exum said. “He’s taking his art to this level where he’s making it a communal process… .”

Glimpse Gallery April/May show opening reception

When: Saturday, April 12, 5-7 p.m.
Where: Glimpse Gallery, 4 Park St. (Patriot Building), Concord
RSVP: [email protected]

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Klezmer Conservatory Band in Concord

By Michael Witthaus

[email protected]

The lively folk song “Hava Nagila” is a staple at Jewish weddings and other celebrations, but when Hankus Netsky started the Klezmer Conservatory Band it was part of a very niche musical tradition that carried on mostly in synagogues. Netsky decided to change that. Surprisingly his inspiration was an Irish musician.

Nearly five decades later, his group is credited with reviving klezmer music for modern audiences, making several albums and performing around the world. Their music has been in films, including one narrated by the late Robin Williams, and they’ve worked with many musicians, including an ongoing collaboration with Itzhak Perlman.

The last one happened after Netsky lured a reluctant Perlman into a jam session — more on that later.

An April 6 show at Concord’s City Auditorium will be special, with the full Klezmer Conservatory Band on stage, Netsky shared in a recent phone interview.

“We need to give a little present to New Hampshire,” he said, noting that their last time in Concord, “we came with a small group … we didn’t even have a trumpet player.”

Netsky came to New England Conservatory as a student in 1973. Five years later he was hired by the school’s Third Stream Department. The name came from NEC President Gunther Schuller, who felt that much contemporary music resulted from mingling “streams” of classical and jazz.

Schuller, Netsky said by phone recently, “felt very strongly that he couldn’t possibly talk about the 20th century of music without looking at the works of Ellington, James B. Johnson, Louis Armstrong, etc.” Netsky saw a role for Jewish music from the Ashkenazi communities of Ukraine, Romania and other Eastern European countries.

There were other tributaries, and as the Third Stream definition broadened, Netsky made klezmer’s case.

When Netsky was studying at NEC, he’d found boxes of klezmer 78s in his uncle’s basement that were once owned by his great-grandfather. He was amazed.

“By then in the Jewish community, the music,” he said, “was very perfunctory.” So he began transferring them to cassette.

The recordings revealed “there was a whole tradition of music that was on a really high level,” he said. “I kind of reinvigorated that stream.” Netsky began sharing them with students when he joined NEC’s faculty. He found common ground with guitarist Mick Moloney, who’d worked to bring long-lost Irish music back to the forefront.

“The real session music was more or less forgotten at that point, and he revived it,” Netsky recalled. “I went to one of his Irish sessions, and I went, ‘Oh! I get it! You have a party, serve some food, and then everybody comes and you teach them the music’; so that’s really what happened. Then one of the students got this idea we should do a concert.”

The young group contributed a three-song set as part of an evening of Jewish music. It was supposed to be a one-off, but in days they had three offers to do full concerts. They sent a tape to Garrison Keillor and quickly received an invitation to appear on his NPR show, A Prairie Home Companion, the next time it stopped in Boston.

From that point on, they’ve led a resurgence of the once moribund tradition, appearing everywhere, from synagogues to Carnegie Hall. They’ve spawned other bands as well; the genre-bending Klezmatics, founded during the mid-1980s in New York City, includes KCB founding member Frank London.

Then there are the many collaborations, the most famous with Perlman. It began haltingly, however, after an attempt at melding his legendary violin talents with jazz players like Oscar Peterson left him, according to many, dissatisfied. When a rep from NPR’s Great Performances contacted Netsky about Perlman’s interest in klezmer, she offered caution.

“He felt kind of burned by this jazz project,” he recalled her saying. “He just wants to learn about the music, but he doesn’t feel like he’s going to be ready to play it. Your job is to get him to take his violin out and feel good about what he’s doing.” Netsky knew there were certain songs that Perlman would have listened to as a young child in Israel, so he began with those. Perlman, his interest piqued, took out his violin and joined in. Mission accomplished.

“Then we started playing more serious klezmer music,” Netsky continued. “He recognized the tunes, and, again, right away he was playing along. Then we started going around the band, having people improvise, and then he improvised. He realized right away that this actually was something he wanted to do.”

Klezmer Conservatory Band

When: Sunday, April 6, 2 p.m.
Where: Concord City Auditorium, 2 Prince St., Concord
Tickets: $23 at eventbrite.com

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.