In ‘Northside Hollow,’ deep thoughts about mortality
When longtime Harbor Stage Company partners Jonathan Fielding and Brenda Withers decided to write a play together nine years ago, they were thinking of a fantasy. “Imagine being trapped in a room with someone, not knowing when you would get out, and worrying about dying,” Withers says. And then the pandemic happened. “Northside Hollow” premiered at their Wellfleet theater in 2015, “but since then, we have all, as individuals and as a nation, been going through so many reckonings, the themes of the play took on more urgency.”
Their play is now being remounted with its original cast members — Robert Kropf and Alex Pollock — in the Black Box at the Boston Center for the Arts, Jan 11-20. The play opens in the dark, with rumbling and static from a radio. When the sound stops, a man discovers he is trapped in an apparent mine tunnel collapse. When a first responder arrives to rescue him but ends up trapped too, the play becomes, in Withers’s description, “an eerie, contemplative conversation about mortality and meaning between two guys.”
Withers says she and Fielding have similar senses of humor — she describes her work as “funny plays about serious things” — but very different approaches to writing. Although she broke out with “Matt and Ben,” her twohander co-written with Mindy Kaling, her more recent plays include “The Ding Dongs,” about a couple who park themselves in someone else’s home (produced last year at Gloucester Stage); “Off Peak,” about an older couple who rekindle a romance on a stalled train (Great Barrington Public Theater); and “Westminster,” about the ways in which the gift of a rescue dog brings up issues of race, class, and good breeding (premiering in Florida in March). For his part, Fielding, while focused primarily on acting, has written the two-hander “The Ballad of Bobby Botswain” (Harbor Stage) about another pair of mismatched partners. While they came at the development of the play from different angles, what they agreed on was that “Northside Hollow” should immediately create a disorienting atmosphere.
“From the beginning, Jonathan wanted to experiment with what it would be like to have the actors lit by audience members wearing headlamps,” she says.
“Actors onstage are always aware of being watched, and judged,” Withers says. “But we hand over control of the lighting to just a half-dozen audience members [who can purchase a ticket in the ‘Headlamp Zone’]. While the people with the headlamps usually keep them focused on the actors, there are occasions where the focus wanders, which only adds to the tension.”
“Northside Hollow” was written for Kropf and Pollock, and Withers says she is eager to see how their performances have deepened since they first stepped into the roles nearly nine years ago.
“Bob and Alex have a wonderful chemistry, and this play lets us show their vulnerability,” she says. “We were happy to have theater companies in Florida and Texas mount productions. They were not what we expected, and their audiences saw different messages, which is always fascinating. We have gone into the script to make some slight adjustments, but we feel the themes of mercy and redemption remain strong.”
Food for the soul in ‘Lunch Bunch’
When a group of co-workers gather as a highly curated “Lunch Bunch,” expectations are high. An unimaginative mixed-nut butter on moldy pita is guaranteed to get you booted, while an arugula pear salad with mint can make you a hero.
Sarah Einspanier’s play, which runs at Apollinaire Theatre Company in Chelsea through Jan. 21, lasts the length of a relaxed lunch hour, but director Danielle Fauteux Jacques says it fits the company’s quirky aesthetic. Although the set-up is simple — with seven co-workers taking turns making lunches each weekday for the group — Einspanier’s dark comedy weaves in the pressure and the disappointments these employees endure as family-court public defenders.
“Food is a means of escape,” says Paola Ferrer, who counts “Lunch Bunch” as her 15th production with Apollinaire while working a day job as an attorney.
“I spent six years as the chief of staff in the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families,” she says, “so while I wasn’t involved in day-to-day litigation, I was in the thick of all the challenges our clients experienced, including allegations of neglect, including nutritional neglect.”
The challenge of burnout among overworked and underpaid public defenders may have encouraged some creative stress relievers, but Ferrer says Einspanier’s use of food is comic and clever.
“The planning that goes into these meals is ridiculous,” she says. “But the act of preparing food — using ‘bougie’ ingredients like jackfruit or accommodating a fad like Whole30 — requires attention and concentration and gives these people a sense of control when everything else seems to be falling apart.”
Much of the play’s humor comes from the competition among the lawyers to create the most outrageous combinations of flavors, a drive Ferrer says rings true.
“Lawyers are competitive by nature,” she says with a laugh, “across all aspects of law,” but it’s the fast-paced dialogue that she says makes these characters appealing.
“They each have their idiosyncrasies and insecurities,” she says, “combined with their desire to be part of a club that provides them with the positive reinforcement they need.”
The escalating obsession with the perfect week of lunches, she says, “balances out the things that are so painful. When you take on this kind of work, it’s because you want to do the right thing.”
The fun of “Lunch Bunch,” Ferrer says, is how Einspanier uses food to feed the souls of these hard-working public defenders.
“For the characters, food is a wonderful outlet,” she says. “For me, theater replenishes my soul and provides me with a healthy perspective on my day job.”
In keeping with the healthy food mentioned in the script, Apollinaire is partnering with several local chefs (including Dalia Valencia of Kushala Sip), who will provide “tasty treats” after the show, as well as engaging in a conversation around food justice with GreenRoots, the community organization working to improve public health in Chelsea.