It’s here! The concert reading of A Healthy Marriage: The Hall-Mills Murders! I write this from the studio at the State Theatre during our cue to cue. Bad news first: I have a headache, I’m a little tired, and we haven’t run the show yet.
Good news: the music is fire!!! The scenes are cooking!! The actors are having fun and so am I!! This is a story being told by people who sound like they need to tell it. Or, more aptly for this piece, they sound like they want to tell it! These characters here are poor, bored, hungry, and they feel existentially like boulders in a rushing river. Oral history is, for them, a pastime. Work is work, home is home- this is entertainment. And what’s better entertainment than a story that can be embellished in the telling? This is 1929, no one’s going to whip out their phone to fact check each other and Ken Burns won’t be born for another 25 years. In A Healthy Marriage: The Hall-Mills Murders, the story was how it is told.
That’s how I heard it! My pop pop told it to me. And in the years since I’ve heard other people tell it to me like it happened to them. That’s what this story does to people, it makes you want to tell it. I hope people leave this concert reading inspired to dig into the case on their own so that they can tell it in their own way.
When the day goes down, our history can define us, and- if we agree- align us.