A good tribute act walks a tightrope, capturing a sound without trying to fully reproduce it. It’s something that bassist Chris Nelson thinks about frequently. His band Lotus Land plays the challenging catalog of Rock & Roll Hall of Fame trio Rush, and Nelson knows that convincing proximity, not perfection, is a sane performer’s best target.
“It’s not like we’re trying to repaint the Mona Lisa, that’s almost a thankless task,” he said by phone recently. “We’ve gelled into performing this stuff with a certain degree of our personalities. Tone comes from the hands of the musician; you can’t help but sound a bit like yourself … you’re not trying to just be a robot.”
Fortunately, Nelson’s voice has a natural pitch that’s similar to that of Rush’s lead singer. Comments about the vocal resemblance have followed him for years. “I’d sing a Zeppelin tune and without fail people would say, ‘You sound so much like Geddy Lee,’” he said. “Here I thought I was doing a pretty good Robert Plant! But anyway, I’m a crazy Rush fan.”
His bandmates, guitarist Bob Chartrand and drummer Mark Dalton, started Lotus Land as a four-piece, parting ways with the original bass and keyboard players when they met Nelson and became a trio. Before playing out, they watched videos and practiced hard, aware that Rush’s fans would “be as understandably critical of us as they are loyal to the real thing.”
They approached their first gig fretting about the formula, prepared to bail if it failed. “I’m not going to put myself and my bandmates through the embarrassment — if it doesn’t work, that’s going to be it, because I know it’s a tall order,” Nelson recalled thinking at the time. “But it was well-received … and it kept snowballing.”
The band took its name from a line in “Freewill,” a song from Rush’s breakthrough 1980 album Permanent Waves. The late Neal Peart was inspired by Homer’s The Odyssey when he wrote it, according to interpretations. In the book Merely Players, Peart said the “Lotus-land” was “a metaphor for an idealized background, a land of milk and honey.”
Their website describes “an obsessive approach … that inevitably compels us to incorporate every authentic Rush nuance into whatever amazing tune of theirs we may be playing,” and on songs like “Spirit of the Radio” and “Tom Sawyer” they deliver on the promise with masterful musicianship that honors the original songs.
Nelson’s bonafides as a fan are undeniable — he’s seen them live almost 20 times, and Lotus Land performed at the 2012 RushCon in Toronto. The latter was a life-changing event for him — he met his future wife there. She was there from L.A., along with thousands of others who’d traveled there.
The meeting only sparked a friendship; both were with other partners at the time. “Two years later, our situations changed, and here we are married; so I can credit the band for that,” he said. “What’s cool is I got to tell Geddy Lee that, very briefly at a book signing, I had my 60 seconds like everybody else, and I got to tell him that.”
Asked to name his most enjoyable moments during Lotus Land’s set, Nelson responded, “I love that question. People have their favorite areas of the band and mine happens to be from Permanent Waves through Grace Under Pressure, so that’s also Moving Pictures and Signals. For my natural register as a vocalist, that feels right in my pocket, so that’s the kind of stuff I love to do.”
That said, there’s another song he loves not on any of those albums.
“I love playing ‘The Path,’” he said, adding a side note. “I never try to change my voice to sound like him at all. I hear some other tribute acts do, but I’ve got a higher, and similar register as Geddy, so I’m just going to sing in my natural voice. If it sounds like him at the end of the day, great. If not, it shouldn’t be too painful on people’s ears because I’m going for the right pitch … it should be close.”
Lotus Land
When: Friday, Feb. 7, and Saturday, Feb. 8, 8 p.m. Where: Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry Tickets: $42 and up at tupelohall.com
Questlove codirects Ladies and Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music, a very Questlove-y documentary about the role of music in Saturday Night Live throughout the decades.
And by “Questlove-y” I mean wonderfully insightful about the music, not afraid of addressing controversy and exquisitely edited — see also his 2021 doc Summer of Soul (… Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised). Get a taste of what you’re in for with the six-ish-minute intro, which has been floating around online featuring a mashup of interviews and performances from 50 years of the show’s history. The doc proper keeps the energy going, with a look at the technical aspects of how a performer approaches an SNL appearance, the role that music has had in the show and some of the more memorable performances including the “riot” that wasn’t during a performance by punk band Fear, Sinéad O’Connor’s protest against the Catholic Church, Rage Against the Machine’s tumultuous appearance (as told by Tom Morello, a guy with a fair amount of insight into the music history presented here as well), Ashlee Simpson’s technical difficulties and more. Talking heads from Lorne Michaels, Justin Timberlake, Andy Samberg, Jimmy Fallon, Jack White and others don’t slow things down and help to give both context and, especially from the behind-the-scenes crew, some nice dirt on how the show and the musical elements come together. A must watch for fans of SNL, Questlove and music in general. A Streaming on Peacock and, like, however else you get your NBC. Summer of Soul, which is also awesome, is available on Hulu/Disney+, Tubi and for purchase.
Sing Sing (R)
Colman Domingo is my pick of the five actors nominated for a Lead Actor Oscar this year for his role in Sing Sing, a feature film based on the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts program at Sing Sing Correctional Facility.
Domingo, Paul Raci and Sean San Jose act alongside formerly incarcerated men who participated in the program and are here playing, more or less, themselves. These men clearly know how to draw from their experiences to present an entirely raw wallop of emotion that radiates out from them even when all they’re doing is just standing there. Domingo plays John, an author and one-time student at the Fame high school, who helped to found the theater program at Sing Sing. John says he has proof that he didn’t commit the crime he was convicted of and is hopeful that an upcoming hearing will lead to his release. Perhaps it’s his knowledge of his innocence and his belief that eventually he will be able to present his case to someone who will accept and believe his evidence that keeps him relatively optimistic. He writes plays, he helps scout new members for the program’s productions and he seems to work hard to hold up the men for whom the program is something of a life raft.
Divine Eye (Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, a real-life program alum) is a new member who goes through the process of breaking down his prison defenses in order to perform in productions as varied as Shakespeare and a new comedy written by the group’s director Brent (Raci) that includes time travel, cowboys and gladiators. The tough-guy-ness that keeps them alive (and may have also brought them to the prison in the first place) is chipped away and the theater program becomes a place where they can all become vulnerable.
The actors here — both the RTA guys and the civilian actors — get to the heartbreak of the men’s situation (which includes the sense that, had they had an outlet like this for their emotions before they committed crimes or fell into a life of violence, they might not have made the choices that they did). Domingo in particular is excellent as the guy who believes in what he’s doing, has hope for the future, can find joy in the moment — until he can’t. The movie manages to mix moments of levity, moments of “let’s put on a show” goofiness and moments of devastation in a fully captivating way. A Available for rent and purchase.
You’re Cordially Invited (R)
The overly involved father of a bride and pushy sister of another bride find themselves sharing a double booked wedding venue in You’re Cordially Invited.
A single dad since his wife died, Jim (Will Ferrell) wants recent college graduate daughter Jenni’s (Geraldine Viswanathan) special day to be perfect, even if he thinks she’s way too young to marry Oliver (Stony Blyden). Meanwhile, Margot (Reese Witherspoon), a reality TV producer wants her baby sister Neve (Meredith Hagner) to have her dream wedding to Dixon (Jimmy Tatro), an Army National Guard medic and exotic dancer. Both Jim and Margot book the same weekend at a small inn, which can really only do one wedding at a time, on Palmetto Island in Georgia. Because Margot and Neve eventually feel bad for Jenni, they offer to share the hotel, making everything a little crappier for everyone. When slights trigger mutual animosity, both Jim and Margo turn to various degrees of sabotage.
This is an intensely stupid movie — an intensely stupid movie that I had to pause at one point because I choke-laughed so hard I thought I might need medical help. The movie also features a very dumb but enjoyable bit with an alligator, and “Islands in the Stream” is used twice for solid comic effect (as is Peyton Manning). To some degree I feel like the whole thrill here is watching Ferrell and Witherspoon play their standard characters — kooky and tightly wound, respectively — but with the “improbable nuttiness” turned up to 11 and a whole lot more swearing. That sounds hacky, and maybe it is hacky, but they win, they got me. Just ignore the 11th-hour attempt at rom-com-ery; the movie doesn’t seem to think much of it either. B Streaming on Prime Video.
Featured Image: Ladies and Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music (TV MA)
What is street food? For Alyssa Drift, the owner of Local Street Eats in Nashua, it’s not about the exact food you might get on a street corner halfway around the world. Although it could be.
“I haven’t traveled internationally a whole lot,” Drift said, “but I like to eat. So it’s more like going out into different cities and different places, whether it’s Boston, Portland, Portsmouth, any of those kinds of places. Even in Florida, like Miami and places like that are just a little bit more rich in culture than New Hampshire is a lot of the time. I feel like places like that have more of a diverse dining scene, and I wanted to bring something like that to Nashua.”
With a mission statement like that, it would be understandable if the menu at Local Street East went in a bunch of different directions, featuring dishes from a large number of places around the world. Drift and her staff have done the opposite. She said it was important to them to keep the menu clean and simple.
“It’s really streamlined, very simple, some handheld [items], some bites, some snacks. It’s really approachable, again, on the food standpoint, but very manageable for us to keep fresh ingredients in-house and have everything go out consistently at the high quality that we expect our team to deliver.” Plus, Drift said, she and her staff have a loophole. “The other thing is, we offer specials every single week,” she said. “So in addition to our regular menu, each week that runs Wednesday through Tuesday we offer at least two to three specials coming out of the kitchen. We usually offer a larger item and then a smaller item just to give variety to those people. We have a really big regular clientele. So we like to give people the choice to switch it up every now and again and not get sick of the regular menu. And then the plan for the regular menu is to switch that every 12 weeks. So we’ll do four seasonal menu changes.”
This winter’s menu items have been inspired by cultures as different from each other as China’s, Thailand’s, Mexico’s, and from the southern U.S. Some of the appetizers include Pork Bao (chewy Chinese dumplings), Crispy Crab Pakora (deep-fried Indian snacks) and a charcuterie plate called Girl Dinner. Main courses include American-style smash burgers, pad thai, and blackened fish with pineapple salsa.
About half the items on the menu either are plant-based or can be modified to be.
“We have a lot of vegan options on the menu,” Drift said. “Not just vegetarian, but full vegan. I feel like that’s a demand. Today, people try to be a little bit more more sound in their decisions and how they eat and source food. It’s definitely on the upswing. There are a lot of non-alcoholic people and a lot of vegan people. We have a permanent section on our cocktail menu that has zero-proof cocktails at all times and we have specials that we rotate every now and again. But I mean, to have 10 to 15 non-alcoholic options that aren’t Coke, Diet Coke and Sprite is a point of pride for us. We take just as much care making those as we do with any of our cocktails.”
Bar manager Krista Fisher said that whether she is designing mocktails or full-octane drinks the goal is to find ingredients that go well together, especially if they are a little surprising, so she can keep customers on their toes. “The special this week is called a Clown Car,” she said. “It has scotch, apricot, raspberry, and orange bitters — a little bit of everything. It’s served in a Collins glass on the rocks.”
“With a little umbrella,” she added. “Everything here is made a little cute.”
“Inspiration comes from everywhere,” Fisher said. “There’s a lot of trial and error. We’ve definitely experimented with flavors where you’re like, ‘Nope, that was weird.’ But pineapple and espresso go together, so that was cool to find out.” The biggest realization she has come to recently is the importance of picking a great name for each drink. “The name attracts them,” she said. “The flavor makes them stay.”
Local Street Eats Where: 112 W. Pearl St., Nashua, 402-4435, local-streeteats.com Hours: Tuesday through Thursday from 4 to 9 p.m., and Friday and Saturday from 4 to 11 p.m. Make reservations through the restaurant’s website.
There is something you need to understand about chocolate-covered strawberries.
They are ephemeral. They need to be eaten immediately.
They are also very romantic, so it’s tempting to hold on to them, and savor the gesture, but Paige Quish says don’t do it. Quish is the manager of Van Otis Chocolates in Manchester, and she knows and understands chocolate-covered strawberries on a bone-deep, almost spiritual level.
Van Otis goes through a lot of strawberries around Valentine’s Day. “Hundreds of pounds of strawberries,” Quish said. “Hundreds. Of. Pounds. Every pound is about nine to 12 berries, so I mean we’re talking a lot of strawberries.”
She said the clock starts ticking as soon as a berry is coated with chocolate.
“Freshness is definitely really important,” she said. “Chocolate-covered strawberries are best enjoyed within 24 hours. Some people don’t know that, but chocolate is dry, believe it or not — there’s no water involved with it — and then once it touches any kind of strawberry or fruit that has a watery base with a lot of moisture to it, the shelf life immediately starts to expire on it.” That’s why a two-day-old chocolate strawberry in your refrigerator might start looking sad and tired, she said. The fruit dries quickly in contact with the chocolate, and shrinks, so its chocolate coat doesn’t fit it anymore and it looks dejected.
There are many chocolate-giving holidays throughout the year, Quish said, but Valentine’s Day is one of the biggest.
“We do a lot of molding for our Christmas season and Easter,” she said, “you know, the bunnies and all that. But dipped fruit specifically? I’d say that strawberries are definitely the top seller for Valentine’s.”
A large portion of everything Van Otis makes is covered with chocolate.
Hand-painted Lovestruck Van Oreos at Van Otis. Photo by John Fladd.
“We cover almost everything in chocolate,” Quish said. “Anything that you see that has the chocolate coating on it goes through our enrobing system. All of our creams, our jellies — anything that you see like that — our liquor cordials, those are all fully enrobed. Orange peels and dipped cherries, just about everything.” All the chocolate enrobing is done on-site, she said. “A lot of people refer to it like the I Love Lucy episode, when they’re putting stuff on [the conveyer belt], but it’s basically a chocolate waterfall. There’s one part of the machine that coats the bottom of everything, and then there’s the top part that gets fully drenched and enrobed, and then it goes through the drying tunnel.”
One trend that began several years ago and is still gaining momentum, Quish said, is covering something salty with chocolate, for a salty/sweet contrast.
Chocolate-covered pretzels and potato chips have become increasingly popular.
“We try to think outside the box of things that would be delicious in chocolate,” she said. Chocolate-covered bacon has become a go-to gift for men. “Super Bowl, Father’s Day — those things are usually really popular for the chocolate-covered bacon.”
A good rule of thumb, she said, is that if something is delicious on its own, it will probably be even better coated in chocolate. “We have our Oreos. We take those and we’ll enrobe them, and animal crackers are something new that we started last year. We have gummy worms and gummy bears [that we cover with chocolate].”
Surprisingly, Quish said, chewy gummy candies actually hold onto a chocolate coating pretty well. It seems as if it would crumble and fall off while it’s being eaten, but she said that’s not the case.
“As soon as that chocolate dries and sets, it’s on there,” she said. “It’s fully coated. And it’s so good! We have people who say they’ve tried chocolate-covered gummy bears elsewhere and they’re obsessed with ours. They always say that it doesn’t compare. We have a really skilled production team so they definitely have their magic that they apply to all the goodies. Swedish Fish is another one of them.”
Jeffrey Bart’s family has owned and run the Granite State Candy Shoppes, which has shops in Concord and Manchester, for almost 100 years. He said the most popular candy his stores sell is also one of the simplest.
“Our most popular item that we make and sell are dark chocolate nonpareils,” he said. “Some people might call them snow caps; it’s a small round of chocolate with white nonpareil seeds on them.” But after that, he said, customers will go for anything coated in chocolate.
“Peanut butter cups,” Bart said. “We make a lot of peanut butter cups. And our third is our butter crunch — a toffee dipped in chocolate and then sprinkled with roasted chopped nuts, almonds. They are very, very popular. We make those constantly, all the time.”
He said that his staff too, struggles to keep up with the demand for chocolate-covered strawberries at this time of the year.
“People still come to us and they want to buy a traditional heart-shaped box with assorted chocolates, but we advise ordering strawberries in advance if at all possible. We make them available on the 13th and the 14th, only. We [make] a huge variety of different berries. We make straight-dipped [berries] in dark, milk, and white chocolate. And then we have a huge array of what we call “Fancy Dipped Berries”; they’re dipped in chocolate, and then we’ll roll them in decoratifs, and then we’ll hand decorate them with chocolate drizzle and do another large assortment of other types of fancy decorations for the berries, too.”
Bart, too, advises customers not to wait too long to consume the berries.
“It’s best if you can consume them within 24 hours,” he said. “If you’re going to keep them for a little bit, we recommend refrigerating them, but when you want to enjoy them we recommend taking them out and letting them sit on the counter or sit out for a short period of time — 20 minutes, a half an hour, maybe an hour — so they warm up a little bit, and they’ll taste better that way.”
Another classic and popular item at Granite State Candy are chocolate-covered cherries.
“We use cordial cherries,” Bart said. “It’s a whole cherry with a liquid center. We have those available in milk and dark chocolate.” But some of the treats are less traditional. “We sell a lot of chocolate-dipped Twinkies,” he said. “That’s a fun, crazy little item that we do that is very popular. We’ve been doing it for a number of years now, so that’s a great item. We also coat orange peel, ginger — candied ginger — in chocolate, and that’s very popular. And another unique … item is something called the Jordan Cracker. It’s an oblong-shaped baked, sugarless cracker that we coat in chocolate and people love them.”
Jim Pasquill is the store manager for Sweetz & More in the Mall of New Hampshire in Manchester. He says there is a strong, consistent demand for any type of gummy candy covered in chocolate.
“Anything like Haribo gummy bears, even something like Juju cinnamon bears, we have those covered in chocolate,” he said. “The chocolate-covered cinnamon bears don’t always sell as well. I think it might be because the mixture of chocolate and cinnamon isn’t a favorite mix. However, we pretty much have the same brands on our theater box wall. It’s called Money Bears. It’s the same thing. It’s just packaged differently and it’s cheaper. And that also tends to be as hot as the chocolate-covered gummy bears on our pouch wall. It’s the same thing. Customers keep on coming in here asking us if we have them. Unfortunately, we don’t because they sell too fast.”
Pasquill said it is hard to keep this type of candy in stock.
“We try to get at least get 16 to 24 pouches in at a time,” he said, “because that can usually only last us a couple days — maybe a week. It’s a steady pace on the milk chocolate covered gummy bears but we do try and make sure we have a large quantity on our shelves.” He said he tries to keep just enough in stock, so that there is a constant turnover and the candy stays fresh.
Pasquill himself doesn’t necessarily go for outrageous combinations of chocolate and candies. “Me, I’m like a traditional guy,” he said. “I like nuts — cashews, almonds, peanuts — something with a solid crunch. I’m not really for the crazy Swedish fish, the gummy bears, but I can see why it sells. Now, I won’t necessarily say that they are healthy, but we do have chocolate-covered raisins, and we do have chocolate-covered cranberries. That can be somewhat healthy because we do have dark chocolate, and I know dark chocolate is more healthy than milk.”
Chocolate-covered Doritos at The Chocolate Moose. Photo by John Fladd.
In Salem, a lot of The Chocolate Moose’s customers would agree with Pasquill’s preference for chocolate-covered nuts. According to owner Nancy Cornell, “what we have to make every day is the turtles.” She pointed to a long display case filled with different varieties of turtles, in all sizes, and with all different types of nuts. “This whole line all the way down is all turtles. We have mini turtles, in milk and dark chocolate, pecans and cashews, and then the larger ones, the same thing, and then there’s almonds, macadamia, and then there are Oreo turtles. The Oreo turtles have no nuts in them.”
Chocolate-covered candy apples are another big seller for Cornell.
“Today,” she said, “we’ve been selling apples. It’s mid-morning and we’ve only got one left. But at Christmas we usually start at 2:30 in the morning making the candy apples. Even now, my husband is up at 3 o’clock at night and he does apples galore. Another thing that’s popular is our peanut butter cups. People come from Boston and so on to come up and get our peanut butter cups.”
Cornell said fruit works really well dipped in chocolate. “This” she said, pointing, “is candied orange peel, and I have grapefruit peels too, but we’re sold out of them right now. To get that bitter taste away, you have to boil them three or four times, then dry them out for days, with sugar. And then we dip them. Same with the ginger. Ginger is hot, so when you put it in chocolate it doesn’t quite have that hotness to it. Orange peels, we mostly cover in dark [chocolate]; that seems to be what most people want. And we have dried apricots, too.”
She said that an old-fashioned favorite has been coming back into fashion recently. “Marzipan went through a period of time where people didn’t want it,” Cornell said, “and I would have it, and then I’d have to throw it away. But now it’s back again. People go in cycles, and they actually ask for it now.”
Some things never go out of style, though. “Oreos dipped in chocolate and graham crackers dipped are big,” she said. “They’ve been that way for years.I don’t think that’s ever going to change.”
DIY a chocolate coating
Buying chocolate-covered delicious things is an excellent way to express your affection, but there is always the homemade approach. Coating snacks in chocolate yourself (a) might impress the type of person that is impressed by this sort of thing, and (b) allows for a level of customization.
Making a chocolate-covered snack isn’t complicated — at least in theory. You only need two ingredients: a snack and some chocolate. It’s the details that can get a little finicky, such as what type of chocolate you use.
Richard Tango-Lowy is a master chocolatier and the owner of Dancing Lion Chocolate in Manchester. He said it’s not enough that a chocolate is delicious; if you’re going to coat something with it, you need to read the label.
“There are a lot of chocolates,” he said, “especially chocolate chips, that have ingredients that don’t lend themselves to [coating things]. You’re looking for three ingredients: cocoa solids, cocoa butter and sugar. Plus milk powder if it’s a milk chocolate.”
He said to stay away from anything labeled as “chocolate-style baking chips.”
Laura Wither, the chocolate maker for Loon Chocolate in Manchester, agrees. “There are additives in many [chocolates] that might or might not help you coat things — palm oil, and coconut oil, and things like that,” she said. She pointed out that Loon Chocolate doesn’t use them.
She also pointed out that it helps to be thoughtful about what kind of snack you’re covering with chocolate.
“I would say that you want to look for complementary flavors,” she said. “For example, we have a chocolate that leans towards the fruity side and I love it with pineapple. Contrasting can also be good. A lot of it is just taste testing, which is the fun part of the job here.”
If you want to coat a piece of fruit with chocolate, she said, it has to be patted as dry as possible.
“Chocolate and water are generally not good friends,” she said. “There are some exceptions but for the most part if we were covering fruit it would be dried fruit. I know people do chocolate-dipped strawberries, but generally when you do that, a lot of times, you’re using a coating chocolate.”
One fiddly part of melting chocolate at home is something called tempering. This is a process to make a chocolate shiny and give it a good snap when you break it or bite into it. It doesn’t change the flavor of a chocolate; it is a way of aligning the crystal structure of a batch of chocolate to bring out its best characteristics. On baking competition shows, judges will call out a contestant about how well or poorly tempered their chocolate is.
The accepted procedure that many home confectioners use to temper their chocolate involves manipulating its temperature:
Step 1 – Heat the chocolate in a double boiler, or in your microwave a few seconds at a time, until it reaches a temperature of 115°F.
Step 2 – Remove it from heat, and stir it until the temperature drops to 81°F. Most home chocolate-temperers will hurry the process by stirring unmelted chocolate into it. (I’ve used frozen chocolate to do this and have been reasonably pleased with the results.)
Step 3 – Raise the temperature of the chocolate again, to 92°F.
Step 4 – Start dipping.
If you think this seems like a difficult way to spend a morning, Richard Tango-Lowy agrees with you.
“You’re not going to do it at home unless you know what you’re doing,” he said. “Tempering is just one of those things that’s inherently complicated. You’ll never learn how to temper by watching videos. Most of them are just dead wrong.” To learn to temper chocolate at a professional level, he said, takes years of practice, and specialized techniques. Fortunately, there is a work-around, he said.
“If you don’t know how to temper, use chocolate that you like, one that is already tempered. Melt it extremely gently in the microwave — just mostly melt it, you’ll end up with a reasonably passable temper to put on your strawberries and things.” He advised melting the chocolate, a little at a time, until only a third or so of the chocolate remains solid, then to stir it until the chunks melt away.
Flamin’ Hot (Chocolate) Cheetos. Photo by John Fladd.
Once you have your chocolate melted, and delicious snack food standing by, it’s time to start covering things with chocolate. You can use chopsticks, tweezers or a fork to dip your snack and roll it around to cover it, or use a spoon to gently blanket it with melted chocolate. Coat the snacks, and put them on a piece of parchment paper or a silicone mat to cool and harden. In the photo below, I have coated Flamin’ Hot Cheetos with a 53 percent dark chocolate. I learned the hard way that they are delicious coated in white chocolate but can’t be swished around in it. The white chocolate will turn pink and look like peppermint, which it emphatically is not. I had the best luck laying each Cheeto on the surface of the melted white chocolate, then spooning it over the Cheeto. — John Fladdk trails.
Things to cover with chocolate
Easily made and stored for a week or so: Pretzels — especially peanut butter-filled ones Crystalized ginger Dried blueberries, spooned into clusters Candied orange slices Banana chips Any nuts — perhaps something unusual, like pistachios or shelled sunflower seeds Other candies like licorice bites or gummies Corn chips Spicy snacks — Flamin’ Hot Cheetos work very well Cookies — especially store-bought crunchy ones like Oreos or Vienna fingers Animal crackers Marzipan Espresso beans, especially dusted with lemon or lime zest
Easily made but must be eaten immediately: Strawberries Mango cubes Fresh mint leaves Avocado slices Jalapeno slices Cream cheese and lemon zest, or goat cheese
Having a community conversation was Theatre Kapow’s goal when its season began last fall. This continues with Every Brilliant Thing, a play that will spend a weekend at BNH Stage in Concord, then move to Winnipesaukee Playhouse two weeks later for three final performances.
About a child trying to encourage their mother, hospitalized after a failed suicide attempt, with a list of “brilliant things” that are worth living for, it’s technically a one-person play. However, an in-the-round crowd plays a big role, even for a theater company that’s always strived to bring it close to the action.
“Throughout … the audience is relied on quite heavily to make the story actually happen, to get the character through each scene to the next point,” Director Emma Cahoon said by phone recently. This begins when attendees enter the venue; each gets a card with a numbered “thing” written on it to call out when prompted. Bolder souls can choose bigger roles.
Playwright Duncan McMillan, she continued, tells a story about how depression can be contagious without tools to take it on. His message: People can’t go it alone, they need help. To that end, the National Alliance for Mental Illness, Capital Art Therapy and the Jason R. Flood Memorial Fund are all community partners for the production.
“He tells a story about a person discovering how important it is to talk to other people, in a way that requires the audience to be in conversation with the piece the whole time,” she said. “So the function of the storytelling is proving the narrator’s point [that] I could not get through this on my own … I had to turn to other people.”
Though the material can be dark, it radiates hope with happy thoughts of “ice cream, water fights, and knowing someone well enough to get them to check your teeth for broccoli.” There’s also an improv comedy mood; an exchange between the main actor and a volunteer co-star could go anywhere, after all.
In a Jan. 28 blog post, Eric Gutterson, a longtime patron who’s served as test audience for rehearsals, said the play evokes “laughter, sadness, joy, longing, and a sense of togetherness,” adding that it “doesn’t shy away from being real. There are dark tones, but you come up for air early and often with frequent moments of comic relief.”
Matt Cahoon co-founded Theatre Kapow with his wife Carey; Emma is their daughter and this is her second directing role. Matt, who’s also Academic Dean and Theatre Director at the New Hampton School, has taught Every Brilliant Thing to his students. He called the feelings Gutterson described in line with his company’s mission.
“Sometimes contemporary theater can feel like you’re taking your medicine, because you’re having to have these difficult thoughts,” he said by phone. “But there’s also a lot of sugar that goes with that medicine.”
The decision to make conversation a focus of their season was deliberate, in anticipation of a contentious election and its aftermath. Matt thinks Every Brilliant Thing transcends that.
“In a polarized and often isolating world, the play’s format… emphasizes shared vulnerability and collective healing,” he wrote on their website.
“There’s a stripped down, base human aspect to all of us,” he continued in conversation. “With the audience for this show, we’re not Republicans and Democrats, we’re not even men and women or old and young. We’re just humans in the space together … here’s an entry point for every single person who lives and breathes on this planet into this play.”
Though she was 6 when her parents founded the company, Emma Cahoon wasn’t always certain that it was her destiny. During her rebellious middle school years she even planned on being a nurse. Last May, however, she graduated from BU with a BFA in Theatre Arts. She’s in it for the long haul now, and comfortable with that knowledge.
“Everything I said I was going to do that wasn’t theater was, in some ways, theatrical,” she said. “I never imagined myself not in a caretaking or community-based position, and when I got over that period of time, I was like, ‘Yeah, actually, this is what I wanted to do.’ Then I went to school for it, and here we are.”
Every Brilliant Thing
At BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord Friday, Feb. 7, and Saturday, Feb. 8, 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Feb. 9, 2 p.m.
At Winnipesaukee Playhouse, 33 Footlight Circle, Meredith Friday, Feb. 21, and Saturday, Feb. 22, 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Feb. 23, 2 p.m.
Tickets: $25 and up at tkapow.com
Starring Peter Josephson on Feb. 7, Feb. 9, Feb. 22, Carey Cahoon on Feb. 8, Feb. 21, Feb. 23.
Content Transparency: Verbal descriptions of depression, self-harm, suicide and suicidal ideations. There will be some warm and inclusive audience participation.
Featured photo: Emma Cahoon. Photo by Sarah Coleman.
John Skevington was named the new CEO of Catholic Medical Center in Manchester, which as of Feb. 1 is a part of HCA Healthcare, according to an HCA release. Skevington most recently served as interim CEO of Portsmouth Regional Hospital and was previously CEO at Parkland Medical Center, both HCA Healthcare facilities, the release said. Previous CEO Alex Walker will be the executive director of the new nonprofit Catholic Health Care Foundation of Greater Manchester, according to a Jan. 29 story from the Union Leader.
Oscar 2026
The New Hampshire Film Festival, slated for Oct. 16 through Oct. 19 in Portsmouth, will serve as an Academy Award qualifying festival for films in the three short film categories, according to a festival press release. The festival is now taking submissions for the 2025 festival including those Oscar hopefuls in the live action shorts, animated shorts and documentary shots categories, the release said. See nhfilmfestival.coml.
Re-entry program
The New Hampshire departments of Corrections and Health and Human Services have launched two new programs aimed at helping adults and youth prepare for discharge from correctional facilities, according to a DHHS press release. The programs — the Community Re-Entry program and the Youth Re-Entry Program — were both launched on Jan. 1 and seek to help participants “be successful in their return to community settings and reduce recidivism related to unmet health care needs,” the release said. The adult program will “provide eligible adult individuals with severe and persistent mental illness and substance use disorders a targeted set of health care and peer services 45 days prior to release,” the release said. The youth program “provides a tailored service package to Medicaid-eligible youth up to age 21 and former foster youth up to age 26,” the release said.
Break out the flannel
Nashua will host its first ever GenXpo on Sunday, March 2, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Nashua Center for the Arts, according to a press release from the mayor’s office. This free event is geared at “Gen Xers, Baby Boomers and better” and will include “a variety of entertainment and leisure companies, businesses and service providers of all kinds, who have offerings targeted towards the needs and interests of those age 50 and better. Financial planners, travel agencies, local activities, home improvement, adult learning, health care and fitness, insurance, senior life and housing, etc.,” the release said. Vendors and sports can sign up until Feb. 14 by emailing [email protected].
The Center for the Arts will hold its monthly First Friday Gallery Stroll on Friday, Feb. 7, from 5 to 7 p.m, showcasing artwork at five locations in New London. See cfanh.org.
Ice has been declared “in” and the 46th annual Great Meredith Rotary Fishing Derby is on for Saturday, Feb. 8, and Sunday, Feb. 9, on the lake near Hesky Park in Meredith, with a $15,000 prize for the winning fish. There will be a kids’ activity tent with contests, snacks and a free ice fishing clinic. Go to icefishingnh.com for tickets, derby rules and registration.
N.H. Poetry Out Loud competition announced the schedule for its upcoming semi-finals: Tuesday, Feb. 11, at 6 p.m. at New England College in Henniker; Thursday, Feb. 13, at 6 p.m. at Plymouth State University, and Tuesday, Feb. 18, at 6 p.m. at the Rochester Opera House. Now in its 20th year, the competition features high school-age students reciting poems, according to a press release. See nharts.dncr.nh.gov/programs/poetry-out-loud.
The NH Audubon’s 38th Annual Backyard Winter Bird Survey is Saturday, Feb. 8, and Sunday, Feb. 9. Go to nhaudubon.org to learn how to help produce a snapshot of the state of birds in New Hampshire by birdwatching from your backyard. For more on the event, see the story on page 11 in the Jan. 30 issue of the paper; find the digital issue at hippopress.com.
The 2025 Special Olympics Penguin Plunge will be held Sunday, Feb. 9, at Hampton Beach. After a costume parade at 11:30 a.m., plungers will begin their run into (and then quickly out of) the Atlantic at noon, followed by a towel, a change into dry clothes and a lunch. For information on supporting the plunge or plunging yourself, see fundraising.sonh.org. A High School Plunge is held Saturday, Feb. 8, and the next big cold-water fund-raising event is the Winni Dip in Laconia on March 8.
