pt at large

Martin Grosswendt: Finger pickin' slide guitar specialist

Singers like Martin Grosswendt are rare birds these days. They carry forward the traditions of the "roots version" of The American Songbook. A Grosswendt concert is likely to be filled with difficult-to-master finger picking and slide guitar techniques that went hand in hand with Blues, Country, and Cajun music that percolated from Tennessee to Texas in the early twentieth century - and was sung by colorful, sometimes charismatic characters who roamed from rural lanes to urban juke joints.

Grosswendt has an archival memory and channels the voices of scores of singers who laid down the musical traditions that modern singers still emulate.

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Talk about heavenly music. Martin Grosswendt’s performance at the Notlob Music Concert last Saturday night was a little miracle performed on a stage whose Sunday incarnation is as an altar at the Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church on Powder House Boulevard in Somerville, MA.

Here’s this big guy in a well worn baseball cap, a flannel shirt and jeans sitting on a folding chair in the middle of an unadorned stage and delivering the cleanest finger picking blues you’ll ever hear around here. And when he got down to Louisiana music -mama, look out!

Part of the draw was to listen to him choose from the vast repertoire of roots music he’s been fascinated by for about thirty years. He’s a student of this stuff. He knows the pedigrees of the songs and the life stories of the men who sang them. I’ll bet he could tell a pretty good cultural history of the first half of 20th century America by patching together the hundreds of songs he knows.

He singing voice has a naturalness that fits the songs' emotional cores, with inflections and tone that makes the music so uniquely American. He’s not interested in imitating the voices of the original singers but he sure can play like them, which he did with the six and twelve string guitars that stood in stands on either side of him - and the fiddle that languished in its case till near the end of his one hour set.

Between the vaulted ceiling and the anemic speaker system, occasionally the lyrics and often the singer’s patter between songs were undecipherable… a monumental obstacle to this reviewer straining to hear the background Grosswendt gave before most songs, stories that will go untold here. A blessed exception was the sound emanating from a gooseneck mike aimed right at the sound box Grosswendt’s well-worn guitar.

American roots music spans Blues, Country, Bluegrass, Gospel, Cajun, Zydeco, Tejano, and American Indian. Grosswendt’s selections tonight covered  blues and country from Tennessee to Texas and the Cajun music of southwest Louisiana.

He started the show with “Payday,” a Mississippi John Hurt song from the 1920s and followed that with Josh White’s late 1930s version of “Good Gal.” By this time, the audience sitting in the handsomely curved pews realized they were in for a set of extraordinary musicianship.

You may have heard of Taj Mahal, Dave Van Ronk, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee, NRBQ and Sam and Dave. Well, good ‘ol Martin has been an opening act for all of them.

Grosswendt’s cover of “Savannah Mama” by Blind Willie McTell featured another of his talents: slide guitar. Watching a musician coax waves of sound by sliding a metal tube over a ring or little finger and gliding it up and down the frets of a guitar is a window into the past. African American artists like Blind Willie McTell in the early 1920s were among the first to popularize the technique. That slide technique ranges from stompin’ to steamy. Martin can play ‘em both. Gorgeously.

One of Grosswendt's songs was a Blind Blake song called “Police Dog Blues.”  It was a treat to watch Grosswendt's big fingers flutter around the strings and produce that precise finger style blues picking that prompted David Bromberg to say, "Martin Grosswendt is one of the best fingerpickers I ever heard play..."

Grosswendt played “The Good Times Are Killing Me,” an elegant twelve string bottleneck (slide guitar) original, an elegaic instrumental he composed upon hearing of the death of musician friend Jim Ringer and has since dedicated to roots/blues musicians who’ve gone to the great juke joint in the sky. The bottleneck style is a natural fit in a roadhouse but this tune felt right at home in a church.

Grosswendt finished his set with two songs he said were ‘the kind of music you’ll hear in southwest Louisiana, places like Crowley, Opelousas, and Eunice, Louisiana.” His foot stomped the time as he fiddled songs made famous by Cajun masters Dan and Ed Poullard and Andrew Carriere.  I wish I could tell you the names of those songs but I can tell you they had the piquant flavor of a po’boy sandwich with red sauce. If given an invitation, I’d have jumped up to dance a Cajun Two Step right down the aisle.

Many of the songs he played are on his CD "Call and Response," which seems to be available only at his concerts. No website, no email, no marketing, but plenty of talent.

Grosswendt is a member of The Magnolia Cajun Band, a favorite of Cajun and Zydeco dancers all over New England. You might not be able to hear Grosswendt’s virtuosity amongst Magnolia's two fiddles, guitar, washboard, accordion, bass, and drums but you'll damn well hear the vitality he adds to the group's monthly gigs at the German Club in Pawtucket, RI.

If you ever go down there to dance and listen, you can ask him about that CD.

Fool For Love: Sam Shepard at the New Rep Theater

“Fool For Love” was first produced at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco on February 8, 1983, with Sam Shepard directing and the two lead roles played by Kathy Baker and Ed Harris.  Shepard’s notes for the production state, “This play is to be performed relentlessly without a break.” The New Repertory Theatre follows the dictate to the letter.

FOOL FOR LOVE
Play by Sam Shepard

Directed by: Bridget Kathleen O'Leary. Set, Ada E. Smith. Costumes, Eric Propp. Lights, Christopher Brusberg. Sound, Matt Griffin. Fight direction, Meron Langsner. Presented by New Repertory Theatre.

At: Arsenal Center for the Arts, Watertown, through April 5. Tickets: $25. 617-923-8487, www.newrep.org

Sam Shepard is alive and well in Watertown. He hasn’t been in these parts for quite a spell and The New Repertory Theatre production of "Fool For Love" gives him a pretty good homecoming. Nothing much gets resolved in Shepard’s plays and this is no exception.

Eddie has driven his rig 2480 miles to track down May in some run down motel on the edge of the Mojave Desert. Eddie has a commitment problem, a drinking problem, and has his own version of the truth. May loves/hates Eddie, has had a drinking problem and has her own interpretation of their tangled past. They’ve known each other since they were in high school. They may have the same father.

The Old Man, who sits at the edge of the stage and acts as an invisible Greek Chorus, is the play’s missing link. His revelations and denials are the taproot that explains Eddie and May’s history.  Martin is the hapless man who has come to take May on a first date. He seems to be the only emotionally intact person on the stage.

Stacy Fischer as May is a terrific wild-eyed, damaged, trailer trashy woman. May’s body language, provocative and self protective, practically shouts Shepard’s lines. She’s been abandoned by Eddie before and may be again. Timothy John Smith is a tightly wound Eddie, a cowboy stunt man who understands animals better than he understands women. He’s tied to her in ways he can’t rope down.

Andrew Dufresne as Martin is probably Shepard's way of showing us how far the others are from the norm. He fills that role well. As desperately as May would like a white picket fence life with Martin, she’s just not equipped for a settled life. Joseph Finneral as the Old Man has his own versions of how Eddie and May met and what role he’s played in how they’ve turned out.

Finding one’s identity amidst emotional debris is Shepard territory. When Martin asks Eddie if the stories he says he makes up aren’t lies, Eddie responds,  “No, no. Lying's when you believe it's true. If you already know it's a lie, then it's not lying.”

It’s hard to tell where the truth lies in the play. Like standing in the middle of the desert outside this seedy hotel room, it’s hard to find the path to salvation at its green edges when the wind constantly sweeps it away. That’s just the feeling Shepard wants to evoke.

Just as a rodeo might not be everyone’s idea of good entertainment, neither is a Sam Shepard play. But if you do like Shepard, this production will give you a good ride.

Photo: Christopher Mckenzie

Blackbird: SpeakEasy Stage Company

BLACKBIRD
Play by David Harrower
Directed by: David R. Gammons. Set, Eric Levenson.
Costumes, Gail Astrid Buckley. Lights, Jeff Adelberg. Sound, Cameron Willard.
Presented by: SpeakEasy Stage Company.
At: Boston Center for the Arts Roberts Studio Theatre, through March 21. Tickets: $30-$50. 617-933-8600

Do any of us ever change? Underneath all the plot twists, controversial subject matter, and quirky acting style, that’s the central question SpeakEasy Stage Company’s production of Blackbird at the Calderwood Pavilion seems to ask us.

The sordid details of an illicit affair between an older man and a younger woman are revealed in a pitched battle between the two who meet years after their initial encounter.

Think of the play’s exposition being pieces of a jigsaw puzzle scattered over the floor and slowly assembled from the outside edges in towards the center. After one hundred minutes there are some pieces missing but a powerful image is constructed. What do we learn in the process?

My guess is that one reason the play won the 2007 Olivier Award for best new play is for its bold choice of subject matter, which the audience is asked not to disclose. (Stated on the program: "Tell your friends to come see Blackbird, just don’t tell them how it ends! Thanks for keeping the end a surprise.")  That could also go for a disclosure which drops like a bomb about ten minutes into the play.

Bates Wilder and Marianna Bassham’s performances are gut wrenching. One distraction is that both of them (as Ray and Una) often lapse into mannerisms that appear more like body tics than authentic agitation to show inner turmoil. Words would have been enough. Believe me, the subject matter might cause you to squirm in your seat.

The set is a perfect metaphor for the lives of these two characters. What appears to be a worker’s lunch room is littered with wrappers and empty containers, painted industrial gray that’s peeling from the walls, has a couple of dilapidated gray metal lockers and two chairs. Its harsh fluorescent lighting casts a cold glow upon the audience. It is desolate, messy, and untended.

As Mickey and Sylvia sang long ago, “Love, love is strange, lot of people take it for a game, once you get it, you never wanna quit, after you’ve had it, you’re in an awful fix…” This is especially true for these two characters. Writer David Harrower gets heavy handed from time to time but the subject matter is riveting.

Ray and Una paid a heavy price for what happened between them years ago. In the charged moments of the play’s final scene, we wonder whether either has changed since they met. Has this encounter closed that chapter in their lives or poured salt into emotional wounds that will never heal?

Audiences and critics are divided about whether the play offers us a glimpse into our own psyches. I suppose that depends on how you feel when Ray asks Una, “Does anyone care about you at all?” and how open minded you are about who that ‘anyone’ might be.

Photo: Stratton McCrady

Vendee Globe 13: Rich Wilson Draws A Crowd

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

The hoopla of the previous day had disappeared but ripples of Great American III’s return to Les Sables d”Olonne spread throughout the countryside. Securely tied up to the long pontoon dock in the inner harbor, American flag fluttering in the morning sunshine, the Open 60 monohull lay in peace.

For the better part of the previous 121 days, the racing machine had rattled, rolled, pitched and yawed  28,590.2 miles through the great oceans of the planet. If it could talk, it probably would have asked for a bottle of Advil, a good long shower, and a trip to the body shop. Come to think of it, Great American III’s skipper might have asked for the same things.

It might take Rich Wilson weeks to recover physically, mentally, and emotionally from the epic journey. It wouldn’t start today. By late morning, a rising tide of men, women, and chlldren approached the narrow hipped, white-hulled number 37. After spending his first night sleeping in a bed that didn’t double as a roller coaster, here he was, ready to meet and greet. For some skippers, this is work. For Wilson, it‘s oxygen.

Some spectators stand on the perimeter, hesitant to make contact. They’ve come from Paris, nearby neighborhoods, and everywhere in between. Some shout congratulations and ask for autographs. Tons of them would like a photo with the skipper. Rich obliges with a smile. He chats with people in their native language, answers questions, and shakes more hands than a politician on the eve of an election.

And, according to Rich’s longtime pal Myles Jessel, who lives in France and knows a thing or two about French women, there are “les biz,” the light French kisses on the cheek. After photos, women lean toward Rich, cheek turned ever so slightly. Digital cameras flash, grown women giggle. If it weren’t so damned dangerous and hard, I’d be willing to sail a few thousand miles for such adulation.

What’s the draw, I ask Vendee Globe Race Director Denis Horeau. “Human beings are the heart of the Vendee Globe race. Rich is now a part of the imagination and history of the Vendee Globe. People in France admire these men and women who compete. And they know that Rich speaks from his heart.”

Being handsome doesn’t hurt. “Il est adorable! C’est domage il a une copaine (He’s adorable. It’s a shame he has a girlfriend), ” says one woman awaiting her turn for a photo.

Star quality isn’t worth a piece of flotsam, though, if it isn’t accompanied by character. They know he’s genuine. “I’ll est abordable (roughly translated - accessible, open, warm),” says another. “He is interested, some are not that way, some are very closed.” Others comment on his self-deprecating sense of humor.

Rich visibly lightens up when youngsters approach. He was totally enthralled when a six year old bespectacled girl with a mop of red hair and an “All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth” smile came to say hello with her mom. 

“Weeelson! Weeelson!!”  A short ruddy-faced muscle man built like a fire hydrant barrels down the pontoons. He showers Rich, and everybody within reach, with photos of his previous visits on the pontoons or from his exploits on his native L’Isle d’Yeu. He’s entertaining, a colorful maniac who punctuates his oratory with blast on his trumpet or a dozen one armed pushups. He shouts something about Amitiés Vendée Louisiane and appears shocked that no one, including the French, have a clue what he’s talking about.  C’est la vie.

A woman from Paris comes to see the last skippers to cross the finish line. “I think they have prevailed with longer odds, against harder luck, and endured more difficulties than the earlier rivals who completed the course,” she says.

This is what Rich appreciates about these people. Of course everyone in France was thrilled that a Frenchman won the race.  As Rich said many times, especially after being interviewed by the American press, the French get that winning isn’t the only thing, that the men and women who crossed the starting were there because of their Olympian skills and records of success. They were the crème de la crème. and all winners

A gray-haired fellow drives from Challans, about fifty miles northwest, He wants to welcome Rich himself. “The last one is like the first one. This is a very difficult race. It’s not necessary to win to be appreciated.” Case in point for Rich.

What is it that drew you to come here today?” I ask a middle-aged woman as she walks away from greeting Rich. You’d have thought I asked her about the place of French wine or Impressionist art in the world. She takes in a long breath, sighs, and launches into an answer that would have floored Rich Wilson.

I scribble and concentrate on interpreting her French, which is flowing pretty intensely. “This is a great race, a chance for me to teach content and character,” she says, the little smile lines around her face deepen as she continues.

“When one of my nine or ten year olds looks up and says, ‘Learning these times tables is hard,’ I point to the map on the wall that we use to track the race. You want to see difficult, THAT is difficult…apply yourself like they’re doing and you’ll get there.”

She’s just getting warmed up. Give a teacher an appreciative audience and you’re in for some passionate discoursing about the sheer joy of the job.

“We have them take on the roles of the skippers and make up questions to ask each other. They pose questions such as what’s the hardest thing for you to confront, are you afraid, how do  you confront and vanquish your fears , how do you push yourself when you’re tired?

Spurred on by the sight of me writing furiously and asking her to stop now and then to repeat something I missed, she rattles off topics the Vendee Globe generates for her classroom - weather, geography, the tropics, the continents, the history of navigation, and the great explorers.

“These navigators are role models for all of us,” she finishes, adding a French saying she  uses to stimulate her students: “Au bout de la monde, au bout de soi-meme!” (literally ‘to the end of the world, to the end of yourself’) an expression that has to do with pushing yourself to your limits to achieve what you want.

Where is Oprah? Where is Wolf Blitzer? Where is a team of documentary filmmakers from the Vendee Globe Race Committee? This quote hits the same notes as the joyous fulminating finale to the 1812 Overture, cannons firing, church bells ringing. It’s like this unassuming woman just walked out of a phone booth and emerged as SuperTeacher.

Au bout de la monde, au bout de soi-meme.  Exactly what every one of the thirty men and women was living out when they bolted across the starting line of the Vendee Globe Race on November 9, 2008.

Exactly the kind of theme Rich Wilson has been living his entire adult life.

Vendee Globe 10,11,12: Great American III's Arrival At The Dock

PART 10
ARRIVAL AT THE DOCK

March 10, 2009 at 1:43:19 PM French time, Great American III screamed across the finish line with thirty knots of wind blowing across the deck. And was headed for a rocky shore less than a mile away. “I had two minutes to get the boat organized or we’d be on the rocks. It was like a continuous car crash out there,” Rich Wilson said. How fitting. After sailing 28,590.2 nautical miles, the last eight thousand like running a gauntlet of adverse wind and weather, even the last minutes were fraught with tension. 

Rich quickly spilled air from the sails and bore away. His team jumped aboard from the Zodiac that bounced alongside. Sails were lowered for the last time and the engine was throttled into gear for the first time in months. For Rich, here was a chance to unwind after 121 days, 41 minutes and 19 seconds at sea.

Every one of the eleven boats that returned to Les Sables d’Olonne was an occasion for celebration. Townspeople, friends and relatives of the skipper and tourists flocked to the jetty and lined the ancient canal entrance leading to the marina in the inner harbor. By the time Great American III arrived at the pontoon dock, it was jammed with spectators wanting to get up close and personal.

So what do you say when you haven’t had a chance to talk to a live person in four months and are face to face with a sea of them? For the first minute or so, nothing. Rich stood on deck, his hand tapping his heart in a universal gesture of appreciation.

 Someone in the crowd handed him an American flag. He waved it aloft, probably grateful for the time it gave him to get his bearings.

The slight smile on his face was a few degrees short of a good cry. Buoyed by the cheers, the applause, the good will, he got himself together. This was show time. Deal with the relief, the exhaustion, and the sense of achievement, later.

“Je n’ai pas des mots (I don't have the words),” he said several times as he collected himself emotionally.

“Je n’ai pas des mots. Golfe de Gascogne, Ocean Atlantique, Indien, Pacifique, encore L’Atlantique, c’etait un cours sans fin (it was a race without end),” he began. Then, Oscar-style, he jump-started his small speech with a list of thank you’s. To Thierry Dubois, the builder of Great American III, to Brian Harris, the man who oversaw Great American III’s major refit before the race, to the organizers, and to the French, who are as passionate about sailing as they are about soccer and red wine.

“The trip was hard,” he said in French. “It wasn’t a question of waiting for the other shoe to drop, but of how many shoes would drop.” The last several thousand miles had been truly rough. The dark circles under his eyes told the story as clearly as his words.

A jeroboam of Mumm’s appeared out of nowhere and lightened the mood considerably. A smile replaced the pensiveness on the skipper’s face. The pop, fizz and whoops from the crowd are the unofficial declaration of a successful finish.

Race Director Denis Horeaux led Rich up the gangway amongst throngs of people who wanted to get close to the man who just completed the hardest, most dangerous sailboat race in the world. We are in rock star territory here. Rich was mobbed all the way to the covered staging area erected to formally present the returning skippers to the crowd.

PART 11
AT THE PODIUM
“Le doyen de la cours termine a la 9th place!” (The elder of the race has finished in ninth place!) the announcer shouted to the crowd. TV cameras whirred. The place looked like it was being buzzed by a squadron of digitally equipped fireflies as cameras flashed everywhere. For the next half hour, Rich answered the announcer’s questions in French. With his enormous respect for the race and the people and country that hosted it, Rich did not disappoint.

Three vignettes

1. When asked about Cape Horn, Rich recounted his experience in 1990 when he and a crewmate nearly lost their lives when trimaran Great American I was capsized by a sixty foot wave and was miraculously flipped upright by another one. Hours later, the two men were rescued by the container ship New Zealand Pacific.  Wilson said that it was the encouragement of children across the country in his sitesalive program that he prompted him to re-plan the San Francisco to Boston voyage to beat record set by clipper ship Northern Light in the 1800s.  He succeeded and went on to break three other clipper ship records, all the while connecting online with school children across America.

2. He praised race winner Michel Desjoyeaux. “ When I met him in Port Le Foret after the 2007 TransAt, I asked him if he would answer some of questions about preparation since this was my first time. Michel agreed and said it’s fine if you write them in English. Out of respect and gratitude, and an English to French dictionary by my side, I asked MJ ten questions in French. Twenty four hours later, he emailed me ten answers in English!”

The crowd laughed at the irony. Rich said the exchange repeated itself six or seven times in a two-week span. “How generous he was with information. He is an incredible navigator. I’m happy that he won the race.”

3. “When I passed Cape Horn on January 26, there was a new president of the United States.” The crowd cheers. Barack Obama was France’s choice during the election. 

 “Before Thomas Jefferson became the third president of the United States, he was the ambassador to France. As ambassador, Jefferson said ‘Every man has two countries, his own and France.’ He was absolutely correct.”

The audience cheered vigorously. Rich has a bit of the ambassador in him, too.  He has an affinity with the French people he’s encountered. They’ve been warm, generous, and most importantly, appreciate the dreams of these skippers, what they risk and what they give up in order to realize the dream of competing. 

And it doesn't hurt that Rich is addressing them in their own language, unusual for an American athlete in any sport.

After the thirty minute ceremony, as rain began to fall from leaden skies, organizers whisked Rich to the media tent.

PART 12
IN THE MEDIA TENT

More cameras. lights, and action. The folding chairs in the media tent were filled with family, friends, schoolchildren from local towns, and any adult who could get a pass to gain entry.  On the dais sat Rich Wilson, Andy from the Vendee Globe Media Center, a Vendee Globe official, and a translator.

“Il est differente que les autres, il est intellectuale,” mused Corinne, a middle-aged local resident who’d witnessed every previous arrival. (He’s different from the others, he’s an intellectual.)

Well, he was one quite exhausted intellectual. It takes time to adjust to terra firma, where your environment isn’t jangling around as if you'd spent the last four months living inside the cylinder of a cement mixer truck.

Vignettes.

1. Taking on the Vendee Globe race:
“At first I said no - too long, too hard, too dangerous. What began to intrigue me was associating it with a global campaign with schools across the world. We set up booths at conventions, got commitments from countries as far away as China. The international program didn’t pan out the way we wanted but we got a robust national campaign together and that’s when I jumped in.”

2. “Would you do this again?” Andy asks.
Rich first quotes Samuel Johnson: “He who goes to sea for pleasure would go to Hell for a pastime.”  Mind you, Rich is still talking in French. Much laughter from audience. “I don’t want to sail around the again but you don’t have to sail around the world to appreciate it and to dream about it,” he said.

3. “Other skippers reported having hallucinations due to lack of sleep, did you have any?”

“No but I heard that Jean-Pierre Dick hallucinated that Jesus Christ was on the foredeck trimming his jib,” Rich says, waited a moment and added. “at least he had a good crew.”

Rich then recounted a surreal dream that had him flummoxed - during a week that featured a parade of storms, he dreamed he needed a 20 ton steel cable, the kind that lifts boats from the water in boatyards, to lift his boat out of the water to placidly remain above the 85 knot wind-packing storm the weather charts predicted was on the way.

"When I woke up I looked for the storm on the radar and realized I had only a 2.4 baud connection capacity on my computer that would make it too slow to download the steel cable and wondered how I’d be able to do it. That,' he said dryly, “I realized when my head cleared was the wrong question to be asking.”

Toward the end of the interview, Andy asked for questions from the school kids.

“How many times have you won the Vendee Globe?” a child asked. After the laughter had subsided, Rich responded. “When I was getting my physical exam by the race doctor, he said to me ‘Anyone who finishes the Vendee Globe is a winner.’” More applause.

Rich thought a moment and added, "One day in November before the race, a young boy standing with his school group listened to me talk about why I chose to enter the race. 'C’est importante participer (It's important to participate)', he blurted out. What an important life lesson. That is exactly what I was doing."

When media conference concluded, Rich was mobbed for autographs. In between a radio interview and photo flashes, he greeted every autograph seeker and every man and woman wanting to tell him how much they appreciated his demeanor and his respect for France.

As the tent emptied he was approached by teachers who wanted a photo opportunity with this French-speaking American who had just tangled with the toughest sailing race in the world that started and ended in their home port. Every one of the finishers was a winner to them, too.

Like a gregarious and popular politician, Rich waded into the crowd of youngsters. His wide smile and beaming eyes belied the fact he was running on pure adrenalin. He was in his element again.

Vendee Globe 7,8,9: Great American III Claws Her Way To The Finish

Six posts about the days preceding American skipper Rich Wilson's crossing the starting line of the Vendée Globe solo, non-stop, 26,000 mile, round the world race that departed Les Sables d'Olonne, France on November 9th appeared in this blog in November, 2008.

The Vendee Globe is called "The Everest of Sailboat Racing." Nineteen of the fleet of thirty boats that began the race on November 9th did not cross the finish line. Rich Wilson, at the helm of Great American III, did.

The next series of entries recount Wilson's completing the race, his return to Les Sables d'Olonne on March 10, 2009, and the generous welcome given him by the French populace there.

PART 7

From Les Sables d’Olonne, France to Cape Horn - the first 19,500 miles of the race

When Rich Wilson turned the corner around Cape Horn on January 26, 2009, and headed north for Les Sables d’Olonne, he thought the worst of his Vendee Globe solo, round the world race was behind him…  wind and sea turbulence galore from the Atlantic down south to the Indian and east to the Pacific.

His Open 60 monohull had surfed down mountainous swells in the Southern Ocean at speeds of over 20 knots. That might have been fine for some of the newer boats and skippers who were accustomed to blazing down the white crested swells at speeds that make most sailors blanch.

Rich was skittish about pressing too hard. He knew he had one shot at this race and this was it. His strategy was to get to the finish line. He had about a quarter of a million school kids glued to his daily progress through the school program he created at www.sitesalive.com. For the first 15 weeks of the race, Rich filed photos, made Podcasts, and wrote ship’s log entries for kids around the world who were following him online.

Most skippers sailed to win. Big sponsors, big money, big pressure to succeed. They sailed aggressively, pushing their boats to their limits. The Open 60s are built with one purpose in mind - to go fast. They are aquatic rocketships with canting keels, adaptable water ballast, dual rudders, carbon fiber masts and booms, They’re capable of speeds in excess of thirty knots. For a landlubber, think NASCAR and 210 mph.

Rich Wilson sailed to participate. At 58, he was the eldest competitor in the second oldest boat. By the time he reached Cape Horn at the tip of South America, 18 of the fleet of 30 had abandoned the race. Broken masts, fried electrical systems or having rudders sheared off after running into flotsam or large sea creatures had punched out 17 of them. Another boat would have its keel ripped off and would abandon the race in the Azores, a few thousand miles from the finish line.  Rich’s mantras: sail safe, don’t break the boat.

Most of us will never experience hurtling 45 degrees down confused seas in the pitch black of night with wind shrieking through rigging, water thundering off polycarbon topsides, everything in the boat rattling around like dice in a Parcheesi cup. Adrenaline and stark raving fear rule that ride. Somewhere in between is exhilaration as you realize you’re having the race of your life. It’s the nitro-glycerine without the heart attack.

One skipper had his femur snapped when he was on the foredeck and his boat nosed into the trough of a steep wave and stopped on a dime. His momentum slid him into the bow pulpit, breaking bone and dangling him over the side. Somehow he managed to crawl back into the cabin. Two days later the Australian Navy found him and brought him to safety. His boat, worth the GDP of a small nation, was lost at sea.

If you or your boat don’t break before you get to the finish line you’ll have sailed south from Les Sables d’Olonne, France, passed the equator, keeping the world’s great capes (Good Hope,Africa; Cape Leuwin, Australia; and Cape Horn, South America) to your left, Antarctica to your right, then sailed north up the Atlantic Ocean till you arrived at Les Sables d’Olonne about 28,000 miles later.

You will have been physically banged up, had to improvise repairs on electronics, software, rudders, sails, rigging, booms, windvanes. You will have hoisted yourself perilously up the mast to inspect or repair. You will have crawled through the bowels of the boat to find where the seawater trickle was coming from. You will have eaten hundreds of meals by popping a plastic bag of freeze dried food into boiling water. You will have used a bucket for a toilet and kept yourself hygienic with wet wipes and the occasional shower if rain fell while you were in temperate zones.You will have asked yourself why you decided to enter the race.

You would have been on the lookout for icebergs and growlers (semi-submerged chunks of icebergs)  south of the "furious fifties" latitudes and be required to pass through ‘ice gates’ set up by the race committee to prevent you from sailing too far south in search of better sailing conditions. You would peer into dark corners of your soul.

The winner, Michel Desjoyeaux's Foncia, crossed the finish line in a record breaking 84 days on February 1st, 2009.

Photos courtesy of www.sitesalive.com

PART 8

Contrary Conditions Test Mettle

So here was Rich Wilson on January 26 catching a glimpse of Horn Island off Cape Horn (the dark spot barely visible on the horizon), looking forward to trade winds and favorable weather that would propel him toward the finish 7023 miles away. He’d covered 19,500 miles. The boat leading the pack was 5200 miles ahead and would finish the race six days later. Rich thought he was in the home stretch.

Not.

The next 36 days tested Rich Wilson to his core. Fierce wind, no wind, confused seas, glassy calm seas, wind directly from the direction he was heading, or directly behind him… just about everything that makes sailing difficult.

“These boats aren’t made for upwind sailing,” he said. “When they go to windward they take a terrific pounding. Every moment you’re waiting for something to break.” That included himself. One night he was catapulted clear out of his bunk and lacerated his skull in the process. Imagine a freight train hurtling downhill on the railroad ties alone, no rails, and you get the idea of the racket and the movement.

February’s weather systems kept pinning him to the west, at one point less than fifty miles off the coast of Brazil. Weather charts contradicted one another. Sometimes Rich read the tea leaves right, sometimes wrong.  Time and again, the fickle hand of fate slammed the door leading to favorable wind conditions for Great American III.

Ship’s Log entry on February 16 (99th day at sea):
“Still going. We have our own private low formed off the Brazilian coast to bend the wind in a more adverse direction than even the northeast trade winds would be. Had perhaps 16 or 18 thunderstorms come through this morning: rain, wind, no wind, 50 degree wind shifts, sails up, sails down, heading for France, heading for Mexico, pounding, crashing, keel on, keel off, start over. Knocked the wind charger, already loose, completely off its mount to dangle by its wires. Maybe tomorrow will be better.”

There was always maintenance. Replace the auto-pilot steering linkage bolts twice (the first time in the middle of the night, of course), clean the desalinator, figure out a way to put a new shim under the mast to tighten the rigging, tinker with cantankerous self-steering mechanisms, were but a few of February’s tasks.

At one point well north of the equator, he was closer to Newfoundland than the finish at Les Sables d’Olonne. The usually sanguine voice on daily podcasts became strained, occasionally discouraged. Ship's Log February 24, 2009:

Day 107 - Frustration
1711 UTC, 31/16N 41/16W, 2.5 knots, @315T. Heading away from France, trying to cross the high pressure ridge. After that, you have to look at the weather maps to see how long this could take. A high pressure system comes in very far north to give northeast winds from here to France. "Frustrating" does not describe what I feel.

The constant adversity kept grinding him down. Wilson became brittle but he did not break.

PART 9

“Trigging” his way to the finish

A cruel irony is that for better part of the last week of the race, the wind filled in directly behind Great American III. This led to a Wilsonian tutorial on sailing a big rig downwind.

March 7, Day 118
Ship’s log

It should be understood by all viewers of the Vendee Globe website, that because positions are taken from the boats four times per day, the course shown on the map might bear little or no resemblance to the course actually sailed by the boat. I haven't seen the website in a while, but I would guess that the route that is shown for Great American III shows basically a straight line from the second high that I went around. That is not what has happened.

Since the second high, we have sailed an absolutely symmetric zig-zag course toward the finish, because the wind at the top of this high pressure system, which is moving precisely exactly at the same speed as we are, is precisely west to east, thus we can only sail 40 degrees on either side of that, and thus not head straight for Les Sables d'Olonne. And given the trigonometry of that (sin 45 degrees = 0.7071), if we are sailing 10 knots on our zig zag, we are in fact only making 7 knots toward France. This is why it is taking us so long to get to Les Sables d'Olonne. And right now, we are only sailing in 10 knots of wind, and making 7 knots of boat speed, 40 degrees off course, so in fact we are only making 4.9 knots toward the finish. In fact, since we crossed the equator, we have not had the bow actually pointing at the finish.

In case there was any doubt, this sealed the appropriateness of the nickname the Vendee Globe organizers had bestowed upon our man Rich (the M.I.T. graduate): “The Mathematician”. The Vendee Globe had been treated to its first trigonometry lesson.

March 10, 2009

Forty-nine hours after posting this "lesson," at 13:43:19 French time, Skipper Rich Wilson and Great American III crossed the finish line at Les Sables d'Olonne. Race time: 121 days, 41 minutes and 19 seconds.

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Tennessee Williams

CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF
Play by Tennessee Williams
Directed by: Scott Edmiston. Set, Janie E. Howland. Costumes, Gail Astrid Buckley. Lights, Karen Perlow. Sound, Dewey Dellay.
At: Lyric Stage Company, through March 14. Tickets: $25-$50. 617-585-5678, www.lyricstage.com

Are you a fan of Tennessee Williams? Enjoy a bracing night of good theater? Let me make this easy. Get down to the Lyric Stage Company before March 16 and see “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.”

Georgia Lyman’s Maggie on the hot tin roof is as carnal and feline as Williams intended.  Watching her expressive eyes, small gestures, and smoldering desperation in the first and third acts is worth the price of admission.

Williams’ themes of hypocrisy, greed, and corrosive secrets emerge from the moment the first act opens. For reasons I don’t understand, these themes work best in Southern settings. Maybe it’s the southern accents and vernacular, which sound genteel, but are often stealth missiles meant to inflict pain.

The cast of Maggie (Georgia Lyman), her husband Brick (Kelby Akin), Big Daddy Pollit (Spiro Veloudos), Big Mama (Cheryl McMahon), Gooper (Owen Doyle)  Mae (Elisa McDonald), and minor supporting cast works well in ensemble. McDonald plays Mae with a little more broad humor than the viper Williams had in mind but she does it well.

The family has converged upon the family mansion to celebrate Big Daddy’s 65th birthday. Big Daddy is dying of cancer, a fact known to all except himself. One of his two sons will inherit his sprawling 28,000 acre Mississippi plantation. Second son Gooper wants it; he and his wife Mae connive to get it. Favorite first-born son Brick is indifferent toward the inheritance and to Maggie. His childless marriage with Maggie has raised eyebrows and spawned suspicions about Brick’s sexual preference.

The second act confrontation between Big Daddy and Brick gives Williams the chance to work his classic themes of ‘mendacity’ and failure to communicate. Brick - how marvelous a nickname for a young man so blocked from his emotional life - steadfastly hangs on to his bottle of bourbon, his security blanket.

Big Daddy pushes Brick to tell why he drinks and doesn’t let him off easy. Brick finally admits that his drinking began when his best friend died of alcohol and shame. “One man has one great good true thing in his life. One great good thing which is true! I had friendship with Skipper. You are namin' it dirty!” Brick says

Gruff Big Daddy came from nothing by bullying and braying his way to wealth. In his rise to power, he seems to have learned more about human nature than anyone else in his family can guess. Trying to cope with Brick’s secret, he says, "One thing you can grow on a big place more important than cotton!—is tolerance!—I grown it." Big Daddy took over the plantation from the original owners, Jack Straw and Peter Ochello, a pair of bachelors who lived in the very bedroom in which the play is set. Big Daddy knew them to be good men. He has reserves of tenderness not many see.

The third act offers as much resolution as you’re going to find from Williams. Venality comes from expected places, deception comes from unexpected quarters. And everyone seems to be lying to everyone else. The play is rich with William’s aphorisms, mainly delivered by Maggie and Big Daddy.

Maggie, the cat on a hot tin roof, has come from poverty. She’s not going to give up her chance to escape it by losing Brick and her ticket to a monied life. "You can be young without money, but you can't be old without it," she says. This is a high-class American soap opera that will engage you from start to finish.

Photo courtesy Lyric Stage: Mark S. Howard
 

Exits and Entrances, New Rep Theater

EXITS AND ENTRANCES Play by Athol Fugard

Directed by: Chris Jorie. Set, Patrick Lynch. Costumes, Eric Propp. Lights, John Malinowski. Sound, David Wilson. Presented by: New Repertory Theatre.

At: Arsenal Center for the Arts, Watertown, through March 15. Tickets: $35-$54, 617-923-8487, www.newrep.org

Athol Fugard’s play Exits and Entrances is at once intimate and existential. Youth and age, apartheid and political freedom, arrogance and innocence, self-loathing and self-acceptance form the contrasting arcs of this small poignant production at the New Repertory Theater in Watertown.

The play centers on an aspiring writer (the young Fugard) and a aging Afrikaner actor André Huguenot (born Gerhardus Petrus Boorstlap in Bloemfontein, S. A.) in rural South African theater dressing rooms in 1956 and 1961. The entrances and exits themes are set in motion.

Huguenet is a pompous actor and ardent proponent of Afrikaner theater. After thirty years, his fame diminished, he is still in the thrall of self-importance and identifies with the noble and flawed characters he’s specialized in during his career.

In their first scenes in 1956, the young man is in awe of Huguenet’s ability to recreate moments of high drama on the stage night after night. He looks upon Huguenet as a mentor. As his dressing room assistant and bit actor in Huguenet’s plays the young playwright listens - and corrects the actor when he omits words from his lines as he prepares for his nightly roles. He dreams of writing for the stage. Huguenet reminisces - and haughtily recreates some of his classic soliloquies for the writer’s benefit.

The writer’s dedication to the letter and spirit of the play contrast with the actor’s disregard for the occasional muffed line. Huguenet has become weary since being star-struck by the sight of his 1916 sight of Pavlova dance the role in Swan Lake. Huguenet’s star is retrograde, the playwright’s is ascending.

Huguenet has always used the theater for the safety to become someone else. “I know who I am in those roles,” he says as he thunders passages from Oedipus Rex and Hamlet, In the compact eighty minute performance we watch Hugeunet’s long held façade disintegrate as tragically as one of the flawed men he’s played all his life.

Five years later, the playwright witnesses Huguenet’s final performance as the persecuted Cardinal in “The Prisoner.” The Cardinal's struggles with his underlying self-loathing are Hugeunet's own. Pride has given way to humility. Nearing his final days, he summons the resolve he's played on the stage but never in life.

Ross MacDonald portrayal of Fugard's youthful idealism and earnest desire to use theater as a tool for social justice is a worthy foil for Will Lyman’s André Huguenet. Hugeunet, disdains his middle class public audiences, the writer sees them as his target.

Will Lyman’s rich baritone, aristocratic demeanor and physical presence make him an ideal choice for the role of Huguenet. Huguenet’s egotistical bluster is a shield for his self-loathing. Bit by bit, Lyman shows the man’s armor crumble under the weight of a failing career and the a life built on self-deception.

Huguenet’s recreation of Hamlet’s “To be or not to be…” soliloquy is his first true gaze into his life’s work and the maw of mortality. The quietly delivered lines might be the best "To be..." speech you've ever heard. It has more impact than the fiery oratory Hugeunet has ever played on stage.

The simple scene gains power as it comes from a stooped man seated on a chair backstage of a no name theater in a nowhere town. No declaiming, no bravura, just a man asking himself the hardest question any of us will ask ourselves at the end of our own time. What has it all been about? Is life worth living? If Edward Albee and Will Shakespeare quaffed a pint in a dimly lit tavern some night and decided to write a short play together, this is how it would come out.

“Fan the flames of your purpose, keep them bright,” Hugeunet implores his young friend. Hugeunet’s has been reduced to a flicker. His most courageous performance is played out in the dingy dressing room as he casts aside the yoke he's dragged behind him his whole life. We wonder about our own flame as we make our exit from the theater.


Photo: Andrew Brilliant. Boston Globe

Jimmy Tingle's Laugh Stimulus Program

Jimmy Tingle’s Laughter Stimulus Program
Regent Theater, Arlington, MA
February 28, 2009

Jimmy Tingle is a local UFO. Underappreciated Funny Observer of Life. He’s a descendant of the best and hardest kind of vaudeville acts - a stand up comedian. Remember Fred Allen and George Burns? Guys who could take the stage, read the headlines in the daily paper and wring wry and offbeat humor from them. That’s our Jimmy - a local boy from Cambridge, MA who’s appeared on The Tonight Show and 60 Minutes II.

When he gets on a roll, all he needs to do is pace around the stage, tap his red head mop and say, “Y’know folks, I was just thinking…” and we get ready to laugh at some oddball spin he’s about to lay on something.

The jury is still out on whether Barack Obama can deliver on his promise to bail us out of global misery with his Stimulus Plan. Our boy Jimmy, however, delivered on his promise to present a “Jimmy Tingle’s Laughter Stimulus Program” last Saturday. Several hundred people who watched Tingle present his show at Arlington’s venerable Regent Theater were treated to a wealth of laughter.

Tingle does this the hard way. No four letter words, no bathroom humor, no crude sex jokes.  You could bring your teenagers to this show. Several of them who sat in the row in front of me guffawed with the rest of us and even asked Tingle a question in the brief Q and A that preceded Tingle’s second act in the two-hour show.

Jimmy’s been parlaying his brand of thought-provoking comedy for twenty-five years. He ran Jimmy Tingle’s Off Broadway Theater in for five years, shuttering the doors in 2007. Tingle’s little box of a theater brought in some of the smartest political and social satire in town. Sadly, we didn’t know a good thing while it was in our midst. That’s another story.

Watching a stand up comedian work is part of the fun. You know he/she has some bits they planned in advance. Tingle had material so fresh about President Obama’s recent nationally televised speech about the economy that he read it from a podium. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s rebuttal speech gave Tingle at least a page of material.

Tingle made his own proposals to raise money, create jobs, and use green energy. He poked at easy targets like Bernard Madoff then did a hilarious bit about mortgage brokers. Sometimes Jimmy gets on a roll and riffs for five minutes about a topic. You can almost see him going through the mental gears from start to finish like a grand prix driver on laughing gas. His list of what airlines might begin charging passengers for was a lulu.

The wild thing about his off the wall humor is that much of it has a teensy thread of possibility to it. His ideas about cheap ways to find and use wind power - put wind turbines in the breakdown lane to make use of cars whizzing by, for example. I mean, we've all stood on the side of the road and felt that blast of air generated when a Ford goes by at 65 mph, haven't we? Then he gets rolling about the gas tax and gets going about methane from farm animals.

He can spin a trip with his wife on a cruise ship into a shtick that ends up with “If 9 Vikings can row to America why cant cruise ships save thousands of gallons of diesel fuel by requiring passengers to row to Jamaica?” Then somehow he ties this in with riffs about physical fitness and the endemic problem of obesity. Whew.

By the end of the evening, you’ve listened to Tingle put his offbeat spin on gays in the military, figure out how he would spend revenue from parking tickets, poke holes in immigration policy -beginning with the buckled up Pilgrims,

Around the middle of the show he pauses for a moment. “Look, I like to make people laugh because it’s part of the human spirit, right up there with empathy, compassion and love,” he says. He knows damn well we’re up to our eyeballs in scary headlines and financial worry and people behaving badly. He finds a way to turn them upside and make us laugh about them.

It makes the headlines we read the next morning a little more bearable when we wonder. “I wonder what Jimmy would say about that?”
 

Photo courtesy Regent Theater

Tingle appears at the Regent Theater again March 14, 8:00 PM