A surprising summertime treasure

Speaking of South County and its surprises,  I launched the summertime with “Love and other Fables” at Theatre by the Sea in Wakefield, and found a Jewish element within its musical tragic-comic premiere performance. 

“Love and Other Fables” gave me much to mull over. How “Aesop” is a variation in the spelling of “Ethiope.”  He was a “Falasha” slave who survived in chains after the defeat of Queen Judith’s aristocratic African and Jewish realm through his skill at weaving fables.

He hid his human and humane hopes for freedom, peace and love within the disguise of animals he knew from those Semien Mountains near Eritrea, the lions and the baboons.  Many a true word is said in jest, the privilege of all clowns in court. He brought the Torah and its wisdom into tale-telling. 

I thought back to my boyhood: unlike our neighbors, we lit logs in our fireplace, which was surrounded by built-in bookcases. My mother would take down the Aesop section of the red, leather-bound Harvard Classics and read to us. I turned away from the lessons in common sense but later rediscovered their magic and their melancholy.

The actual Aesop was executed for his revolutionary ideas by being thrown from a cliff, a fate he predicted among the “tales.”

Not in the pleasant play, among the tended and exquisite garden paths in Narragansett. It is turned into a love story.  Like most of us fellows,  “Aesop” falls in love with a slave-girl who is instead drawn to a pleasantly foolish, tall and “handsome” fellow slave who later becomes reliant and dependent upon his romantic rival who can liberate him through, wit, brains, and the power of poetry.  The ancient wisdom of the Fables seeps through the script by means of the flawless and zestful performances. I add this postscript as an alternative to Channing Gray’s rather harsh critique of the play: I thought it was charming, nostalgic and even inspiring. Like that antique-shop Twilight Zone, our “Kent County” zone has a touch of Eden before the fall!

Mike Fink