We Still Remember: Sacco & Vanzetti’s Divine Comedy at WHAT

I first heard the names Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti when I was thirteen years old, through the famous song Here’s to You, written by Ennio Morricone and Joan Baez for a 1971 film about the men. I heard it sung in French by Georges Moustaki (real name Guiseppe Mustacchi!), and it was in his voice that I imagined them speaking.

Their story is dramatic. Their front-page trial was filled with procedural errors and ethical lapses, and the years of appeals—and their eventual execution—led to protests around the world.

Not something you’d consider material for a having a laugh, but that is precisely what Sacco & Vanzetti’s Divine Comedy, now at the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre through July 26, delivers. As playwright Kevin Rice notes, it’s the only way the story can be told two years short of the hundredth anniversary of their deaths. We’ve learned to live with gallows humor in this country.

The humor is balanced with deadly serious reminders of the reality, much of it provided by the brilliant scenic, lighting, and projection design of WHAT’s Artistic Director Christopher Ostrom. A buzzing sound and flickering of lights punctuates the scenes, a grim reminder of the electric chair. The setting is stark, the black-and-white geometrically tiled floor disappearing into its vanishing point, myriad prison bars framing the stage.

And the acting is stellar. Jon Vellante is Vanzetti; his physical presence dominates every scene, by turns serious and then turning into slapstick in the next breath. (This is something the play does very well; Rice knows when to move from light into dark and back again.) Christopher Eastland’s Sacco is intense and brooding, and Kathy McCafferty as Rosina Sacco brings all the passion—and gesticulating—that establishes her as a first-generation Italian-American.

As the presiding judge, Stephen L. Russell knows precisely where the line is between being stereotypical and lapsing into parody: he is the ultimate white man, wishing the whole ordeal over so he can return to the peace of his club and a fine dinner (with no Italian seasoning!). And Robin Bloodworth is just magnificent; his character as the court bailiff comes close to stealing the show.

Michael Sottile wrote the music; there are a number of clever songs that fit in nicely with the play’s movement. These characters don’t just burst haphazardly into song: rather than awkwardly punctuating the piece, the music adds texture and another angle to the spoken dialogue. Very well done.

Sacco & Vanzetti’s Divine Comedy will have you gasping at the terrible drama and laughing at the comedy, sometimes in uncomfortable proximity to each other. It’s a brilliant reminder of what happens when we lose touch with our humanity.

Historically accurate, it is very much a story for our times, when the same wave of racism, nativism, and xenophobia is again sweeping the country. The men discuss their thoughts on arrival—the streets weren’t paved with gold, and in fact weren’t paved at all: “we paved them,” echoing back the current refusal of many to understand the sweat equity immigrants bring to America.

The haunting question—“will anyone remember our names?—is answered: we do. What we do with their sacrifice remains to be seen.

review by Jeannette de Beauvoir

photographs by Michael A. Karchmer and Mike P. Kerouac