Review: MELVILLE AND HAWTHORNE at Thunderclap Productions

What interests me most about MELVILLE AND HAWTHORNE is it is a meditation on what it means to be American, what it is to be an artist, and how two men can fall in love. Adi Teodoru has developed a fascinating play around the letters Herman Melville wrote to Nathaniel Hawthorne during a time when they lived only a mile or so apart from each other in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. Melville was writing MOBY DICK, a novel he dedicated to Hawthorne. Melville famously stated that Shakespeare and Hawthorne inspired MOBY DICK, and it deviated from being just another adventure story to a commentary on race, class, religion, and male bonding. His whale was much bigger than what anyone imagined, and perhaps it all sprang from him falling for one of the most romantic authors of the time. Melville created a book filled with many races, multiple religions, and thinly veiled queer passages. It was a flop for all those reasons initially in the Puritanical world of America back then but has been reassessed as one of the greatest novels to come out of our country. Playwright Adi Teodoru has connected the dots from 1850 to today, and the play is a brave reinvention of how we look at two literary greats. This work is an impressive world premiere produced by Thunderclap Productions as part of the John Steven Kellett Memorial Series.    

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It’s fascinating to see Brock Hatton and Tyler Galindo take on these versions of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. Both actors suit the division of the two perfectly. Brock is all fussy and fancy and plays a man bewildered by the raw naturalness of his feral friend. Tyler is all bluster and mess as he takes on Melville, who was notoriously boisterous and contemptuous of civility. You couldn’t find two better men to be this pair. They both have grown out their hair to resemble the historical people, and you get a sense of their pure commitment to this play. Their connection feels real, and I believed them from first light to final fade. 

Curtis Barber portrays David Dudley Field the II, an unctuous lawyer who seems to be an abolitionist but still has a racist streak a mile wide. He represents the America of 1850, on the verge of secession. It was a time when our country was polarized into two distinct camps and went at each other’s throats. Curtis plays out this duplicity and becomes the villain of the piece by default. He’s all charm and smarm; the actor is a master of playing an elegant devil. 

Cortney Haffner plays a plucky Sophia Peabody, the wife of Hawthorne. She seems a bit uncharacteristically forward-thinking for the time, but Cortney plays her as a woman who sees everything without fail. She’s likable and charismatic, as well as plain-spoken and forward. Sophie Powers gets the somewhat thankless role of the quieter Elizabeth Shaw, the picked-on wife of Melville. She’s mousy by design, and we feel for her plight as we watch her husband spin more and more out of control. The two women have marvelous scenes together that have a magic that rivals their literary spouses. You could almost make a MELVILLE AND HAWTHORNE play on their complicated marriages and friendship.

In truth, we do not know if Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne were authentically romantically involved. We only have Melville’s letters to Hawthorne, and Adi Teodoru has smartly woven them into the script at key points. Melville refused to release Hawtorne’s correspondence saying they were “too personal.” Scholars debate on whether Melville saw Hawthorne as a muse, lover, or father figure. I would posit, why not all three? It’s hard to know how men of their time defined their relationships. We see so much history that indicates almost queer connections between historical figures, but did they see it that way? Could they have? 

Director Andrew Ruthven does a miraculous job of making MELVILLE AND HAWTHORNE feel like the world we once lived in. He works with minimal set and just a few costumes, but he gives an elegance to the evening that feels polished and pristine. My one critique is he has three or four beats of the play that feel the same. There are confrontations between the two authors that feel like echoes of each other. And any passion is played the same way thrice, down to the exact same blocking. It’s funny because Melville’s works were often criticized for having repetition as a stylistic flaw, giving us clues he wrote passages out of order. But onstage, it feels strange to see the familiar notes hit and the same choreography in what are supposed to be spontaneous reactions. But overall this is solid work, and the staging is quite adept and smartly done.    

MELVILLE AND HAWTHORNE makes for an intriguing evening of theater that made me want to run back home and pull out MOBY DICK and perhaps THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE and start my summer reading. As a student, I never knew of this possible affair between two literary giants. I would have looked at Melville’s most famous work with far more scrutiny had I known. The play delightfully shows us what might have happened. It soars when it talks about the writing process, America of the day, and hints at a queer love that feels born of mutual admiration. They were two men who shared so much it felt inevitable, they defined the art of American literature. And their era is so very similar to our own it’s frightening. 

MELVILLE AND HAWTHORNE runs through August 10th at the MATCH in Matchbox 1. This space has some of the best air conditioning in the entire complex, so be forewarned that you may need a sweater even in summer. Restaurants and bars are within easy walking distance, and parking options are plentiful. 

The picture is of Tyler Galindo and Brock Hatton and was taken by Aaron Alon. 

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