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10/12/2017 12:01 AMMatthew Barber seems to be enchanted by yearning women of a certain age.
In his Tony Award-nominated play, Enchanted April, which was a book and a 1991 film prior to Barber’s stage adaptation, he followed a group of lonely British women as they found escape from their gray lives by joining forces and setting off for a vacation in Italy where they find their true liberated selves among the wisteria. It had its world premiere in 2000, directed by Michael Wilson.
Fireflies, his newest play, which is receiving its world premiere at New Haven’s Long Wharf Theatre through Sunday, Nov. 5, also is about reawakening the human heart.
Based on the novel Eleanor & Abel by Annette Sanford, the play centers on the character of Eleanor, a retired schoolteacher who lives in a small, sleepy Texas town. Her life changes when she encounters Abel Brown, a mysterious drifter and handyman.
“I read a description of the book and I liked it very much,” says Barber, who is now based in Brooklyn, New York after many years in Los Angeles where he worked on screenplays and book editing,
In the play, Tony Award-winning actress Jane Alexander plays Eleanor and Tony Award-nominated actor Denis Arndt plays Abel. Also in the cast are Judith Ivey (two Tonys for her; she also starred in Long Wharf’s The Glass Menagerie and Shirley Valentine) and Yale School off Drama grad Christopher Michael McFarland. Artistic Director Gordon Edelstein stages the play.
“What interests me in my writing are characters who have been put in a corner by society—or by themselves—and after time has passed, find themselves trapped. Where you started out to go isn’t always where you wind up going.
“These are characters who are re-evaluating their place in world. I’m a person who is always doing that as well so I think those types of characters appeal to me.”
In Fireflies, the leading character of Eleanor is like that, too, he says
“She is pushing the idea there is more to her life than what she has. Sometimes change is difficult, but sometimes it is important, too.”
Barber first read the book in 2005 and first thought it would make a good movie because he was doing screenplay work in Los Angeles. But the more he thought about it—especially the first half of the novel—the more he envisioned it as a play.
Sanford, who like her character was also a retired school teacher, wrote several collections of short stories about her Texas town but only the one novel late in her life. In 2008, Barber proposed to Sanford that he adapt the first half of her novel to the stage.
“It then took me a while to actually sit down and complete it,” he says.
Sanford, who Barber says had a happy marriage and no children, died in 2012 when she was in her 80s. Barber completed the first version of the script in 2015.
“Now I am very close to her niece and we continue to work together,” says Barber.
“It’s a story about facing risk and taking risks in your life and how difficult that is when you reach a certain age,” says Barber. “The main characters here are around 70. Its difficult time in life to take a new risk. It can be romantic and exciting, but at the same time, you’re also set in your ways and secure in the life you have and to let go of your security in order to explore something new is both exciting but also scary. That’s what the play is about. Taking the leap.”
It’s a follow-your-bliss theme that people can identify with, and not just late-in-life folks.
Barber took several major leaps of his own, pulling up stakes and starting over several times in his life.
“For some reason I always am changing it up, going to new places and starting new careers—though I think I’m set on this one for a while. But never say never.”
Frank Rizzo is a freelance journalist who lives in New Haven and New York City. He has been writing about theater and the arts in Connecticut for nearly 40 years.