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Broadway on an Island
Bangor Daily News Editorial - Aug 15, 2007

The old Neighborhood House on Little Cranberry Island, formerly the Grange Hall, is a venue for wedding receptions, basketball games and annual affairs such as the amateur show "Wits and Nitwits," the Firemen's Ball, a literary evening and the Islesford Fair.

But until last week, rarely has it seen a professional production of a major Broadway play. The island community broke new ground by putting on Tennessee Williams's "The Glass Menagerie" before capacity audiences on three successive nights.

People who had made reservations waited on the front lawn until the doors opened 15 minutes before curtain time. When they entered, instead of the bright lights and customary rows of old oak chairs and folding metal chairs, they found themselves in a dimly lit, cozy theater-in-the-round.

The play began in darkness, as the son entered in a merchant marine officer's greatcoat and began to tell the story of his crippled and painfully shy sister who took refuge from a frightening world with her collection of glass animals and the sounds of her father's old Victrola records.

The almost magical production that kept audiences entranced for two hours with the fanciful plot came about because of the conflux on the island of Sonja Moser, chairman of the Theater Department at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, a visit by a few professional actors and actresses, and all manner of cooperation by island residents. Together, they created what dramatists seek to achieve: a suspension of disbelief.

Ms. Moser and her husband, Bill McGuinness, had settled on Little Cranberry four years ago, and she commutes to Brunswick. She first recruited the actors and actresses from Bowdoin and California, including Mr. McGuinness's mother, an experienced actress, a choreographer, and several islanders for walk-on roles. Then, in March, she chose the play.

Producing it in a small isolated island community was quite different from her productions in well-equipped theaters. She made do with small stage, and the old tables and chairs in the Neighborhood House. She augmented its few stage lights with 10 clip-on lights from a local hardware store. The biggest problem was the dress for the mother, a central figure in the play. They had counted on one already on the island, but it had a big stain on the front. With only two days until opening night, they Googled "rental costumes" on the Internet and found one in Seattle. It arrived in time by express mail.

Ms. Moser says the best result was a flood of requests that she produce another play next year. Planning has already begun - for another island concinnity ("a skillful, harmonious arrangement of parts").

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Other Reviews Newspaper coverage being slim on the island, we are gratified to receive many emails, cards and calls after each production letting us know how we did. They come from next-door neighbors and from friends of friends of friends that live thousands of miles away, the word traveling to us third hand via forwarded email.