Fort Salem is revived under Jay Kerr & co.

In my line of work, I meet a lot of people who talk about what they are going to do – and sometimes it works that way, but a plenty of times it doesn’t.

A year ago, when Jay Kerr and his wife Lynne purchased the struggling Fort Salem Theater from Quentin Beaver, he had grand ideas for the building. A New York City impresario and jack-of-all-theatrical- trades, Mr. Kerr called himself a collector of antiques, and this slightly crumbling theater the largest of those. His promise was to renovate, renovate, renovate, and to use his New York City connections to bring a new level of theater to Salem.

This, he has done, in spades – and last Friday’s grand re-opening of the main stage was nothing short of a little miracle, especially for those of us who knew it “when,” as the saying goes.

My understanding is that Mr. Kerr’s hearty crew of helpers – paid and volunteer, together -- were working right up to the moment the doors actually opened, addressing some last-minute trouble with a furnace and screwing in the elegant new real theater seats purloined from the old Helen Hayes Theatre on Broadway (in New York City) that replaced the former seating – which was mostly pews left over from the building’s former life as a church.

Like the smaller theater space built into a former cluttered storage room that Mr. Kerr opened in June for his first cabaret-centric summer season, the new Fort Salem main stage boasts rich burgundy walls with elegant gold trim. Where the cabaret room is something of an intimate bauble, the main stage, with its bright white high tin ceiling and wide open seating space facing a broad expanse of rich gold velvet curtain, seems infinitely large – and entirely unrecognizable from its former look, which I can now barely recall.

But the feeling I got as Mr. Kerr gave a brief pre-show curtain talk on Friday night was not that of a community simply here to celebrate or support a newly renovated theater. They were here to see a show. Frankly, in recent years, the turnout wasn’t so great, I don’t think, for Fort Salem, and the theater had fallen out of the warp and weft of regular Salem life.

Mr. Kerr’s winning demeanor seems to me equal parts gentle and eager, with a large dose of ready humor evidenced by a wide smile. He has clearly won himself an active part in the surprisingly thriving arts scene of little Salem. His cast of 30ish for the grand opening show – a new, original musical based on Charles Dickens’seasonal classic A Christmas Carol, co-written by himself – easily blended professional actors from New York and the greater Capital Region with amateurs from town. Never mind the theater is renovated – more to the point: It’s alive again (not unlike the resuscitated Mr. Scrooge, I’ll just note in passing). People have a reason to go there. This viewer predicts that they will.

Fort Salem’s new ‘Christmas Carol’ has heart

Ultimately, it’s not for a pretty new theater that anyone from outside town is going to travel the windy roads of Washington County to get to the Fort Salem Theater – it’s not for a pretty new space that anyone in town is going to plunk down their money to see a show, either, for that matter.

Fort Salem Theater’s new owner Jay Kerr opened the newly renovated main stage on Friday, Dec. 14, with a new, original musical inspired by the seasonal classic, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The show continues on Broadway in Salem through this weekend. The short answer is, yes, it’s worth the drive.

This Christmas Carol, directed by former Dorset Theatre Festival artistic director Bill Aupperlee, is a tight, 75-minute musical that emphasizes the humor of the piece but finally has a lot of heart. I’m a sucker for this stuff, this time of year especially, and found myself rather moved by the end.

The set-up in this case is a modern family of meager means, whose mother tells the Dickens story to remind them of what is good about the season. One family is transported into another, and the story unfolds.

Here is the formidable professional actor and Washington County transplant Gordon Hazzard as a portly Scrooge who relishes his miserly ways – even does a bit of a soft-shoe, most winningly, to celebrate his bad old self. Mr. Hazzard’s light-hearted bad spirit is all the more easily turned to good, as this production has it.

Topical jokes are volleyed sparingly but with abandon: The modern-day Crachit children spar over sharing X-boxes and iPods they don’t even own yet. There are jokes about health care – even, blasphemously,
in the lyrics to a song about Tiny Tim – and The Ghost of Christmas Futureis a particular wise-cracker, once he gets talking.

Here, also, is a large cast of blended amateurs and professionals whose every member contributes admirably.

Mr. Aupperlee knows what he’s doing when he puts his ensemble of Cratchit family singers front stage, center, for the opening number – then follows with a beautifully choreographed children’s chorus that again blows the roof off the room.

Even a two-year old on stage, who is mostly held but has an occasional little bit of business, has serious stage presence and even some instinct for the spotlight. She’s the youngest member of the talented real-life Gee LaMothe family, relatively recent artist transplants to Hebron whose members make up most of the Cratchit family.

Young Brendan Dailey as Tiny Tim has chops to spare, as does an uncredited young female singer in the children’s chorus. Those kids can sing!

Guest Kerri Pedemonti as Belle sings beautifully alongside homegrown actors such as local doctor Dan Garfinkel, who’ve learned their craft in the corps of Peter Carrolan’s Footlighters community theater in Salem. Seasoned amateurs like Hubbard Hall’s Ted DeBonis or Salem Central drama teacher Mary Skelly add equally to the production.

Simple lighting effects and a few furniture pieces create the setting against which the actors tell their story. I especially like that it’s so consistent, cut from whole cloth, especially given the range of experience of company members. To that, credit must be due especially to the director.

I’d also note that Mr. Kerr and his collaborator -- Jeremy Blachman of California, who worked together mostly by phone – have created a winning book and score. Yes, I was even humming a tune on the long drive home.

Much of the back-breaking work has been done, creating this show. My hope is that it becomes an annual event – it’s certainly a version of the Dickens I’d be eager to see back again next year.

Same goes for the back-breaking work of re-opening Fort Salem. I suppose in that case it just keeps being hard work to run a theater – but already, much has been accomplished. As with Scrooge’s prospects at the end of the play, the future for Fort Salem looks bright.

Fort Salem Theater: New Owners, New Season

Fort Salem's big launch, July 6

Jay Kerr of Hebron & NYC Takes a Plunge

Stephen Trombley: ‘In and Out’ in Salem

Article from The Chronicle - Nov. 8-14, 2007
by Jason Irwin

Stephen Trombley is famously unpredictable. On Saturday evening, Oct. 27, some 50-plus people sat down in the dimly lit Fort Salem Theater’s cabaret room, located in Salem’s NationalHistoric District, for an evening of just what they expected...the unexpected.

I was one of them. Fort Salem was featuring a new cabaret show, a performance by the man they billed as “Salem’s Emmy Award-winning Renaissance Man.” What a fitting nicknamethat is....

Mr. Trombley background as an investigative journalist, filmmaker, author and musician certainly is impressive. You might have seen his blues rock band, Psychoneedles, performingaround the area recently (see below for their Glens Falls gig this weekend). And the Emmy isreal, awarded in 1997 for his post-World War II film, Nuremberg.

Mr. Trombley has several films and books to his credit, and has lived at various times inplaces ranging from Ballston Spa to Paris and London. It would be safe to expect that his one-hour monologue with songs would produce a fair amount of uncertainly.

The show was called “In and Out”, a reference to his own experience and observations ofrepetitive behavior. Topics ranged from the death penalty, quitting smoking, people withbeepers, being in a band, having no barber shop in Salem – and don’t forget “Uncle Paul.”

He opened the dialogue by describing how his initial excitement (when the was asked todo the performance) waned shortly after the moment had passed. “It kicked in,” he reminiscedjokingly, “that this was going to be like work.”

Throughout the performance, Mr. Trombley made several humorous “inside” referencesabout Salem. I got the impression that most of the attendees were local residents andacquaintances of the star of the night (but I still got the jokes).

Accompanied on piano by the theater’s artistic director, Jay Kerr, Stephen led theaudience down a windy road of social and political satire, delivered in baritone monologue, sewntogether by the occasional acoustic guitar number.

At one point, he stopped the show cold and proclaimed a state of emergency: “Ladies andgentlemen, we have a tuning situation. We are going to be moving into some territory where it isactually going to matter if the guitar is in tune. Some serious stuff.”

I especially enjoyed his own “start/stop” version of the R&B standard “(Get Your Kickson) Route 66”, Nat King Cole’s “Straighten Up and Fly Right” and, the highlight of the evening,an original song entitled “Because It’s Time” written (over seven years, he laughed) for his wife, Susi.

The Fort Salem Theater was the perfect backdrop for a small performance, an intimatesetting with great acoustics, and a potential for a wide range of events. There’s a much larger main stage in the building with even more capacity and possibilities. Some interesting events areposted on the theater’s web site, including A Christmas Cabaret , coming later this month, apreview of the main stage’s December presentation of A Christmas Carol. The staff was very friendly and hospitable....I enjoyed the piece of complementary Chocolate Silk Layer Cake,very, very much. Thanks!

I asked Mr. Trombley how he came to live in Salem, given his extensive travelbackground, and what he enjoys most about it (besides being the president of the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce). I kind of expected a half-serious, half-not answer.

”I reached a point where I wanted to focus on being in one place,” he said. “Salem is justa magical community. I love the way it looks, the whole sense of community here. And, for atiny place, we’ve got a lot going on. With Jay Kerr’s new Fort Salem Theater, and this being the birthplace of Psychoneedles, I think it’s safe to say that Salem is now the entertainment capital ofthe world”.

Visit the Fort Salem Theater at www.fortsalemtheater.com

The Chronicle (Glens Falls, NY), Nov 8-14, 2007.