Description: An adaptation of Uncle Vanya set in the 1980’s on a hippie commune.

First Produced: 2006
Date Added: 1/19/2012
Content Advisory: STRONG ADULT LANGUAGE, DRUG USE
Keywords: Comedy  Drama  Pop culture  Politics  Adaptations  Large Cast Size 
2 Acts, 105 Minutes
3 Females, 4 Males

From the Playwright:

The inspiration to write Fenway came on the night that George W. Bush got re-elected. I was at The Magician, a bar on the Lower East Side of NYC, watching the returns with some friends, and I wondered what happened to all those people from the 1960s who were supposed to change the world? Where were those lost idealists and protesters? It seemed like they had all vanished, died, or sold out. I started to think about how liberalism had seemed to be on the decline in America since about 1980, when Reagan got elected, and how hippies were now pretty much a joke, a mostly forgotten stereotype. And somehow, I got to thinking about Uncle Vanya.

I have loved the play Uncle Vanya ever since I saw a production of it done at The Western Stage of Salinas directed by my friend Jon Selover. It’s so funny and sad and pertinent. I remember watching Julian Lopez-Morillas as Astrov in Act Three going on about the shrinking forests and thinking maybe the speech was an insert, penned by a modern writer. But no, turns out old Anton was an environmentalist. This particular production was brilliant—fast and furious and thought provoking—not unusual for that theatre company. If there was one part of the play that I didn’t completely relate to, it was how Vanya was so mad at Serebryakov. I got that Vanya was in love with the professor’s wife, but there was a deeper sense of betrayal at the professor. I don’t know if it was that version of the script (Mamet’s), or where I was in my life at the time, but it just didn’t quite click for me.

But then, watching George W. Bush on the screen, it clicked. Serebryakov was a sell-out, the equivalent of all those people from the 1960s who had once stood for peace, love and understanding but had decided to instead become staunch defenders of the status quo. And I could see in my mind’s eye Uncle Vanya set in the 1980’s, during the Reagan Revolution, on an old hippie commune. Astrov could be a Greenpeace type who works at a methadone clinic, Vanya a burnt out ex-hippie, and Serebryakov a former radical turned conservative. Often, when I get an idea for a play, it’s like that. I see the whole world, and several of its characters. I don’t sleep much, and become sort of annoying to people, as all I can talk about for weeks is the story.

I wrote the first draft quickly. I would have friends over to read scenes as they were being written—including Jack Halpin, Christine Goodman, Heather McAllister, and Tim McCracken. I told Tim Errickson about the idea. He had directed a production of Vanya at Expanded Arts in which I played Astrov, and I knew he would dig it. He did, and soon there was a reading as part of Boomerang Theatre’s First Flight, and it felt pretty groovy. Re-writes were done, and another reading/lab was done up at Lincoln Center, using the talents of many fine actors, including Julie Congress and Dan O’Neill. The next draft was given a reading by BeaconNY Productions, directed by Christopher Grabowski and used such talented wonders as Darrell James, Tara Falk, and Diane Buglewics Foote. One of the great joys of writing plays is all the talented artists you get to work with—each with a unique perspective that adds to the soul of the show. I wrote and re-wrote, and then wrote some more. Many rewrites—with so much help from Lisa that she became co-author—and it was ready for a full production, which happened in the fall of 2006 as a co-production between the Boomerang Theatre Company and Impetuous Theatre Group, with Jack Halpin, Carrie Brewer, Reyna de Courcy, Margaret A. Flanagan, James David Jackson, Tom Knutson, Paul Navarra and was directed by Tim Errickson.

In 2009, there was a workshop reading of the play at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, with a cast that included Gregory Lingington, Richard Howard, Jeffrey King, Derrick Lee Weeden, Terri McMahon, Vilma Silva, Catherine E. Coulson, Miriam A. Laube, Ryan Anderson and Tyrone Wilson. In early 2010, a reading was given by the Seattle Playwrights Collective directed by Dan Tarker with Alysha Curry, Gene Thorkidsen, Sherry Narens, Gary Estrada, Griffith Kadiner, Dolores Rodgers, and Richard Hawki. Several rewrites came about from those two readings, and the version you have is the latest draft, based on all three productions/workshops.

I would encourage people doing this play to seek the comedy as much as possible. And look up all the songs they mention in the script. In this day of the intern, YouTube and Google, it is inexcusable to not research all references in a play.

Enjoy!

NOTE: Fenway: Last of the Bohemians is fully protected by copyright law and is subject to royalty. All inquiries concerning production, publication, reprinting or use of this play in any form should be addressed to Scott D. Edwards of Harden Curtis Associates; email: scottedwards@hardencurtis.com; phone: 212-977-8429; mail: Scott D. Edwards, c/o Harden Curtis Associates, 850 Seventh Avenue, Suite 903, New York, NY 10019..

Original Production Information

Fenway was first presented by Boomerang Theatre Company and Impetuous Theater Group at Chashama, New York City, on November 3, 2006, with the following cast and credits:

Madison: Carrie Brewer
Sunny: Reyna de Courcy
Rita: Margaret A. Flanagan
Moss: Jack Halpin
Zehner: James David Jackson
Fenway: Tom Knutson
Big Jon: Paul Navarra

Directed by Tim Errickson
Written by Kelly McAllister and Lisa Margaret Holub
Asst. Director: Brendan Bradley
Stage Manager: Angela Allen
Set Designer: Joe Powell
Costumes: Cheryl McCarron
Sound: Ryan Dowd
Lights: Scott Davis

Review by Martin Denton

Fenway: Last of the Bohemians, the newest play by Kelly McAllister and his new collaborator Lisa Margaret Holub, borrows characters and situations from Chekhov's Uncle Vanya to tell a story of Americans hopelessly lost in middle-aged ruts. The time is 1986, the height of the Reagan Era, and the country itself, with Vietnam and Watergate a decade in its past, seems headed towards the same sort of relentless anomie. (Has this week's election at long last signaled a path out of that?)

The place is a small island in the Puget Sound, north of Seattle, where 25 years before a bunch of idealistic hippies founded a commune. They included Big Jon Humphrey, who was their leader; his wife; her brother, Fenway; Rita, the nominal "mother" of the pack, who bakes brownies laced with marijuana and "spices" coffee with brandy; and rock & roll stoner Zehner, whose nickname is "Fuckface." The last three still reside at the commune as the play begins. Big Jon's wife died of cancer many years ago; her daughter, Sunny, now runs the place with Fenway. And visiting, for the first time in at least a decade, is Big Jon himself, now a born-again Republican trading on his one-time Abbie Hoffman-esque notoriety to become a prominent and well-compensated convert to the Reagan Revolution. With Big Jon is his new wife, Madison, an intelligent, restless woman who is becoming increasingly disenchanted as the once dynamic man she married has begun to atrophy in uncomfortable middle-to-old age.

Fenway has fallen head-over-heels for Madison, who does not reciprocate. Fenway's best friend, a doctor named Moss who is intensely concerned about the environment, is also enamored of Madison (and in fact knew her years before, when she was a graduate student and he was a young college professor). Fenway cannot abide Big Jon, who he views, with justification, as a sellout and a mooch; he's also very jealous of his brother-in-law, because of his success as a writer and because of his possession, as it were, of Madison.

Sunny, 17, is in love with Moss. As the play progresses, we come to know her well enough to understand that this is no mere kid's crush or infatuation.

If you're familiar with Chekhov's Vanya, then you can see how McAllister and Holub have mapped the situations from that earlier play to their Seattle commune. If you're not, then you will find much to discover as these tangled desires work themselves out.

Either way, you'll be treated to two of the attributes of McAllister's writing that I most admire and respect, namely his deep humanity, which is everywhere in this play, and his keen social consciousness, which echoes Chekhov neatly: the scene that's probably closest to its counterpart in Vanya is the one where Moss explains to Madison about the awful damage wrought by man on the environment—how prescient Chekhov was! And how sadly impotent have generations of activists proved to be as the damage progresses beyond even Chekhov's direst and gloomiest imaginings.

Fenway is intelligent, warm, and funny throughout, but it's not without its problems. Chief among these is Madison's ennui, which is hard to explain in 1986 America: if she's bored with her husband, why doesn't she just leave him and get a job? (In Vanya, her counterpart has no such freedom.) Rita and Zehner's functions within the family/commune structure are also a little fuzzy here, as is the reason why Big Jon has returned. Fenway includes a few soliloquies (as well as a poem, delivered by Sunny at the top of the play) that feel a bit out of place as well: these characters don't know themselves well enough to soliloquize; it seems to me that they seek knowledge (and solace) in others. I suspect that McAllister and Holub will revisit some of these issues as they continue development of this piece.

The production, a co-presentation of Boomerang Theatre Company and Impetuous Theater Group, is generally fine. Tim Errickson's direction is well-paced and nuanced. Particularly strong performances are delivered by Jack Halpin, as a richly complex and humane Moss; James David Jackson as the guileless Zehner; and Reyna de Courcy as Sunny who, if not quite convincingly 17, gets her character's intelligence, frustration, and inner strength exactly right. Margaret A. Flanagan finds the maternal side of Rita but doesn't show us the sophistication that probably led her to this commune so many years ago. Carrie Brewer's Madison is similarly vaguely defined, though I suspect that part of the trouble is that two of her leading men feel so miscast—both Tom Knutson as Fenway and Paul Navarra as Big Jon are unsatisfying, the former playing both too old and too bland, and the latter probably not old enough and failing to convey the magnetism and power that would have attracted Fenway then and Madison now to his cause.

There is, nevertheless, much to commend this insightful and touching new play. So much fundamental in our world is the same now as it was 20 years ago and as it was in Chekhov's time. McAllister and Holub mine that particular truth with great sensitivity and intelligence in Fenway: Last of the Bohemians.

review of the original production in 2006

Excerpt from Fenway: Last of the Bohemians

MOSS

Don’t you see? The fates have given us a second chance- don’t waste it! (grabs her by the waist) I need to touch your soul.

He kisses her. FENWAY comes in carrying a bunch of forget-me-nots, and stops in the doorway.

MADISON

We can’t! Please- (kisses him passionately, then breaks away) Don’t! (another kiss, and then she again tries to break away)

MOSS

(still holding her) Meet me at the old boat house- you name the time. Okay? Okay?

MADISON

(sees Fenway) Oh My God! (crosses away from Moss) Fuck!

FENWAY

You..YOU...HARLOT! YOU HUSSY! (throws the flowers at MADISON) You’re nothing but a Republican slut!

MOSS

It’s not what you think.

MADISON

I hate this fucking place.

FENWAY

I saw everything!

MADISON

I am out of here!

FENWAY

You Republican slut!

MOSS

Don’t call her that!

FENWAY

Why not? That’s what she is- a Republican whore. You’re a fucking asshole, and she’s a Republican bitch.

MADISON

Oh, shut up! Shut your fucking mouth, Fenway! You’re God Damned right I’m a Republican bitch. Better than being a useless left wing burn out like you! You wanna know why I switched to the right? Because you- both of you- are the epitome of the left. All you do is talk and talk and talk- you don’t do a fucking thing! You make up stories about how life should be beautiful and magic. You make us act crazy and do stupid things! I just did a stupid thing. Hoping I’d be able to believe in some bullshit magic place. But you can’t tell me how to get there, can you Moss? You don’t know how. You can’t-

FENWAY

That’s right!

MADISON

Shut up, you annoying, nosy toad! Bad as Moss is, you are infinitely worse. What have you ever gotten done in your life, Fenway? Anything? You just sit around on your fat ass and baby sit a house that’s not even yours, bitching and moaning while getting a free ride. You’re a nothing Fenway- a loser!

Sunny enters.

SUNNY

Daddy’s coming-

FENWAY

Fuck you Madison! You fucking Republican cunt! You fucking lying whore. I hate you. I despise you. I fucking love you!

SUNNY

Uncle Fenway! Don’t talk like that! Don’t you ever talk like that again. Ever! It’s bad enough around here, I don’t need to hear my uncle who I love speaking like that to anybody, ever in my life! It hurts my heart to hear you talk like that. You can’t talk to people like that! It’s not right. You have to stop talking! Why are you talking like that?

FENWAY

Sunny? Sunny, I’m fine! It’s nothing! I’m sorry. It’s nothing.

MOSS

I have to go now. (pause) I have to go.

Moss exits, as Big Jon and Zehner come in.