By Annette Hinkle
The politics that govern the place where sea meets shore have a long, but not always illustrious, history in these parts. While the debate over who has the right to do what on the beaches and waterways of the East End has evolved with time, the emotion behind those issues has not changed. Whether it is a stance protecting pastimes or professions, passions run high. And while the battles may change, the war, it seems, is never truly over.
No where is this truth more evident than in “Men’s Lives,” Joe Pintauro’s fine play about the decline of the baymen — or bonackers as they’re affectionately known — of the East End. Twenty years ago, “Men’s Lives” had its world premiere at Bay Street Theatre, and was the first play to grace the theater’s stage. At the time, Pintauro’s script, which is adapted from Peter Matthiessen’s book of the same name, reflected current events in the form of a reality just coming to pass for families who had lived off the bounty of the sea for generations. It was a reality brought in on the tide of government regulation and a strong sports fishing lobby and it outlawed haul-seining, the baymen’s traditional method of fishing, forever altering their way of life. For a majority of them, it spelled the end of their very existence.
Now, “Men’s Lives” is back at Bay Street. The play runs through July 29 and two decades on, it comes across not as a tale of a culture and people under threat, but sadly, as a historic take on a working-class group of people who have effectively gone extinct on the East End by either dying out or moving on.
Yet still, in a testament to the power of the play, art seems to continue to imitate life in this production. And 20 years later, the play’s subtext remains rich with reference to the continual war being waged by those who, in this day of access debates, are still seeing their rights erode like the very beachfront for which they battle.
From a theatrical standpoint, though the story of “Men’s lives” represents the collective experiences of the entire East End baymen community, the play is told from the point of view of a single fishing family via the perspective of Peter (played by Victor Slezak), a well-educated writer who has ingrained himself in the family by fishing right alongside them. He is the embodiment of the real-life Matthiessen, who, in fact, did get to know many of the subjects of his book the same way. Having Peter play witness to the history is an effective device that lends itself well to the sharing of backstory in a way that doesn’t feel forced or contrived. Peter also becomes the family’s champion when they are forced to take on the larger powers that be (embodied in the form of a sports fisherman as well as a state senator, both played by Mark Coffin).
But ultimately, it is the collective family which is the star of this show. While most often, it is the men and their harrowing tales on the water that becomes the stuff of legend, in “Men’s Lives,” it is the family matriarch Alice, played powerfully by Deborah Hedwall, who acts as the glue holding it all together. Her aging husband Walt (Peter McRobbie) and their two grown sons William (Rob DiSario) and Lee (Brian Hutchinson) toil each day on the often turbulent waters in front of their ancestral home on the beach. Haul seining, the method of fishing in dories and (in the 20th century) trucks on the beach is their preferred method and one that was originally taught to their ancestors by the Native Americans. Working alongside them is Popeye (Scott Thomas Hinson) a fisherman from upisland who is treated like one of the family, even if he is frequently the butt of their jokes, and young Nate Spencer (Myles Stokowski), a neighbor boy who is learning the trade from the older men.
But life on the water has never been easy, and without cost. While tragedy strikes due to the nature of the job itself, it is the threat from legislation composed onshore which ultimately throws the family into crisis. Neither hot headed and heavy drinking Lee nor his younger brother, William, pursued higher education, preferring to stick close to family and tradition after high school. Even with the warning signs and his family’s urging to forget fishing, William refuses to leave the family business by picking up a trade that will allow him to work on the giant homes that are popping up like weeds on the dunes all around them.
For despite the expansive views from their tumble down home, the family lives in an insular world — one built on tradition and family ancestral bonds. They all soon come to understand the property beneath their shack is worth far more than all their meager possessions and indeed, their very lives, combined. It’s a harsh truth, and one compounded by Alice’s admissions that she has secretly mortgaged the place just to keep food on the table when the fish weren’t running.
It’s a move that can only compound the plight of the family.
This production of “Men’s Lives” should be required viewing for anyone who calls the East End home — even if only for a few weekends a year. The material is quite effective thanks to the capable hands of director Harris Yulin, an actor in his own right, who, despite the simple staging of the play, is able to convey the tragic nature of the baymen’s plight very dramatically. Andrew Boyce’s set is at the same time, simple, yet expansive and helps complete the package,. The centerpiece is a deteriorating dory, it’s skeletal ribs exposed, referencing both the power of the sea and the thousands of boats and men who have gone down off Long Island’s shores over the centuries, their parts occasionally washing ashore or becoming exposed by sifting sands. Curved boardwalk planking mimics the shape of rolling waves or the crest of a dune. Pockets of drifted sand mark the wind’s movement and the site of a long gone fisherman’s shack.
For those of us who have been on the East End for the last decade or more, the story of “Men’s Lives” is not a new one. But it remains a tragic one, and one that is well worth seeing. Pintauro is to be commended for finding a way into the story and transforming it into a powerful piece of theater. The details we all know well, or should anyway: the decimation of the scallop population, the failure of the striped bass to turn up in large numbers like the once did. While biologists may ponder whether the root cause is overfishing, pollution, global warming or just the cyclical nature of things, the play itself makes a bigger case for the human toll which is what audiences will carry away with them when the curtain falls.
Meanwhile the fight goes on. Another day. Another battle. Another line drawn in the shifting sands.
“Men’s Lives” runs through July 29. Tickets are $56 to $66. To reserve call 725-0500 or visit the Bay Street Theatre box office on Long Wharf, Sag Harbor.
Top: Peter (Victor Slezak) talks about life on the sea with Nate (Myles Stokowski) in a scene from "Men's Lives." (Jerry Lamonica photo).
