Category: Art & Theater

NH Jewish Film Festival opens

This year’s New Hampshire Jewish Film Festival, opening March 23 at the Rex Theatre in Manchester, offers a rich and varied slate of 15 movies. It’s also very much a statewide endeavor, with seven cities hosting screenings. In addition, more than half of the offerings will be available online.

The documentary Janis Ian: Breaking Silence will be both screened and streamed, followed by a Zoom discussion with director Varda Bar-Kar. Ian was a teenager in the mid-1960s when she released the controversial “Society’s Child,” and charted a decade later with “At Seventeen.” Along the way she worked with everyone from Jimi Hendrix to Dolly Parton.

One of the most eagerly anticipated films is Bad Shabbos, a comedy about a newly engaged couple’s Jewish and Catholic parents meeting for the first time over a dinner gone terribly wrong. With a cast including Kyra Sedgwick, David Paymer and Cliff “Method Man” Smith, it won the Audience Award at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

“That’s definitely the one that people are going to leave talking about,” steering committee member Zachary Cemenker said in a joint interview with festival chair Pat Kalik, who added, “that’s why we’re closing the festival with that one; it’s our final film.”

Max Dagan, from Nashua director Terre Weisman, will be shown on Thursday, April 3, at Concord’s Red River Theatres, and Weisman will participate in a discussion after. The film is about a prison inmate who is dying of a brain tumor, his son’s efforts to free him with a compassionate release, and the past that’s revealed in the process.

“I explore themes of tragedy and loss, and how one’s natural talents and strengths can empower an individual toward healing and redemption,” Weisman wrote on the nofilmschool website when Max Dugan was screened as the prestigious Closing Night Film at last year’s Dances With Films festival.

Two films released just this year are also among the most hard-hitting.

October H8te, from executive producer Debra Messing, is a documentary about anti-Semitism in the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel. Soda explores a relationship between a Jewish man and a woman suspected of being a capo for the Germans during the Holocaust, and its effect on a small village with war still a fresh memory.

With films about Beatles manager Brian Epstein (Midas Man), a former U.S. Senator (Centered: Joe Lieberman), and even an animated feature from the 1990s (Prince of Egypt, chosen to coincide with Passover), there’s a little bit of everything for everyone, with offerings coming from all across the world.

There’s an effort to draw from both U.S.-based and foreign distributors. “That way there’s a variety of films that aren’t all subtitled,” Cemenker said. Beyond that, “we try to balance where they’re from, and the content in them, so that they’re not all World War II or Holocaust-driven [and] they’re not all about Israel or the Middle East. We have a variety of criteria.”

One film that checks more than a few boxes is Running on Sand. It’s a comedy of mistaken identity that also deals with the hot-button issue of immigration. In it, a man about to be deported from Israel runs from officials at an airport, only to be mistaken for a star soccer player arriving to play for the local team.

The Joe Lieberman documentary will be shown on the festival’s final day of theater screenings, followed by a pre-recorded conversation with director Jonathan Gruber. It’s part of a dual program including Darren Garnick’s short film Righting A Wrong: The Bialystok Cemetery Restoration Project.

Garnick was a longtime festival volunteer who passed away last autumn. “We are showing that film in his memory and in his honor,” Kalik said. “We wanted to do it on the last day.”

The festival is a program of the Jewish Federation of New Hampshire and is also sponsored, in part, by the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts.

17th Annual New Hampshire Jewish Film Festival
When: Sunday, March 23, through Sunday, April 6 (Streaming Bonus Week April 6-11)
Where: Locations in Manchester, Concord, Merrimack, Hooksett, Portsmouth, Hanover and Keene
More: Full schedule and tickets at nhjewishfilmfestival.com
Opening reception Sunday, March 23, at noon, Spotlight Room at the Palace, 96 Hanover St., Manchester ($16) prior to the 2 p.m. screening of Shari & Lamb Chop at the Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester ($12).

Featured photo: Bad Shabbos

Gastrobrewery hosts dinner and storytelling

“Sean’s Red Scarf” is a playful story about a greedy man who lets a leprechaun fool him into opening an accessory shop. Simon Brooks has been spinning such tales for more than 30 years, and it may be among those he’ll tell after a dinner at a Nashua gastrobrewery hosting the latest in its Legends & Lore storytelling series.

Or maybe, Brooks said recently, it’ll be a darker yarn.

“A lot of people think that folk and fairy tales are mostly for kids, but when you actually listen to a lot of them they’re really deep.” he said. For example, “The Lonely Boat Man” is about using imagination as a defense against life’s hardships, with an ending that lands differently depending on the listener.

In it, a fisherman named Hagen runs from a socially awkward moment; all the guests at a public dinner have been asked to perform for their share, and his entertainment skills are nonexistent. Outside, he finds a beautiful woman in need of a boat ride to her home. He obliges, and falls in love along the way to the mysterious island where she lives.

In Brooks’ capable hands, the Scottish folk tale, also called “The Fairy Bride,” is magical, its denouement both beautiful and devastating. Hagen’s escape is redemptive and life-affirming, even after things change and he’s once again alone, with the memory of brief happiness the only salve for a solitary existence. However, he now has a story to tell.

Just the basic bones are provided here, so as not to spoil it for anyone who’d like to hear the whole tale on Brooks’ website (diamondscree.com).

Brooks has appeared frequently at the Nashua venue, and the upcoming St. Patrick’s Day event will be his third one there.

“It’s one that both Rambling House and I get very excited about,” he said. “I have Irish ancestry, and so I tell mostly Irish stories. There might be a Scottish or Welsh story thrown in because it’s Celtic.”

The evening will include a farm-to-table meal with an Emerald Isle feel — “the chef is absolutely incredible, it’s some of the best-tasting food I’ve ever had,” Brooks said — followed by dessert and, perhaps, a mug of their Oscar F.O.W. Wilde Nitro Stout. After the tables are cleared, tale-spinning begins.

Rambling House has designated Brooks as the evening’s Seanchaí (pronounced, shan-a-key), described as “a storyteller tasked with keeping alive the Irish myths, folklore and legends that inspire a people. In ancient Ireland, the seanchaí was held in high esteem and would regularly attract large crowds to hear the long-form poems and tales they had to tell.”

Opened in 2012, the Factory Street restaurant is named after the Coosane Rambling House, a rural family home in County Kerry, Ireland, that served as a gathering place for locals to gather and share conversation, song, dance and storytelling. It was a favorite spot of Maurice Gleeson, scion of the family that runs Rambling House and nearby TaleSpinner Brewery.

Born in England, Brooks is well-versed in many storytelling traditions and is vigilant about properly honoring all of them. As he’s keenly aware that his interpretation of a story may not hew exactly to its original telling, he’s careful to understand the cultural norms informing each one.

“I try to [tell a story] as authentically as I possibly can so that I’m not homogenizing it,” Brooks said. To that end, he spent years transforming the anglicized version of a Japanese folk story he’d found in a children’s book into something that felt genuine, even availing a fellow storyteller from Japan to translate websites he couldn’t read.

“She gave me insight into how to tell the story and not Europeanize it, but actually keep it in the way a Japanese storyteller might tell it,” he said. “Having done all this digging and delving, I was able to then tell that story properly, from a place of authenticity, rather than just taking a Japanese story and making it mine.”

Brooks has also written a book aimed at young readers that encourages both children and adults to “take these stories and make them your own … make them relevant to your life experiences and the life that you live. Because that makes it more personal. It makes it way more fun for both the teller and the listener.”

Legends & Lore Storytelling Series: Tales from the Seanchaí
When: Sunday, March 16, 6 p.m. (dinner seatings begin at 4:15 p.m.)
Where: Rambling House Food & Gathering, 57 Factory St., Suite A, Nashua
Tickets: $20/person at ramblingtale.com. Ticket price includes entry to performance and does not include dinner, drinks, or gratuity.
Adult content, not for children.

Featured photo: Simon Brooks. Courtesy photo.

New twist on religious iconography at Currier

The mother-and-child theme has been part of Ann Agee’s art going back to a 1999 porcelain figure recently revived for the Rena Bransten Gallery’s RBG at 50-Focus on Ceramics exhibition in San Francisco. She’s frequently returned to the form, but recently Agee has taken a different approach, making Madonnas with a feminist touch.

“Madonna of the Girl Child” has grown into a significant body of work, and on March 7 the Currier Museum will begin showing five of the largest figures from it. Also on display at the exhibition, running through June 5, are two relief works done in porcelain, welded steel and epoxy resin, “Offering Madonna” and “Donatello Riff Madonna.”

In a recent phone interview Agee said she made the first piece out of curiosity in 2019, then a few more to fight a bout of altitude sickness. Occasionally she’d ask herself why she was focusing on religious icons. It was, she decided, a good way to look at and comment on their inherent oppression.

As she walked through churches on a trip to Italy, the clash between depictions of violence like the crucifixion and the gentle nature of the Madonna got her thinking.

“So many horrific things that were the guides to how to live your life … don’t do that, watch out for this,” she said. “Then you see the Madonna, and it’s … have a child, and everything is peaceful.”

Amidst this warmth and maternal comfort, however, something stark stood out to Agee.

“It’s always a boy child,” she said. “I wanted for myself a Madonna that held a girl child and publicly showed the interest that a mother could have in her. That this child, this girl, could deserve your hopes and dreams in the same way that your boy child could. Slowly, it became a little bit of a campaign.”

The upcoming Currier display is a departure for Agee, who usually displays her Madonnas in groups of mixed sizes. It will be held in the Manchester museum’s Welcome Gallery, which is a space between other spaces.

“There’s a sprawling staircase, it spreads out to both sides, and there are banisters of a different material,” she said. “I decided to keep it really simple, and have the work stand up to all that’s architecturally going on in that room, and the movement of people coming and going.”

The five pieces are the largest ones she’s done, Agee said.

“I’ve enjoyed slowly learning how to make things bigger,” she said. “Last summer I was sitting on someone’s deck and looking out into this grass and I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to just have a big red figure in the grass there?’ So I made one in red, and then I made one in pink.”

She was further inspired by a trip to Boboli Gardens in Florence, Italy. “I was looking at all the white marble sculptures that are in the garden there. They’re not really that big, but they’re one color. There’s all this stuff around them, and they hold their form. That’s basically the shift in these Madonnas, they’re big and they’re a solid color.”

The works, however, further Agee’s “campaign” for a feminist reinterpretation of religious iconography. More than a simple exploration of motherhood, “Madonna of the Girl Child” is a critical commentary on the way these traditional symbols have reinforced gender roles. Agee’s art usurps an image steeped in patriarchal culture.

This shift is a deliberate act of reclaiming this symbol for women. Agee wanted to present a vision where a mother could hold and nurture a girl child with the same devotion and aspirations traditionally reserved for sons. In this new context, the Madonna figure becomes a symbol not just of motherhood but of equality.

Ann Agee: Madonna of the Girl Child
When: Friday, March 7, through Thursday, June 5
Where: Currier Museum of Art, 150 Ash St., Manchester
More: annageestudio.com

Featured photo: “Offering Madonna” by Ann Agee. Courtesy photo.

Easygoing Escape to Margaritaville hits Palace

By Michael Witthaus

mwitthaus@hippopress.com

New England spent most of February waking up to single-digit temperatures and the sound of snowplows in the street, so the latest musical at the Palace Theatre couldn’t arrive at a better time. Set in a sunny resort somewhere near the equator, Escape to Margaritaville is a frothy, guilty pleasure that’s packed with Jimmy Buffet songs.

With a book from a pair of sitcom veterans, the jukebox musical’s mood is best summed up by Tully (Matt McCloskey), who sings at the hotel bar and is modeled after the writer of “Changes in Latitudes” and the show’s title song. “The deeper you go,” Tully says, “the less interesting it gets.”

To paraphrase the Bard of the Keys, this evening comes with a license to chill.

The plot centers on a bachelorette getaway. Tammy (Megan Quinn) is finding some respite from her boorish fiance ahead of her wedding. Rachel (Jen Fogarty-Morgan) cares more about getting a soil sample from an island volcano for an energy venture that apparently involves potatoes, but falls quickly in a fling with the one-week-stand specialist Tully.

While that’s happening, Tammy is warming to the polar opposite of her husband-to-be, a genial bartender named Brick (Adam Fields). With those parts in place, and a few colorful denizens like hotel owner Marley (Nakiiya Coleman), old-timer J.D. (Jacob Medich) and handyman Jamal (Tyler Price Robinson), the Parrothead-pleasing songfest moves forward.

Though Escape to Margaritaville is aimed at the people who instinctively know the last two words in the chorus of “Why Don’t We Get Drunk,” it’s also fun for folks who are new to Buffett’s brand of trop rock. In fact, the Palace company had little awareness of him before rehearsals, one of which was canceled due to a foot of snow falling.

That would change.

“Now I get it; I’m kind of a converted Parrothead,” Director Carl Rajotte said by phone recently. “We’re having a blast teaching this show. There’s a lot of stylized dancing, a Caribbean feel, and then just all the puns. The show is written for people who enjoy puns, and all of the actors are laughing during rehearsal.”

In a joint interview, Fogarty-Morgan and Quinn discussed the cast’s mood as a Feb. 28 opening night approached.

“It’s a really nice, easy story,” Fogarty-Morgan said. “It’s fun, it’s goofy and silly. The music is amazing and wonderful and you get to hear it in a new way, which will be fun for the fans. They put together a phenomenal cast, and everyone’s really going to have a good time.”

Quinn, a Palace favorite who also runs their Youth Theatre Company, is pleased to see many fresh faces in Margaritaville. “Besides Jen and one other person, I have not worked with any of these people before,” she said. “They are all so good, so talented and very funny. We’ve been having such a good time with them, so that’s been a nice experience.”

Early on, both Quinn and Rajotte were certain “for an embarrassingly long time” that Rupert Holmes’ “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” was a Buffett tune, but they since have come far. Everyone has a favorite now — “Cheeseburger in Paradise” is Quinn’s go-to, and Fogarty-Morgan is a fan of “Five O’clock Somewhere,” which began as an Alan Jackson tune with a guest vocal before Buffett took sole ownership by making it a staple at his concerts.

Rajotte selected the new work with an eye on the schedule, and the Palace will keep the tropical vibe alive by handing out leis to audience members. No word yet on whether blenders will be whirring with the show’s signature drink, though. The show is a great way to clear thoughts of frigid temperatures and seasonal stress, if only for a couple of hours.

“We always strive to do at least two brand new shows per season,” he said. “It’s the perfect time to do it, with the cold and snow … I keep on falling on the ice, but then I get to come in here and have a good time with this music and this show, and I know the audience will, too.”

Escape to Margaritaville

When: Fridays, 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays, 2
& 7:30 p.m., and Sundays, 2 p.m. through
March 23. Also Thursday, March 20, 7:30
p.m.
Where: Palace Theatre, 80 Hanover St.,
Manchester
Tickets: $39 and up at palacetheatre.org

Featured photo: The cast of Escape to Margaritaville. Courtesy photo.

Faithless is a fast-paced look at modern religion

By Michael Witthaus

mwitthaus@hippopress.com

A play with humor, intelligence, drama and the pacing of a West Wing episode, Jon Klein’s Faithless arrived on director Monique Peaslee Foote’s desk at an inconvenient time. New Hampshire Theatre Project head Sean Robinson gave her the script, asking if she’d give it a read, when “I was in no position, with no desire to do it,” she said by phone recently.

Then she dug into the story of a family crisis confronting Gus, an aging atheist, and his two grown stepchildren; Calvin, a minister, and Claire, who teaches comparative religion but is a skeptic until a head injury causes her to think she’s seen the divine. The cause of the conclave is Gus’s adopted teenage daughter Rosie, who’s decided she wants to become a nun.

“I was hooked after three pages,” Foote said. “Number one, it’s funny, and I think we’re at a time in life where that’s good. It’s witty, and it’s fast-paced…. I’m all about a 90-minute show, no intermission these days. Get me there, tell me the story, and then I’m going to peace out. And that’s what this piece does.”

Foote describes the play’s four actors as “whip smart” — Jim Sears playing Gus, Stephanie Lazenby as Claire, Matt Recine in the role of Calvin, with Michelle Levine playing Rosie. “Each of them, their comedic timing is everything,” she said. “I mean, I have to do little to no work, because they’re bringing all of it.”

Preparation began at a pace befitting the script. “I knew the rehearsal process wasn’t super long, so as a director, I set the scaffolding,” Foote said. “Sometimes you get those golden groups of people where they all kind of get it, and we started that way — everybody got it. We’re all on the same page at the same pace.”

Blocking done, the cast was ready, she continued. “Now we get to play. Let’s dig into the layers of these guys. The biggest problem for us in rehearsals is to stop them from laughing. I’m like, all right, guys, get [it] together, like, let’s go. Because they’re funny, they’re just hilarious people. So we’re all there just laughing our tails off. It’s great.”

Faithless is the first Klein work that Foote’s been involved with. “He’s pretty clever,” she said. “Quite frankly, I haven’t done a ton of research on Mr. Klein, but what he has right is the story, and the way people talk to each other. The banter, the way they just throw it back and forth is really wonderful and real.”

In a review of a Washington, D.C., production of the play, DC Theatre Arts writer Amy Kotkin agreed. “The playwright’s sure-fire dialogue combines lofty questions with very funny analogies to popular culture,” she wrote. “Watch how he references time-shares, dodgeballs, crowbars, and Little House on the Prairie as his all-too-human characters slug it out.”

Foote joined New Hampshire Theatre Project in 2009 as an actor. Directing “is fairly new to me, but I really think I love it,” she said, Collected Stories, a two-woman play she directed last year starring Genevieve Aichele and Amy Desrosiers, was nominated for multiple New Hampshire Theatre Alliance awards.

“We didn’t win, but it was nice to be seen,” she said, adding that the experience reinforced her commitment to NHTP.

“I have a personal passion for the organization because it does really smart theater, and it tells really smart stories,” she said. “The foundation of their work is starting a conversation [and] that’s what I’m here for. They want to bring the tough stuff out and get people talking about it, because that’s where community starts. That’s where we find our humanness, in the conversation.”

Faithless
When: Fridays, 7:30 p.m., Saturdays, 4 p.m. and Sundays, 2:30 p.m. through March 9
Where: New Hampshire Theatre Project, 959 Islington St., Portsmouth
Tickets: $28 and up at portsmouthnhtickets.com

Featured photo: Jim Sears, Stephanie Lazenby, Michelle Levine, and Matt Recine. Courtesy photo.