The Wind and the Rain: A story about Sunny’s Bar

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Upon entrance to the barge, which has a life of its own as The Waterfront Museum, the windows (actually sliding walls) are open, each providing its own vista. One vista provides an almost-view of Sunny’s Bar, the real subject of playwright Sarah Gancher’s The Wind and the Rain: A story about Sunny’s Bar. Another window opens onto the Statue of Liberty; yes, you are that close. In performance, you can lose sight of the fact that you are not in a theater watching a play, that is until your “theater” gently bounces off the dock.

Four actors play quite a number of important roles. The central characters are played by Jen Tullock in the role pf  Tone (pronounced “tuna”), the hearty and stalwart Norwegian artist who ends up enamored with Sunny (Pete Simpson), the aimless yet hunky and charming Antonio Balzano, also an artist (and an actor) named after his grandfather, the original owner of the bar. They each double later as Angelina Tullock), the original Antonio’s steadfast wife , and Romeo (Simpson), a suave lady-killer, one of two brothers that Balzano hires to help run the bar. Romeo breaks out into the Louis Prima version of “Just A Gigolo” as if we needed further proof of his ne’er-do-well ways. He goes on to teach Sunny how to be just like him.

Jennifer Regan and Paco Tolson fill the other roles with imaginative nuance: Regan is Teresa, the faithful wife of Romeo although she would have been better off and sincerely loved if she married his brother Dominic, and Sunny’s evil bitch cousin Gina who is trying to sell the bar right from under him; Tolson finds the humanity in Angelo, though devoted to his wife Angelina, his old world take on masculinity forces him to step on her dreams in furthering his own, and then as Dominic, who has more sense than his brother in everything in life, in particular how to love even if the person you love isn’t in a position to love you back.

Throughout the performance, the four actors assist in the narration, escorting us forward and back not only through the history of Tone and Sunny, but the history of the Red Hook neighborhood as well. There is also a “cast of hundreds” – the audience gets to read lines off screens, or longer passages from books presented to them by one of the actors. For individual lines you’ll know it’s your turn because the person sitting next to you has handed you a shoe being passed through the room and now your row. There are ground-rules in place that if you don’t want to participate, you put up your hand in a mock stop-sign. But then, just like in high school when there were kids that never paid attention – the person next to you looks at the shoe as if it’s a devotional offering. And then there are the ones who never liked to read out loud in school and, conversely, the ones that go, “Ooh! Teacher, pick me!” Sometimes you are treated to a real pro that invests in it all the meaning of an audition. The end result is we have built a community – together we are Red Hook.

We live out this vast text through the painfully beautiful performance of Jen Tullock as Tone. It is Tone that experiences the change necessary to drive this story to its inevitable and decidedly happy though bittersweet conclusion. Tullock’s scenes with Simpson, particularly the early ones, are so engaging as they take us through the baby steps of two cautious people navigating a new relationship. We want them with all our hearts to fall in love, and then they do. Then their conversations turn to a married couple that are used to each other: she talks about their bar and business, and he throws up his hands, but they never lose sight of how much they love each other…she demonstratively and he in his own way. Tullock’s alone time, when she crawls into her car to conduct business calls, is also revelatory, as are the little defeats that are thrown in her conversations with agencies that should be helping make her more resolute. Her body language tells it all.

Pete Simpson is winsome throughout, always finding that silver lining where there is none. As a character that could be painted more as a “heavy,” only because the audience intentionally aligns with Tone, Simpson finds treasures in the actor playing an actor. He is always ready with a smile and then we melt. As all four actors are performing in what is a mere strip of a stage surrounded by audience members on three sides, there is no space for them to hide. The segues for Simpson from Sunny to Romeo and back again are fluid with hints given in body language alone. Remember we first meet Sunny as he is already older having been married with children before he even lays eyes on Tone. His moments where he is immobile, not wanting to wake from sleep to wrestle with responsibility, or when we become aware that he is very sick, are sad more because we sense we are gradually losing a friend rather than simply coming to the end of the play.

Director Jared Mezzocchi uses the proximity of the actors to the audience to its best advantage. We don’t even question when one of our ranks is pulled out to play Young Sunny. It adds to the sense of community that is the cornerstone of this production. Kudos to Mezzocchi and the four actors in intuitively divining who in the audience is most right for participation. As the play dashes back and forth in time, the actors are kept moving, narrating as they go along. Again physical life clearly dictates whether they are in character or in narration mode. Mezzocchi incorporates projection design to complement the telling of the history of the ever-changing neighborhood. It provides a welcome steady stream of point-of-reference when one considers the land was once dry tundra in the shadow of a glacier twice the height of the Empire State Building.

Scenic designer Marcelo Martinez Garcia does wonders with the limited space on the barge. The walls are decorated with so much memorabilia to give us in depth a tangible history of Sunny’s. Framed articles and photographs delineate the pride with which the owners have taken to heart their place in the Red Hook community. This makes the moment when Tone comes into the bar the morning after Hurricane Sandy has wreaked havoc all the more poignant. She sifts through the flooded room holding back tears as she tries to salvage any remnants of what once was a cherished time capsule of a family’s history. Lighting designer Amith Chandrashaker makes as much use of the natural light through open windows as it will allow. As night falls the lamps create their own semblance of time and space.

Costume designer Mika Eubanks lets the modern era fashions dictate what the actors wear in more current scenes, but does herculean work with the Antonio and Angelina costumes considering they both require fast changes. Jane Shaw’s astute sound design never allows us to forget we are in a harbor. Paul Deziel’s projection design is sumptuous. Both in the barge and out, when we en masse make our way with headphones from the barge to the actual Sunny’s, we are followed by projections of the people that have gone before us. The immersive design is striking as the images mix with our own shadows as we walk the two blocks and then again as we witness how the bar’s building had changed over the course of the century-plus.

The Wind and the Rain is haunting in that it is unlike any other theatrical experience. It has characters we get attached to and it leaves us with our hearts full. It takes us simply where we haven’t ever been before.

The Wind and the Rain: A story about Sunny’s Bar (through October 27, 2024)

En Garde Arts in association with Vineyard Theatre

The Waterfront Museum, 290 Conover Street, in Brooklyn

For tickets, visit http://www.vineyardtheatre.org

Running time: two hours and 15 minutes including one intermission