A Tanglewood Tale opens at Shakespeare & Co.

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Through the rest of September, and until Oct. 21, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville are raising their glasses together in the Springlawn Theatre. Upon its publication 150 years ago, Melville dedicated Moby-Dick to Hawthorne. They were friends. They were intimate. And their friendship ended dramatically. Hawthorne left the Berkshires, and Melville burned Hawthorne’s letters. Screenwriters Julianne and Stephen Glantz’s first play follows that friendship to its collapse, on a dig into the foundations of intimacy. The Glantzes were living in Los Angeles when A Tanglewood Tale began, Stephen said. Julianne had just finished her first film, a dark-comedy coming-of-age story. She wanted to do something period, not to be thrown into the mold of dark-comedy coming-of-age stories. She thought of adapting a Hawthorne short story. Then she found Melville’s letters to Hawthorne, and a better story than her original idea arose. Hawthorne and Melville both moved to the Berkshires, Hawthorne from Salem and Melville from New York, for similar reasons. Melville was more or less run out of New York, Stephen said. Debate arose over whether what he wrote in Umu and Taipei pilloried missionaries. Religious establishment called him licentious because his characters slept with native women. Hawthorne lost his job in customs and wrote critically about the process, offending many people. They met in the summer of 1850, Stephen said, because a local lawyer, Dudley Field, arranged a literary hike up Monument Mountain. “The Berkshires in those days was a resort for both bohemians and wealthy folk from Boston and New York.” Hawthorne and Melville lived six miles apart, at Arrowhead and Tanglewood. They were both married and had children. They were devoted family men and dependent on their families, Stephen said, after reading letters between them and their wives, especially between Hawthorne and his wife. Melville did most of the visiting. Melville had to work his farm. He wrote most of Moby-Dick at night, and nearly went blind from working in poor light. He drank heavily. He was often depressed. He supported not only his wife and children, but his mother, sisters and aunts. He also would not let the women drive his carriage, and had to interrupt work to drive them on visits. The Glantzes worked backward, trying to recreate the letters and the dynamic between the two men. Stephen found it amazing that more is not made of Hawthorne and Melville’s relationship, he said. He thinks no one investigated too closely because of the homoerotic element, though no one has proof of anything except the intensity of their friendship. Joanna said, “A lot of people have had a friendship with someone of the same sex that’s cosmic somehow.” Stephen said the play is about “what happens when people react to each other on a level below or beyond consciousness. You can see the relationship play out in Hawthorne’s mind ... It’s about friendships, how much you reveal about yourself.” “And what it means to be a writer,” Joanna said. “A lot of what they talked about is writing, making money by it, supporting a family,” he agreed. Joanna researched Hawthorne and Melville’s friendship and wrote a screenplay. She found some interest in it, but was unable to sell it. “People wanted to know if the two guys actually had sex. No one knows. Without that, it ‘wasn’t marketable,’ ” Stephen said. “People also said, ‘it feels like a play.’ ” Sometime between then and now, along with moving to the Berkshires, she rewrote the screenplay as a play, and Stephen got involved. They showed it to friends, among them Gordon Hyatt at Arrowhead. He loved it and wanted to get behind it for the 150th anniversary of Moby-Dick. He got Shakespeare & Company interested enough to stage a reading last October. It happened on the first snowstorm of the year, Stephen said, and it sold out. Dan McCleary, who plays Melville, also referred to the “rough and tumble reading” last fall, and said he was taken aback by how many came to hear these two men speak. The Glances integrate Hawthorne and Melville’s novels, correspondence, reviews Hawthorne and Melville wrote of each others’ work, into not a fantasy, he said, but an educated inspiration. All the people on the stage are flesh and blood who, in this intimate theater space, the audience could reach out and grab. Mysterious romance has always struck McCleary more as a potent titillation than as what’s really being gotten at in the script, he said. He sees a search for truth at the heart of it. Two men, with a convergence of works, found each other in exile in the Berkshires. The larger world and the literary society they lived in operated with Victorian values. Melville came from a family that did not discuss intimacy and sexuality, McCleary said. “Certainly in Moby-Dick and in many of his works, he struggles with sexuality — how the country, more particularly men, more particularly he is defining it,” McCleary said. The couple struggles with this question but, he said, they do not project an answer. They do make some assumptions about Melville’s romantic past. McCleary said it took two years at sea, experiences on ships and islands to open Melville’s eyes. “It is easy to imagine that when he came back to New York, Albany, the Berkshires, he struggled to find someone he could be intimate with.” The intimacy between Hawthorne and Melville did not need to have been physical, McCleary said. He thinks intimacy is deeper than that. The Glantzes’ script assumes that Melville was able to share a certain intimacy with his wife, Lizzy. “But truths, real truths we’d be burned for, or wear an A on our dress for — looking for someone to share these with is not only right, it is necessary.” It takes two special people, he suggested, to acknowledge the wish for intimacy in themselves and then to initiate an intimate friendship — “and then what, and then what.” It is very hard for two men, perhaps harder than for two women, he said, to initiate a level of intimacy perhaps more profound than what they have with their opposite-sex partners. He finds intimacy without romance more interesting and difficult to develop. Intimacy that springs from romance is easy to do, he said. “We don’t pretend to find answers. And it’s heartbreaking that, at least on stage, answers aren’t found.” But the Glantzes’ play articulates something inside the struggle that he has not seen articulated as profoundly in other plays that try to deal with these themes. The Glantzes rewrote the play many times over last winter and spring. “It felt like looking for the nearest hole to climb into,” Stephen said. They would get notes that Lizzy Melville’s character needed fleshing out and do a Lizzy draft. Then they would find that Sophia, Hawthorne’s wife, needed work. After writing screenplays, Joanna said it was also hard to confine herself to a few locations or sets. “When you’re writing movies, the possibilities are limitless. You can have a scene in a field with a view, another on top of Mount Greylock, another in a bedroom. Here it’s, should I have the character sit on the bench now, or stand?” The fairies in the screenplay had wings and flew. Even after the first draft of the play, they said, Director Michael Hammond had to point out there were staging limitations. Theater has other advantages, though. Stephen mentions a scene in which the actors are meant to be in a tub full of cold water. Well, there is no tub in Springlawn, but the Glantzes said even the audience’s lips turned blue, watching. “You’re right on top of actors in this space,” Joanna said. “You get every subtlety of emotion.” Hammond said directing a changeable script is challenging. It is two jobs in one. “It’s a tall enough order just to direct. Ideally the script is developed before the first rehearsal, but no matter how much time you spend and how earnestly you work ... once you hear it and see it, you learn all sorts of things.” The cast invariably spent a part of each rehearsal on the script. It was fun, he said, but also harrowing, since they have such a short rehearsal time to begin with. Hammond had a teacher, as an undergraduate, who had been a playwright in New York, and who told him there was a particular breed of actor who did well with early plays. An actor who does not need to set anything until the last moment can absorb constant changes. His actors have been very generous, he said. “We have to do it though. If we force our way into an artificial resolution, we’ll have to go back again anyway. It’s best to stay in the muddle.” People are surprised by the play because it is not a BCC stodgy talking heads kind of drama, the Glances said. “People are surprised it is so engrossing.” They added that had to commit a few historical inaccuracies in order to tell the story in a compact way. Joanna brought three characters from Hawthorne’s stories into Hawthorne and Melville’s family life: two fairies and Eustace, the narrator of Hawthorne’s children’s stories, The Tanglewood Tales who acts as the voice of Hawthorne’s younger self. Hawthorne was reclusive, Stephen explained. He had been known to have three hour long conversations with himself or hide behind trees when he saw people coming. The Tanglewood stories are tales he told his own children. He wrote them down about the same time he wrote The House of Seven Gables. Melville wrote himself. They could not get him to shut up. But Hawthorne would not say anything. Joanna said Hawthorne and Melville’s correspondence with each other and with others was more helpful in finding voices even than their novels, especially for Hawthorne, whose work is so decidedly not conversational. “Melville’s letters are intense and personal, he writes,” she said, though the recipient is there in front of him. McCleary said it was not hard to imagine Melville writing himself, if only from looking at his works. “They are so chock full of words. He had such an immense vocabulary. I think also for them, for me, for a number of people in Berkshire County, he does write himself. He’s such a character in his own life, always putting himself in his own work. A 20th century comparison is Hemingway.” McCleary said that Hemingway, like Melville, was a Universal Man, a contradiction. Both found themselves in their work, he said. Melville arguably used himself, Hawthorne, his mother and his ancestors in Pierre, the book that followed Moby-Dick. It is a strange book, McCleary said: it seems to have a number of endings. He finds Melville a wildly interesting artist, “struggling with contradictions and asking big, fat important questions all the time: questions that a young country should have been asking more frequently and more in the open.” Melville grapples with the morality of slavery, McCleary said, and how differences in a country of immigrants were segregating us. He struggled with the idea that depression was a mental, social and genetic condition, at a time when it was considered a physical illness. Melville’s first two books were seen as travelogues, fairly innocent narratives with profound insights. He made money and a name for himself with them, but McCleary said that was not what he was writing at all. He was trying to write what was aesthetically right, and the works he was proud of made no money in his lifetime. He was manic and a heavy drinker, from a family of heavy drinkers. The lack of recognition for Moby-Dick and Pierre threw him into poverty and despair so great that he wrote almost nothing more for public consumption. He wound up on the New York wharves working as a customs officer. He should have been in the prime of his writing life, McCleary said; he lived another 20 years. He saw Hawthorne at least once after Hawthorne left the Berkshires, in Liverpool, and they may have met once in Concord. McCleary does not think teenagers should have to read Moby-Dick in high school; he thinks they should read Melville’s short stories instead. Moby-Dick is infuriating, frustrating and extremely rewarding, he said. Too few people know about Hawthorne and Melville beyond “oh yeah, that’s the guy who wrote the thing about the scarlet letter, never got through it, Cliff Notes were great,” he said. Many people’s first experience with Hawthorne or Melville is being forced to read them, and if someone is forced Moby-Dick at a time when they are not ready to, he does not blame them for never coming back to it. But the short stories, he said, are brilliant. He hopes that the Glantzes’ play will introduce audiences to the two men, as well as to their works — that it will be a friendlier, more immediate, more modern way of getting at them, without a difficult ring from people’s childhoods, and that it will inspire Shakespeare & Company to explore adaptations of Hawthorne and Melville’s stories. Researching Melville for this part has been a thrill, McCleary said. It has been an honor.
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Friday Front Porch Feature: A Charming House Like New

By Breanna SteeleiBerkshires Staff

The home prior to renovations.

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Are you looking for a newly renovated home with great space? Then this might be the perfect fit for you!

Our Friday Front Porch is a weekly feature spotlighting attractive homes for sale in Berkshire County. This week, we are showcasing 100 Autumn Drive.

This three-bedroom, two-bathroom split level was built in 1965 and is 1,396 square feet on 0.32 acres.

The house was completely renovated recently. It includes a one-car garage, and comes with appliances including a dishwasher and stove/oven, and other major appliances.

The house is listed for $359,500.

We spoke with owners Michael Zeppieri and Chris Andrews, who did the renovations. Zeppieri is an agent with Alton and Westall Real Estate Agency.

What was your first impression when you walked into the home?

Zeppieri: I purchased this home to do a full renovation flip and saw tremendous potential in this mid-century split level home that had not been updated since it was built in the 1960s, in a great North Adams neighborhood.

 

Andrews: The house was a much different house when we first purchased it in 2022 (photo attached is from about 2010.)  The interior was painted all in dark colors and we brightened it up with neutral colors. The transformation makes you feel like you are in a totally different house.  

 

 

What were the recent renovations, any standout design features?

 

Zeppieri: The house has had a complete reconfiguration including new kitchen with high-end appliances, ceramic tiled baths, hardwood floors, new windows and roof ... just to name a few.  All a buyer has to do is move in and enjoy.

 

Andrews: Yes, we renovated the entire house.  New windows, new roof, all new custom black gutter system, new blacktop driveway, hardwood floors were installed through out the house. New kitchen and bathrooms as well as painting the exterior and interior of the house.  New paver patio in the back yard.

 

What kind of buyer would this home be ideal for?

 

Zeppieri: The buyer for this home could be a first-time homebuyer or a retiree ... the location is close to attractions in North Adams ... and the property is located in Autumn Heights, which is a very small residential development with several long-term owners.

 

Andrews: This home is truly ideal for a variety of buyers. Whether a first-time homebuyer, a small family or even someone looking to downsize from a larger home.

 

 

What do you think makes this property stand out in the current market?

 

Zeppieri: The location, price and move-in condition of this home make it a true market leader in the North Adams Market.

 

Andrews: This house is completely renovated and in a desirable location of North Adams. The natural light in the home really makes the interior pop. And with all the upgrades the home stays quite cool in the summer months.

Do you know any unique stories about the home or its history?

Zeppieri: This home was built for the Gould family in 1969 and they lived there till 2010. It was always a family home during that time in which the Goulds had two children ... and Virgina Gould managed Mohawk Forest Apartments and was a very active resident of North Adams.

 

Andrews: Built in about 1965.

 

What do the current owners love about this home?

 

Zeppieri: As the current owner it was a fun project to transform this home and get it ready for its next adventure with a new family to enjoy for many years.

 

Andrews: No one has lived in the house since we purchased the home. The new owners would be the first to live in the house since the renovations have been completed.

 

 

What would you say to a buyer trying to imagine their life in this space?

 

Andrews: I would suggest seeing the house either on a sunny day or at twilight to really get a vision of how special the home feels.  

 

You can find out more about this house on its listing here.

*Front Porch Feature brings you an exclusive to some of the houses listed on our real estate page every week. Here we take a bit of a deeper dive into a certain house for sale and ask questions so you don't have to.

 

 

 

 

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