Revolution’s Edge Returns to Old North

Old North Illuminated has brought back Revolution’s Edge, its thought-provoking play set inside the church on 18 Apr 1775.

Patrick Gabridge wrote this drama to be performed in Christ Church, Boston, about actual people in that congregation in 1775, using the historical record and some dramatic imagination. It’s directed by Alexandra Smith and produced by Jess Meyer for Plays in Place.

It looks like there’s a new cast this summer. The Rev. Mather Byles, Jr., a Loyalist at odds with most of his flock, is being played by Eric McGowan and Tim Hoover. Cato, the African man enslaved by Byles and the play’s narrative voice, is played by Stetson Marshall and Joshua Lee Robinson. Captain John Pulling, Jr., a church vestryman and Patriot activist, is played by Dustin Teuber and Kevin Paquette.

I wrote about the play last summer. The approaching Sestercentennial anniversary of the day it depicts makes it even more resonant.

Revolution’s Edge lasts about forty-five minutes. It will be performed four nights a week through 10 August. For more information, a video preview, and tickets, visit Old North Illuminated.

Peeking in on “Revolution’s Edge”

A month ago I noted the upcoming premiere of “Revolution’s Edge,” a play dramatizing the stresses affecting three men associated with Christ Church in the North End on 18 Apr 1775.

The three characters are the Rev. Dr. Mather Byles, Jr., planning to leave that church; his enslaved servant, Cato, worried about being removed from his family; and John Pulling, a merchant captain and vestryman who’s also interested in the movement of British soldiers. Byles is a Loyalist, Pulling a Patriot, and for Cato the lack of liberty cuts most deeply.

I attended that first performance at Old North and can recommend the show as a thoughtful exploration of how the Revolution’s big issues intersected with individual desires and needs. Performances run through 19 September.

WBUR’s report on the play included this passage:

Nathan Johnson, the actor who plays Cato, says it is one of the most important projects in which he’s been involved.

Johnson, who is Black, promised himself early in his acting career that he would never play an enslaved person. But the depiction of Cato, and the importance of the play’s message, made the role too compelling to pass up.

“I want everyone to see that we have all something to contribute to our history,” Johnson said. “I want everyone to see that it is not a matter of white and Black. It is a matter of America. It is a matter of progress. It is a matter of stakes, it is a matter of tension. And not just for Pulling and Byles, but for Cato as well.”

Cato is the least documented of the three characters. Playwright Patrick Gabridge had to gather vital records from Boston, Roxbury, and Nova Scotia, and then make an educated assumption that all those mentions of a man named Cato related to the same person.

To compound the challenge of building Cato’s character when none of his words survive, an enslaved man in a room with his owner wouldn’t have been able to speak his mind.

Gabridge turned that vacuum into an advantage by making Cato the character who addresses the audience, introducing the historic situation, the other characters, and his own unvoiced thoughts.

For folks who want to hear more, WBUR also ran an audio report.

The photo above of Johnson performing as Cato was taken by Evan Turissini, who plays Pulling, as he waited to enter.

“Revolution’s Edge” Premieres at Old North, 15 June

Old North Illuminated has commissioned a new play depicting the tensions within its Anglican congregation on the eve of the Revolutionary War.

The playwright and producer is Patrick Gabridge. Through Plays in Place, he has previously written site-specific dramas about the Boston Massacre and the John Hancock household for Revolutionary Spaces.

“Revolution’s Edge” portrays three men connected with Christ Church, Boston, in early 1775:

• the Rev. Dr. Mather Byles, Jr., the minister and a firm Loyalist, though descended from the Puritan Mathers. 
• John Pulling, a vestryman on the committee who hired Byles, a merchant captain, and an active Whig (member of the North End Caucus, for example). 
• Cato, a domestic servant enslaved to Byles, married to a woman enslaved to Byles’s in-laws out in Roxbury. 

All three men have young children. All three face the prospects of separating from their families or communities. Byles has just resigned to take a pulpit in New Hampshire while Pulling is wondering if it’s safe for him to remain in army-occupied Boston.

And it’s also the morning of 18 April.

To hear more about this production and the historical facts behind it, listen to Gabridge and Nikki Stewart, execuctive director of Old North Illuminated, chatting with Jacob Sconyers for the HUB History podcast. (Disclosure: Stewart and Sconyers are married. Double disclosure: I’m referenced in this discussion.)

“Revolution’s Edge” will premiere on Thursday, 15 June. After that, there will be performances every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday evening until 19 September. Seating starts at 5:00 P.M., with the performance running from about 5:20 to a little after 6:00. Tickets are $20 for adults, $10 for people under age eighteen, though the show isn’t really recommended for kids under twelve.