Insights - Squarespace · PDF fileSynopsis 4 Characters 6 ... Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Online, September 14, ... Several years passed before Valcq and Alley found a project that

InsightsA Study Guide to the Utah Shakespeare Festival

The SpitfireGrill

The articles in this study guide are not meant to mirror or interpret any productions at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. They are meant, instead, to be an educational jumping-off point to understanding and enjoying the plays (in any production at any theatre) a bit more thoroughly. Therefore the stories of the plays and the interpretative articles (and even characters, at times) may differ dramatically from what is ultimately produced on the Festival’s stages.Insights is published by the Utah Shakespeare Festival, 351 West Center Street; Cedar City, UT 84720. Bruce C. Lee, communications director and editor; Phil Hermansen, art director.Copyright © 2011, Utah Shakespeare Festival. Please feel free to download and print Insights, as long as you do not remove any identifying mark of the Utah Shakespeare Festival.

For more information about Festival education programs: Utah Shakespeare Festival351 West Center Street

Cedar City, Utah 84720 435-586-7880 www.bard.org.

Cover photo: Misty Cotton (left, then clockwise) as Percy Talbott, Pat Sibley as Hannah Ferguson, Afton Quast as Shelby Thorpe and Danforth Comins as Sheriff Joe Sutter in the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s 2004 production of The Spitfire Grill.

Contents

Utah Shakespeare Festival 351 West Center Street • Cedar City, Utah 84720 • 435-586-7880

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Information on the PlaySynopsis 4Characters 6About the Playwrights 7

Scholarly Articles on the PlayThe Heart and Soul of America 8

The Spitfire Grill

Synopsis: The Spitfire GrillPercy Talbott, having been recently released from prison, steps off the bus in Gilead,

Wisconsin, a location she selected because of a picture she found in an old travel book. Sheriff Joe Sutter takes Percy to the Spitfire Grill, since it’s the only guest room in town and because he doesn’t know what else to do with her. Here, she meets Hannah, who takes her in and gives her a job.

Effy Krayneck, the town postmistress and busybody, is immediately suspicious of Percy, as is Caleb Thorpe, Hannah’s nephew. They make it known that a jailbird isn’t welcome in their midst. It is the painfully shy Shelby, Caleb’s wife, who is the only one willing to suspend judg-ment.

When Hannah accidentally falls and injures her leg, Percy gets medical help for her, but Effy immediately goes about spreading the story that Percy pushed Hannah down a flight of stairs. Hannah, disabled for the time being, puts Percy in charge of the grill. Since her cooking proves to be nearly lethal, they enlist the aid of Shelby. Percy also takes over Hannah’s unexplained ritual of leaving a loaf of bread next to a stump behind the grill, a loaf of bread, which always mysteriously disappears during the night.

As they become closer friends, Shelby tells Percy that Hannah had a son, Eli, the town’s favorite, and an idol to Caleb; but Eli was long ago reported missing-in-action in Viet Nam.

Hannah, it seems, has been trying to sell the grill for years with no luck. Percy and Shelby, however, come up with a scheme. Why not advertise an essay contest with an entry fee of $100 and award the place to the writer of the best “Why I Want the Spitfire Grill” essay? Hannah agrees and Percy and Shelby devise an ad that describes the town, at least in their eyes.

As the weeks go by, the essays begin to arrive in greater and greater numbers, and the com-munity gradually takes an interest. Meanwhile, Caleb does some research to find out what Percy was convicted of.

While all this has been happening, Sheriff Joe Sutter has become more and more attracted to Percy, leading eventually to a marriage proposal. However, Percy turns him down, saying he deserves someone better than she. Percy confesses some terrible things in her past to Shelby, who reacts with great sympathy and understanding as Percy explains the whole situation.

Percy is finally able to confront the mysterious visitor as he comes for the bread, and we learn his identity. It is Eli, Hannah’s long missing son. He was not missing-in-action, we learn. He was simply missing, a shell-shocked loner who has been hiding in the woods for all this time. Percy convinces him to come inside.

At last, the day arrives when a decision must be made. Hannah decides the winner is the ad that was written for the newspapers, the one written by “her girls.” Percy and Shelby are to get the grill, and all the money is returned to the contestants.

Percy has not only found self-forgiveness and happiness, but has proven to be the healing “balm” in Gilead. Joe, once so eager to leave, decides to stay.


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Characters: The Spitfire GrillPercy Talbott: Percy is pretty, if a bit rough-edged. Her face declares the strength of her youth

and a sadness beyond her years. She carries a terrible secret.Hannah Ferguson: About seventy, Hannah is the owner of the Spitfire Grill. She is a tough-

skinned and flinty old bird with a short, no-nonsense manner bordering on the bitter. She can also be very tender-hearted and fiercely loyal. She has a secret of her own to protect.

Shelby Thorpe: In her mid-thirties, Shelby is a plain, soft-faced creature with a shy, almost ethe-real manner. She is the wife of Caleb Thorpe. Once her trust is gained, she also is a very loyal friend.

Caleb Thorpe: In his early forties and the out-of-work foreman of the now-defunct stone quarry, Caleb is a frustrated man clinging to the past and the authority he once had. He bitterly opposes change.

Sheriff Joe Sutter: In his mid to late twenties, Joe is a young, small-town policeman with a rest-less nature and a genuine desire to escape Gilead.

Effy Crayneck: In her fifties, Effy is postmistress and the town busybody. She is a woman with narrow eyes and a sour tongue. There’s little to gossip about in a town so small, but when there is, she is the source.

The Visitor: In his mid-forties and a mysterious figure who never speaks, the visitor has powerful eyes and a very strong sense of his body.


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James Valcq and Fred AlleyBy Marlo M. Ihler

From Insights, 2004For the creators of the musical, The Spitfire Grill, artistic activities began early in their

lives. James Valcq and Fred Alley both grew up in Wisconsin, Valcq in big-city Milwaukee and Alley in rural Mount Horeb. Both were drawn to music and theatre at a young age. During the summer of 1980, while Valcq was attending a summer music camp in Madison and Alley had dropped in to visit a friend at the same camp, the sixteen-year-olds met and became friends almost immediately.

Valcq’s musical background consisted of early training and performance. By age seven he had appeared at the Skylight Opera Theatre in Milwaukee. He later went on to earn a bach-elor’s degree in music and theatre from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, as well as a master’s in musical theatre composition from New York University. The accomplished com-poser, conductor, and musician now lives in New York City.

Alley, considered more of a renegade, had a background in folk music and theatre. As an adult, he joined a folk singing group called the Heritage Ensemble in Door County, Wisconsin. In the early 1990s, Alley and Frederick “Doc” Heide decided to steer this group in a more theatrical direction and renamed it the American Folklore Theatre (AFT). The artistic director was Alley’s lifelong friend, Jeffrey Herbst, who, incidentally, was the friend he was visiting at the Madison summer camp when he met Valcq. For this organization he wrote an original musical based on local folk stories and myths every year for ten years. Such shows included Guys on Ice, Lumberjacks in Love, and Belgians in Heaven.

The two men’s collaboration began following a trip to New York City with AFT, where they were inspired by their visit to Ellis Island to write their first show together. A musical called The Passage for AFT was the result. Alley wrote the lyrics and book while Valcq com-posed the music. The show premiered on AFT’s outdoor stage at Peninsula State Park in Door County in 1994.

The Passage helped both men to polish their abilities as playwrights and artists. Alley would first write lyrics, to which Valcq would respond with music. According to Valcq, much of the music came immediately if the lyrics were “right.” If the lyrics weren’t quite work-ing, Valcq would push Alley until he wrote lyrics that did. This helped Alley to strengthen his voice as a lyricist. Valcq had the challenge of incorporating instruments that AFT used regularly, such as guitars and mandolins, in order to create suitable musical arrangements. By the time they completed this show, they were eager to work with each other again (Damien Jaques, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Online, September 14, 2002, www.jsonline.com/onwis-consin/arts/sep02/79632.asp).

Several years passed before Valcq and Alley found a project that was of interest to both of them. Valcq was specifically looking for a story that was “very rural, that was lyrical, that had elements of kitchen-sink realism and . . . some sort of spiritual or elevated element as well” (Paul Hodgins, The Orange County Register Online, www.myoc.com/entertainment/arts/stories/102002/spitfire_review.shtml). Alley wanted to avoid using other mediums as the basis for the story, but finally the two men agreed to adapt The Spitfire Grill, a 1996 independent film written and directed by Lee David Zlotoff that won the Audience Award at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

The Spitfire Grill tells the story of Percy Talbott, who having recently been released from prison, chooses to start her life over in the small town of Gilead, Wisconsin. She is greeted


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coldly upon arrival because of her troubled past, but she soon begins to build relationships with oth-ers that eventually alter the perceptions of the townspeople for the better.

It took Valcq and Alley until October 1999 to obtain the rights to the show. Zlotoff was very accommodating and allowed the playwrights to take some liberties with the show’s ending, a few of the characters, and the location of the story—they moved it from Maine to their native Wisconsin because they wanted to avoid having the cast sing with a Maine accent. As for the music, Valcq worked to portray a very “rural indigenous folk sound,” based on the prevalent Scandinavian and Celtic cultures found in Wisconsin. He used such instruments as violin, cello, keyboards, guitar, mandolin, and accordion to acquire this sound (Hodgins).

Soon the duo recorded a demo CD with six songs that eventually found its way into the hands of David Saint, artistic director for the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey. In April 2000, he called to book the musical for his theatre’s fall season, even though the show was not yet complete. This deadline forced the playwrights to finish it by November 2000. The show opened on time and premiered to critical acclaim.

The next year the musical was awarded the prestigious Academy of Arts and Letters 2001 Richard Rogers Award for New American Musicals. But prior to receiving this award and amid preparations to open The Spitfire Grill in New York City, Alley died suddenly of a massive heart attack in Door County, Wisconsin.

Despite the personal grief caused by Alley’s sudden passing, and then the soon-to-follow, national grief accompanying September 11, the show’s opening off-Broadway caused a buzz within the theatre community. Directed again by David Saint, this production with the high-profile Playwrights’ Horizons, was selected as one of the five best musicals of 2001 by New York Magazine, and won award nominations by Drama Desk, Drama-League, and the New York Outer Critics Circle (George Street Playhouse, www.georgestplayhouse.org/leadership.html).

Since its debut in 2000, The Spitfire Grill has become one of the most produced plays in the nation. Its creators, Valcq and Alley, envisioned this show finding its home with regional the-atres because of the story’s rural and hometown feel. It has enjoyed such regional productions in Milwaukee; Chicago; Minneapolis; San Francisco; Laguna Beach, California; Duluth, Georgia; and now Cedar City, Utah.


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The Heart and Soul of AmericaBy Kelli Allred

From Insights, 2004The film version of The Spitfire Grill gave viewers at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival a thrill

that earned the film critical recognition, high praise, and the Audience Award. When writers James Valqc and Fred Alley transformed the screenplay into a musical for the stage, their script won acco-lades in the form of the Richard Rogers Production Award presented by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Basing their show on the screenplay by Lee David Zlotoff, Valqc and Alley reshaped the story into an intimate, character-driven musical. According to theatre critic Jerry Kraft, “vivid and sympathetic individuals create a genuine community and the well-crafted and dramatically focused songs move the story to a gratifying . . . conclusion” (Aisle Say, http://www.aislesay.com/WA-SPITFIRE.html).

First produced on a New Jersey stage in the fall of 2000, The Spitfire Grill moved to Broadway in September 2001, playing only three performances before the tragedy that closed down much of New York theatre on September 11, 2001. The show lasted four weeks longer in a city devastated by tragedy, but has since enjoyed numerous productions across the country. Popular among com-munity and regional theatres because of its themes of renewal and healing, The Spitfire Grill brings to the 2004 Utah Shakespeare Festival an uplifting production that captures the heart and soul of America better than most American musicals.

The MusicThe Spitfire Grill is a stage musical rife with the sounds of banjos, guitars, fiddles, and all the

other instruments closely associated with American folk music. Indeed, “folksy” is the word most often used to describe the timbre of The Spitfire Grill, whose result is “affecting musical storytelling with lyrics and spoken dialogue so seamlessly integrated that shortcomings don’t seem to matter” (Sommer, Elysse, Curtain Up, 2001). Kraft further observes, “The songs almost always feel like the natural result of character and situation, and not superfluous or contrived” (Aisle Say). It is not a dancing musical; rather, the music transports the characters and audience from inside the café to the great outdoors that is Gilead, a sleepy Wisconsin hamlet. The lyrics have a conversational tone that contributes to the easy transitions between music and dialogue. The songs sung by the chorus are among the most upbeat in the production. The petty townsfolk are, at times, reminiscent of a larger chorus from River City, Iowa. Several of the show’s comic numbers are “jaunty and amus-ing,” especially the group numbers that reflect the emotions and attitudes of Gilead’s staid residents (Curtain Up).

The StoryThe story is tough, yet touching. And although there is a plot, The Spitfire Grill focuses on rela-

tionships formed among the townsfolk and what happens as a result. The story is an honest account of an outsider who changes the lives of strangers through her actions. The central character is Percy, an ex-convict who decides to start a new life in “a place for leaving, not for coming to”—Gilead, Wisconsin. Gilead is just one of the play’s many allusions to old-time religion. In Old Testament times, a bush producing the resin from which healing balm was made grew so plentifully in Gilead (Israel) that the balm came to be known as the ‘balm of Gilead’ (Jeremiah 46:11). This allusion sup-ports the themes of healing and hope, not unlike the traditional folk song: “There is a balm in Gilead that makes the wounded whole. / There is a balm in Gilead what heals the sin-sick soul.”

The CharactersThe Spitfire Grill, a modern folk tale set in the fictional town of Gilead, gets its title from the

town’s only café, the Spitfire Grill. Soon after Hannah grudgingly gives Percy a job at the Grill, Hannah is injured and is forced to depend on Percy. Although Percy’s cooking leaves much to be


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desired, Percy is assisted in the Grill by Shelby, thwarted by Shelby’s husband Caleb, courted quietly by Sheriff Joe, and gossiped about by the townspeople, led by the irascible Effy. By story’s end, both Percy and Hannah achieve “freedom from their self-imposed imprisonment,” which becomes the play’s resolution (Willows Theatre Company, http://www.willowstheatre.org/PressRoom/SpitfireGrill/Spitfire_Press_1.html).

Throughout the plot, Percy’s personal odyssey takes her “from prison to the natural world, from corrosive guilt to self-forgiveness, and from isolation to community.” One theater critic describes Percy as “the kind of person you dream of meeting, the kind who suddenly appears in your life and profoundly changes it forever” (Jaques, Damien, “Door Shakespeare Follows Its ‘Dream,’” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 3 Aug, 2002).

Hannah is not the only character in need of healing balm, and Percy is not the only charac-ter in the play that stands in need of hope. In the end, the wasted community has been handed hope and renewal on a silver platter held forth by unexpected circumstance.

A Theatrical BanquetThe story behind The Spitfire Grill is as compelling as the musical itself. Before collaborat-

ing on the musical, writer Fred Alley had previously written and produced plays and musicals with the assistance of James Valcq and James Kaplan, mostly for the Wisconsin based American Folklore Theatre. The Broadway success of The Spitfire Grill was followed closely by tragedy, when the show’s thirty-eight-year-old lyricist Fred Alley died unexpectedly of a heart attack while jogging. Before his untimely death in May 2001, Alley authored or collaborated on some twenty productions and wrote the scripts and lyrics for several of the most popular productions at Wisconsin’s American Folklore Theatre. In 2002, Alley was honored posthumously with the Mark R. Sumner Award for Distinguished Achievement, presented by the National Conference on Outdoor Drama. No stranger to Shakespeare, Alley was instrumental in launching the Door County Shakespeare Festival, which debuted in 1995 (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, http://www.unc.edu/depts./outdoor/news/2002/2002 sumnerawardwinner.html

The Spitfire Grill offers a theatrical banquet: mystery, romance, music, friendship, broken hearts, and familial love mingled with themes of starting over, unconditional love, and the bliss of life in small-town America. The lyrics tell us to “Say what you want, play it where you will, someone should keep singing the songs from the Spitfire Grill.” This play will continue to be a favorite among regional and community theatres because of its casting and staging require-ments, as well as its down to earth story. After its brief Broadway run, the show returned to Wisconsin, where it played in Milwaukee’s Skylight Theater, on whose ceiling is printed a phrase that has lent comfort and understanding to audiences—“To help us forget some things, /remember others / and to refresh dry places in our spirit.”

A warm and engaging musical, The Spitfire Grill deserves wide performance and is sure to appeal to Cedar City locals and visiting audiences in 2004 (Edler, Molly S. “Skylight’s Spitfire Grill Turns Tragedy into Triumph,” 30 Sep 2002, On Milwaukee, http://www.milwaukee.com).


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Documents

Insights - Squarespace · PDF fileSynopsis 4 Characters 6 ... Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Online, September 14, ... Several years passed before Valcq and Alley found a project that