Night of nights: A conversation with playwright Evelyn Jones

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Playwright Evelyn Jones, a former Boston Herald features writer, has lived in Kittery for about 20 years and was working on a novel until she started writing plays in 1996. The novel, she says, now "sits unlamented, gathering dust."

Her play Not on This Night centers on a farm girl, Jacqueline (Juliet Nelson), whose home is commandeered by a German soldier and then an American, on a Christmas Eve in World War II.

The Phoenix sat down at a South Portland keyboard, and Jones at hers in Kittery, to inquire about the play and its upcoming shows, December 21 and 28, at the Seacoast Repertory Theater in Portsmouth.

Phoenix: Is the play based on real incidents? If so, how did you first find out about them?

Jones: Though many people surmised Not on This Night was written in response to more current world conditions, it was maybe 40 years ago that I cut and saved a short article about a Christmas Eve during World War I when enemy soldiers came out of their trenches to sing carols and exchange food and trinkets.

I came across the clipping again in the mid-’90s when the "Christmas truce" was still unfamiliar to most people. I always knew I’d write about it, and by now had become fascinated with the playwriting genre. With the format in place, other things followed. I remember details arranging themselves for me like puzzle pieces. Frankly, how do you get the war into the viewer’s gut? Not the battlefield . . . no, use an intimate setting . . . a normally safe place, like . . . like a kitchen . . . a farmhouse kitchen. Ironic contrasts . . . The battlefield so close, death so close, yet a few chickens outside in the barn. Inside, vulnerable victims of war . . . I’ll make them young, a teenage girl, and she’s alone . . . yes, she’s in danger . . . soldiers sneaking up to her door . . . a German, and an American, enemies bringing the war inside her kitchen. But it will be joyous . . . tears are okay, but it will be heartwarming and make the audience laugh, too. The girl is taking over the story . . . she’s determined there will be no violence, not on this night.

At some point I decided to set it closer to the present. An incident in World War 2, though I’d have to figure how the truce story was tied in. I laid out imaginary troop movements, fearsome weather, a dense forest area . . . and a Christmas Eve battle.

During all this, I thought I’d have a lot of rewriting to be reasonably historically correct.

Anyway, lots of stuff kept happening to my characters and I kept typing, and finally I had a feedback reading in my living room with theater friends. I explained I didn’t want to do all the necessary research if it wasn’t working, but when the reading ended, everyone was sniffling and said of course I had to go ahead.

I spent months with stacks of WW2 history books, dreaming at night about the horrific diaries and photos but the eerie part was finding then — and more since — that almost every detail I’d dreamed up fit actual facts!

Q: What happened to the play after it was reworked?

A: I sent the play off to a few publishers, and some competitions in New York and Hollywood, and I got busy on other plays.

Almost a year later, I got word Not on This Night was a winner in New York City and would be performed in a one-act festival. Later, I heard it was one of the six winners in the Hollywood festival — and the following day I got a contract in the mail from Pioneer Publishing. Like winning a lottery.

I finally got to see the play performed at the Players’ Ring, then at Act One (Hampton) Summer Theater, and Phillips Exeter Academy. After the play won the Seacoast Spotlight on the Arts 2000 Best Play award, the Rogosins read the script and they’ve arranged for two performances at Seacoast Rep on December 21 and 28. I think it’s an ideal stage, and can’t wait to see it.

Q: Why do you think people have given so much acclaim to this play?

A: I think people feel deeply moved and uplifted which, to be honest, makes me very happy. Whenever I’ve gone to see the play I’ve felt a disassociation, until Jacqueline comes on that stage setting the table, singing "Voici Noel," and then I’m in it with the rest of the audience. I suspect that comes from this wow of a cast!

Q: Sometimes writers secretly hope that their writing will change just one life in some specific way. For you, and for this play, how would you like someone’s life to change?

A: I’ll just say that the World War 1 story intrigued me and started me thinking — no, it started me feeling — about war. It’s easy to talk war without experiencing how devastating a death is, beyond the moment and beyond the life taken. But I should mention that feelings about war, and defending one’s country, are so complicated it’s tricky to put labels on anyone.

Not On This Night
Written by Evelyn Jones. With Juliet Nelson, Chris Curtis, and Andy Fling. Performed by Dream on Productions, at Seacoast Repertory Theater, in Portsmouth, Dec. 21 and 28, at 8 p.m. Call (603) 433-4472.

Column: Decorating for the season on a budget

Published in the Current, the American Journal, and the Lakes Region Suburban Weekly

As new homeowners, my wife and I have a sizable challenge this year: Beyond just unpacking the boxes still stacked around the place, we need to make the place festive, but are not exactly flush with cash.

I’ve gone looking around the area to find some nice touches without emptying my wallet, and found that making a house look great is not too hard. With a little careful thought, it won’t take much time to set up, maintain or take down when the season is over.

Outside, we’ve got a few shrubs and a little fence. Local hardware stores and gift shops stock holiday lights in wide varieties, with anything from simple white bulbs to sparkling colors, and even lighted figures like cows, moose and Santa Claus.

Choose ones you like – make sure to get outdoor cords and bulbs – and for a few bucks a strand, you can light up the season. There’s no need to go overboard (though some love to, buying thousands of lights and footing large electrical bills through December). Just a few touches, near the entrance to your yard or driveway, and again near the door, are enough. Remember not to put lights on the ground, or you’ll have to dig them out when the snow flies!

If lights aren’t your thing, or you want to spruce the yard up a bit, head to a farm market. Most close in the fall, after summer’s bounty has ended, but reopen in late November with wreaths, greenery and other festive items. As with lights, there are wide varieties, from traditional evergreen wreaths to painted pine-cone ones. Many places also have garlands, perfect for draping along the top of a fence or hanging around a doorway. Other arrangements often include red berries and sticks in simple, elegant designs.

All of these items can go outside and look beautiful when first installed, as well as with a dusting of snow. Inside, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the possibilities.

Sure, it’s nice to have something in every room, but try to keep a space that isn’t totally taken over by the holiday, as a place you can get away from stresses of the season.

Some folks like candles in each window, though fire departments often worry about them igniting curtains or other window dressings. For safer alternatives that are cheaper over the long run, buy plastic candles that take Christmas-tree replacement light bulbs.

They plug into a regular electrical outlet and stay cool near draperies. There are also electric menorahs for celebrating Hanukkah.

The cheapest way to get pretty decorations is to keep around last year’s greeting cards. Hang a few around early in the season to get in the mood – attaching them to a few simple ribbons can be nice – and rotate them as you get this year’s cards.

Another cheap way to get in the holiday mood is to have a fire, if you’re lucky enough to have a fireplace. Just make sure your chimney is clean and clear, and check the flue for leaks to keep smoke out of your home.

Many people get Christmas trees, and there are several Christmas tree farms in the area, as well groups’ sales. Those sales can also be good places to get
greenery and wreaths for both inside and outside.

Decorating a tree doesn’t have to be a huge production. A few lights, some colorful ornaments – your kids or grandkids will probably make some in school – and you’re all set.

Don’t forget the greeneries, which can look wonderful sitting on windowsills or over doorways, to bring the holiday spirit all over your home. Keep the greens misted from time to time to prolong their life, and always make sure your tree has plenty of water.

Revelry after the feast: Nuncrackers full of holiday cheer

Published in the Portland Phoenix

When the big meal’s over, and some relatives have even broken into the leftovers, in sets Thanksgiving’s lethargy. After a few hours of snoozing and reclining, usually someone will pipe up, "We need to go for a walk." But why fight the urge to kick back before the holiday madness really begins?

Get out of the house, relax, and get a big belly laugh from Nuncrackers, the Nunsense Christmas musical, now on at the Lyric Music Theater, "just off Broadway" in South Portland.

You don’t need a Catholic upbringing to get a laugh out of these nutty nuns, putting on a Christmas special for the local public-access cable channel from the basement of Mt. St. Helen’s church, Hoboken. (If you went to Catholic school, though, you’ll recognize the Reverend Mother’s training clicker, now used more widely to train dogs in obedience classes, and a few other gems.)

The studio — which doubles as a nuclear fallout shelter (where else would you rather be during the Apocalypse than in a church basement with cheery nuns?) — was paid for when one of these worldly nuns, Sister Mary Paul (Elisha Walls) won the Publisher’s Clearinghouse sweepstakes.

These and other tidbits tear away some of the burqa-like fabric that literally hides these women of the cloth from the world, showing us the reality of life behind the veil: While restricted and carefully supervised, there’s a lot of freedom to be had.

At least so says Sister Robert Anne, a hilariously troublesome nun wonderfully played by Melissa Bornmann. She plays tricks on poor Sister Mary Paul, leading to big laughs and some great variations on traditional Christmas carols. There’s even a sing-along to get you really in the mood and quite convinced that Thanksgiving is a blip on the holiday radar screen.

The nuns aren’t the only folks on stage. Several of the students at Mt. St. Helen’s school also appear, and are wonderful performers with amazing costumes. They gamely follow the lead of the nuns, and have a blast.

Susan Nappi’s choreography is wonderful — have you ever seen nuns do a Rockettes-style kickline? She maintains an air of comedy throughout, and manages to design a chase of the dueling Sugar Plum Fairies that shows off the dance skills of Patricia H. Davis (as the Reverend Mother) and mocks the lack of same by Joshua Chard (as Father Virgil Manly Trott).

Though Chard himself appears at times to be trying overly hard in this not-at-all-serious play, he carried off a fruitcake-making lesson very well, adding just enough rum to his throat and choosing excellent plastic fruits as ingredients — because "no one will ever know the difference."

But more than just a set of silly anecdotes, this is a musical. The band and performers span a wide range of churchly song styles, from holiday carols to a rousing gospel number sung entirely by white folks. (It’s nearly enough to take your mind off the cranberry sauce you left on the counter.)

There are also a couple of nunly variations on modern songs, including a convent-recruiting song adapted from a number usually performed by the Village People, and a look at what pious, fun-loving nuns really want for Christmas. (Hint: They can’t have it.)

The show gets at the humanity of nuns, and perhaps even pleases real nuns with its humor and candor about life in the convent.

They spread a little holiday cheer with Secret Santa gifts to the audience, including a very handy set of stick-on 10 Commandments. They’re most useful because, Sister Mary Paul points out, "you can peel off the ones you don’t like."

Even puppets get into the act: Sister Mary Annette, a Muppet lookalike, has the secret to why people who decorate Christmas trees put an angel on top. Together with a pair of reindeer sock puppets, she sings out what really happens at the North Pole each year as Christmas approaches.

Yet, at the end of it all, these nuns — for all their wishes of worldliness — know how to do the right thing. They don’t fall prey to their own threats to the children — "be good or Santa won’t come" — but instead do feel the love that should pervade the season, and the sense of gratefulness and compassion Christmas should be about.

Just the thing to remind you it’s time for a snack. Isn’t there some turkey in the fridge?

Nuncrackers
Written by Dan Googin. Directed by Charles Grindle. With Patricia H. Davis, Melissa Bornmann, Elisha Walls, and Leslie Chadbourne. At Lyric Music Theater, in South Portland, through Dec. 7. Call (207) 799-1421.

Safe at home? You might be better off in Kabul

Published in the Portland Phoenix

In case there’s any doubt, it’s still not safe to travel to Kabul. In its most recent official travel warning about Afghanistan (dated July 28, 2003), the US State Department declares, apparently without irony, that "the ability of Afghan authorities to maintain order and ensure security is limited."

Among the threats to the personal security of American travelers are "remnants of the former Taliban regime and the terrorist Al-Qaida network," as well as "US-led military operations." Of further concern to Americans heading there is that the US embassy in Kabul cannot issue replacement passports. Translation: If your identity gets lost in Afghanistan, you better find it before trying to get home.

Though Afghans are allowed on the streets of their capital without a curfew, American diplomats aren’t. Helpfully, then, the State Department Web site says Americans who insist upon traveling to Afghanistan should "register with" the embassy.

With these types of pronouncements coming from the most powerful nation in the world, whose "force projection" has sent troops throughout Afghanistan, stretching from remote fire bases in the northeast of the country to villages in the southwest, it is easy to want to remain a homebody.

But turn the page on the State Department’s Web site and there it is, in cold, black pixels: "We expect Al-Qaida will strive for new attacks that will be more devastating than the September 11 attack, possibly involving nonconventional weapons such as chemical or biological agents. We also cannot rule out the potential for Al-Qaida to attempt a second catastrophic attack within the US."

We’re really no safer here than anywhere.

Kabul, however, may never be among the safest places, current events notwithstanding. Founded on the banks of the Kabul River — now just a trickle after years of drought — the city has been a crossroads of cultures and a crucible of conflicts for thousands of years.

Tony Kushner wrote Homebody as a monologue by request and later turned it into the first act of the frighteningly prescient play Homebody/Kabul, in which the Homebody goes to Kabul, is reported dead, and her husband and daughter arrive to search for her in ruins left by the Taliban and the 1998 US missile attacks on the country. (Yes, Clinton fans, he pulled the trigger, too.)

This performance, directed by Richard O’Brien and executed by Jane Bergeron, is just the monologue section, nearly an hour of complex language and a sweeping history of Afghan history. Just the thing our president and Congress should have had before getting involved in entangling alliances with peacemakers and warlords alike.

O’Brien is something of a one-act specialist, and has chosen the shorter version here. The original full play Homebody/Kabul took about four hours to perform, though it’s still being revised.

We can thank the director for his compassion, given the seats in the PSC Studio Theater. Or perhaps it’s all part of the experience. As O’Brien observes, Kushner uses language to throw off both actor and audience in this monologue. Not only is his script thin on punctuation and full of complex sentence structure, but the vocabulary required is immense. We are meant to be off-balance, and the chairs help.

In a simple but ornate set reflecting the nature of the play’s words and its ideas, Bergeron sits in a 19th-century armchair with a traveling overcoat slung over the side. She has all the actors’ decks stacked against her: A solo monologue, without any lighting or sound cues, delivered from a sitting position, in very complex language designed to lose both actor and audience in discomfort and confusion. And Bergeron pulls off a masterful performance.

Bergeron took the role because "I didn’t know if I could" handle it, she said, after a recent performance. She has learned that she can.

Her intonation and pacing, facial expressions, head motions, and body language all combine to convey meaning and feeling in a play that could easily lack both. Her character even admits — as if to rub it in the actor’s face — that she is hard to listen to and speaks "elliptically."

She has chosen one book, a 1965 travel guide to Kabul, as her armchair ticket to another world. The play is set in 1998, just after the American missile strikes. The Homebody revisits the history of Kabul, from its legendary founding by Cain himself — he may yet be buried within the city — to the present. The play moves from "the serene beauty of the valleys of the Kabul River" still remembered in the songs of nomadic peoples who traveled through there thousands of years ago, to the shell-shocked and war-torn country of 1998, before it became even more shell-shocked and war-torn.

The play is filled with Kushner’s cutting lines, at once funny and painful, insightful and ironic. It also retains his sparks of hope, which are somehow as impossible to doubt as they are unlikely to ignite.

His voice sings through Bergeron’s own, warning and instructing simultaneously, and drawing to an irretrievable "what if" line, one the State Department, with only four or five fluent Arabic speakers (so how many speak Pashto?) amid thousands of diplomats, would do well to heed: "The truth which does not understand corrupts."

Homebody
Written by Tony Kushner. Directed by Richard O’Brien. Performed by Jane Bergeron. At the Human Theater Company at Portland Stage Studio Theater, through Nov. 23. Call (207) 774-0465.

BACKSTAGE

• A group of local kids is doing a play about ego and nakedness at the Theater Project. Ending a four-week workshop and production class, fourth- through eighth-graders have reworked The Emperor’s New Clothes into a mime performance with live, improvised jazz music by Brad Terry. Check out what they’re all up to, November 21 through 23, by calling (207) 729-8584.

• And then there are the adults getting not-quite-naked to help local teens. The Nutcracker Burlesque will be at the Portland Stage Studio Theater December 18 through 21 to benefit . . . the Preble Street Teen Center? It’s true. Infidelity at a corporate holiday party leads a grown-up Clara downtown into opium dens and more. Tchaikovsky’s score has been rearranged "into a hot and sultry modern composition" with a "quirky hip-hop style" to the choreography. All of which means we can’t wait to see the Nut-cracking Prince himself, probably sponsored by Video Expo.

In the beginning: The One Ring comes to the Players' Ring

Published in the Portland Phoenix

Reading The Hobbit is a great way to get set for re-watching the first two Lord of the Rings movies, in time for the third and final installment, due out next month. Better yet, see The Hobbit performed live on a stage. Without the digital imagery and special effects, pared down to its basic elements of storytelling, it illuminates clearly the foundations for J.R.R. Tolkien’s subsequent tales.

The Players’ Ring cast begins the Tolkien-authorized adaptation with a pretentious, presumptuous Gandalf (Tim Robinson) arriving at the home of Bilbo Baggins (Bernie Tato). Bilbo has no idea who the wizard is, but recognizes the name and remembers old stories he was once told.

Bilbo, a shrinking violet who has not yet become the fierce warrior or knowing sage of the later volumes, is just a taste of how Tolkien’s characters develop. Gandalf isn’t yet the friendly face he will become, and dwarves are more whining and hungry than noble and strong. Even the elves — who appear here as captors and dungeonmasters — are bitter and mean, protecting their turf from interlopers.

The extraordinary times and alliances brought by the reappearance of the One Ring have not yet come to pass. Instead, the inhabitants of Middle Earth are as they have been, slightly xenophobic, jealous, nervous and, well, hungry.

Bilbo himself is concerned that "adventures make you late for dinner," as any school-age child has learned when exploring a creekbed or forest path. With the jovial arrival of the dwarves, all played by children who know the value of a good exploratory adventure, appetites grow, both on stage and in the seats.

Bilbo learns, with the audience, that the dwarves are seeking a burglar to help them recover treasure lost when a dragon attacked a dwarf city and ate most of the inhabitants. Gandalf has appointed him to the post, and there’s little the hobbit can do but go along.

Tato plays the wide-eyed hobbit to a T, with the even temper of the halflings, and with the hint of reluctance and homesickness that seems innate to the race. He brightens the show with his delivery of such well written, wry lines as "Adventures are not all Sunday strolls in May sunshine," evoking Winnie-the-Pooh’s innocence and equanimity.

Robinson, as Gandalf, quickly tires of his beard, leaving us with a clean-shaven mage shorn of his symbolic wisdom. His presence on stage varies from the welcome to the interruptive, though that is possibly part of the plan: Even this early in the adventure, he disappears and reappears at unlikely times.

Thorpe Feidt plays Thorin, the leader of the dwarves, but really he seems uncomfortable in another’s skin. Rarely making eye contact with any characters, and blustering his way through his lines, Feidt detracts from the show in small ways that add up. (On the other hand, he created Smaug, the sinister dragon, about whom we will hear more shortly.)

The real joys are the children, who are having fun but keep their focus while on stage. They have asides and ensemble lines that draw big laughs — not just from parents — and generally make merry during what could be a drawn-out journey. The trolls and goblins, with excellent masks, also bring both levity and danger to the trip.

Everyone comes together in the escape from the elf-dungeons to create a true atmosphere of urgency and hurry, with only voices and body language, raising the heart rate of all on-lookers. In particular, Bombur (Dylan Schwartz) appears to have a great time, but reins himself in enough to avoid stepping on the performances of his fellow dwarves.

After the escape, Bilbo meets Gollum (Tana Sirois), a brilliantly costumed and acted writhing character, filled with barely contained eagerness and desire, though not yet fully consumed by sinister greed.

In the final scene, Bilbo and Thorin meet Smaug, the greedy dragon, created by Feidt and (without giving away too much) with a realistic presence and threatening voice that startles and alarms.

We see inklings of the Ring’s power — "it makes me feel funny," Bilbo says — but in all this is a wonderful story that whets the appetite for more.

The Hobbit
Written by J.R.R. Tolkien and Patricia Gray. Directed by Todd Hunter. With Bernie Tato, Tim Robinson, Dylan Schwartz, and Thorpe Feidt. At the Players’ Ring, through Nov. 30. Call (603) 436-8123.