"Two Radio Plays"

March 15, 2020 — I fear this may well be the last live theater performance in New Hampshire for a while, thanks to the coronavirus. The Winnipesaukee Playhouse (the "Winni") in Meredith, New Hampshire, managed to complete the three-day run of Two Radio Plays by Louise Fletcher with sparse audiences.

A greeter met us at the theater entrance and squeezed sanitizer into our hands. We showed our tickets to theater personnel who did not touch them. Programs were in a rack which we were instructed to help ourselves to, and either discard them in a bin on the way out or take them home.

Are these steps really effective, or do they just make theater owners feel good for having done their part, and theater-goers feel safer? Unfortunately, the only really effective means of preventing  disease spread would be to close. Two other New Hamphire theaters have already done that, at least for the spring. In neighboring Massachusetts, the governor's ban on all gatherings of more than 25 people will probably shut down all that state's theaters.

But small audiences did get to enjoy another of the Winni's popular radio shows. The stage is set up like a radio studio with a microphone on the right, foley artist (that's the professional name for sound effects person) with all the sound-producing equipment on the left. In the center and set back back slightly was the control room. Some of the actors enter from stage right and stand at the microphone to read their dialog from a script. Others spoke from behind a glass partition in the control room.

The radio plays are always from forties-era programs, usually of the suspenseful or horror variety, and include commercials for products of the forties. Two shows in one were included in this performance, Sorry Wrong Number and The Hitch-Hiker, both directed by Margaret Lundberg. Michael G. Baker was the foley artist. Gail Ledger as Mrs. Stevenson is convincing as an invalid bedridden and alone in her apartment. Apparently connected to a wrong number, she overhears a plot to murder a woman. With rising anger and frustration, she is unable to get either telephone operators or police to take her warnings seriously. Her anger eventually turns to terror when she reallizes the conversation she overheard describes the location of her own apartment.

In The Hitch-Hiker, Pat Kelly has his turn at the microphone as Ronald Adams who sets out on a cross-country trip from New York to California. He hasn't gone far when he comes across a scruffy hitch-hiker, not the type he'd want for company, and drives on. He sees him again in Pennsylvania. How did he get this far so quickly? Maybe someone else picked him up and dropped him off. But Ronald soon becomes as terrified as Mrs. Stevenson when the hitch-hiker appears on the long and deserted highways across Oklahoma and New Mexico, at the entrance to tunnels and at gas stations. How does he do it? What does he want with Ronald?

You could close your eyes and follow the action, just as you would listening to the radio. There are many other characters, telephone operators, police, a gas station attendant, and a girl hitch-hiker Ronald picks up, but who leaves him when he becomes increasingly unhinged when repeatedly seeing the other hitch-hiker only he can see. Because all but the lead actors have such small roles, you get the impression of a small cast. But we were surprised at the end of the show when fourteen actors came out for curtain call to well-earned applause.

"A Skull in Connemara"

March 1, 2020 — The first day of March was cold and blustery in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, after the second-warmest February on record. I was there for the final performance of A Skull in Connemara by Martin McDonagh at the Players' Ring in the city's historic waterfront.

The Players' Ring is as intimate as a theater can get. In a corner of a 19th Century brick building, the small theater can seat 75 in rows of seats on three sides of the floor-level stage. In playwright McDonagh's typical bleak, dark style, four characters living out their lives in a small Irish village torment one another with suspicion, anger and hurtful comments, at times driving an individual to nearly homicidal rage.

Under Peggi McCarthy's fine direction, Mick Dowd (Roland Goodbody) and Mary Rafferty (Deborah Chick) irritate each other in an evening of conversation and drink. Mary's adult grandson, Mairtin Hanlon (Sven Wiberg) arrives, loud, accusing, impossible to ignore, but not very bright.

We learn Mick's wife died in a car crash seven years ago. Rumors have persisted her death may not have been accidental. Could Mick have had something to do with it? We also learn it's Mick and Mairtin's job to dig up the graves in the small graveyard of the local church every seven years to make room for new burials. Mick's wife, dead seven years, is buried there. Tomorrow is the end of another seven years and they will have to perform their duty once more. See where this is headed?

The theater goes dark temporarily while a small stage crew quickly and expertly converts Mick's living room to a graveyard. They're joined by Mairtin's brother, Thomas (Peter Michaud), a local police officer with visions of making a name for himself by solving once and for all the circumstances surrounding Mick's wife's death, and this is where the evidence might be found. But when her grave is opened, it's empty!

After intermission, the set is restored to Mick's home. On the table are several skulls. Mick and Mairtin, in a drunken frenzy, demolish the skulls with mallets, scattering fragments all over the stage, barely missing the closest members of the audience. Finally, both almost too drunk to stand, Mick hands his car keys to Mairtin to take them on an errand. They both leave, the stage goes dark for several minutes. When the lights come back on, Mick returns alone, his shirt covered in blood. There's a skull on the table that wasn't there before. There's a hole in the top of the skull.

Mick is looking over the devastation when there's a knock on the door and Mary calls to him. This is not what he needs right now, but he lets her in. He attempts to keep his back to her so she can't see the blood, but she spots it. There's another knock. Who could this be? What happened to Mairtin? Whose skull is that? What if Officer Thomas shows up? The audience gasps when tumbling actors, in an outburst of violence, almost collide with patrons in the first rows at stage level.

This is the fourth play I've seen at this charmingly confined, rustic theater surrounded by brick walls. The small space presents unique production challenges, but in each show I've attended, producers, directors and actors have met the challenge and put on plays as good as any you'll see in much larger venues. I hope to return again soon.