The Spitfire Grill is an American musical with music and book by James Valcq and lyrics and book by Fred Alley, based on the 1996 film of the same name by Lee David Zlotoff. The off-Broadway production by Playwrights Horizons began previews at the Duke Theatre on 42nd Street on September 7, 2001, and concluded its scheduled run on October 14, 2001. It won the Richard Rodgers Production Award, administered by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The musical depicts the journey of a young woman just released from prison, who decides to start her life anew in a rural town in Wisconsin. She participates in a journey within the town toward its own tenuous reawakening.
Contents
History
Authors James Valcq and Fred Alley had been friends since high-school music camp in 1980, but they did not collaborate until 1994 on The Passage for Alley's American Folklore Theatre in Wisconsin. New York-based Valcq was seeking a follow-up project for the pair after his Zombies from the Beyond closed off-Broadway in 1995. They wanted to create a piece of populist theatre with elements of myth and folktale. Upon seeing the film The Spitfire Grill, they had found their vehicle. Actual writing of the musical commenced in October 1999.
A demonstration tape of a few songs from the score found its way to David Saint, artistic director of the George Street Playhouse in New Jersey. The theatre presented a workshop of the show in June, 2000, featuring Helen Gallagher as Hannah, and produced the world premiere production in November 2000, featuring Beth Fowler as Hannah. Throughout the process, Arthur Laurents mentored the creative team, encouraging them to find their own emotional truth in the material. The ending of the musical is entirely different from the ending of the film.
Ira Weitzman, associate producer of musicals at Playwrights Horizons, and Tim Sanford, the artistic director, saw the George Street production and announced that The Spitfire Grill would open the 2000–2001 season at Playwrights Horizons after a May workshop. One week before the workshop, Alley suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of 38 while jogging in the woods near his Wisconsin home.
Two weeks later, The Spitfire Grill was presented with the Richard Rodgers Production Award. Stephen Sondheim chaired the committee that chose The Spitfire Grill as the winner. The remainder of the group comprised Lynn Ahrens, Jack Beeson, John Guare, Sheldon Harnick, R.W.B. Lewis, Richard Maltby Jr., and Robert Ward.
The off-Broadway production featured Phyllis Somerville as Hannah, Garrett Long as Percy, Liz Callaway as Shelby, Steven Pasquale as Joe, Armand Schultz as Caleb, Mary Gordon Murray as Effie, and Stephen Sinclair as Eli. It was directed by David Saint. The show received Best Musical nominations from the Outer Critics Circle and Drama League, as well as Drama Desk nominations for Garrett Long as Outstanding Actress in a Musical and Liz Callaway as Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical.
Since the Playwrights Horizons production, The Spitfire Grill has been produced over 900 times worldwide in regional theatres, festivals, stock, community, and school productions. Foreign-language versions have been produced in Germany in 2005; in South Korea in 2007, 2012, and 2015; in Japan in 2009; and in The Netherlands in 2018. Notable American versions include a co-production by American Folklore Theatre (co-founded by Fred Alley) and Skylight Opera Theatre (2002), which featured Phyllis Somerville as Hannah, the West Coast premiere at Laguna Playhouse (2002), which won the OC Award for Best Musical, and the Idaho Shakespeare Festival production in 2006, which was conducted by James Valcq. The musical had its UK premiere at the 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe in a production by the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and its Australian premiere in July 2010 by the Margaret River Theatre Group.
In 2011, American Folklore Theatre produced a 10th-anniversary production that was directed by the composer.
The show premiered in Singapore at the Creative Cube in September 2012. The musical was performed by LASALLE College of the Arts with direction by Tony Knight and musical direction by Ben Kiley. The cast consisted of Erin Clare (Percy Talbott), Alison Eaton (Hannah Ferguson), Timothy Langan (Joe Sutter), Kelly White (Shelby), Emma Etherington (Effy), Vanessa Powell (Caleb) and Brett Khaou (Eli).
The show received its London premiere at the Union Theatre, Southwark, in a production starring Belinda Wollaston as Percy Talbott and directed by Alastair Knights in July 2015. This production was acclaimed as a Top 10 Critic's Choice musical by BritishTheatre.com and was awarded Best New Production of a Musical (Fringe/Regions) in the Broadway World UK Awards.
In 2018, The Spitfire Grill premiered in the Netherlands at the Fontys School of Fine and Performing Arts for a limited run, with direction by Yannick Plugers and musical direction by Rick van den Belt.
Synopsis
Act I
Place: A small town. Time: Not long ago. February. A young woman, Percy Talbott, gazes out the window of her prison cell, from which she is about to be released. In her pocket is a photograph clipped from a travel book with a caption that states "Autumn colors along Copper Creek near Gilead, Wisconsin" ("A Ring Around the Moon"). Arriving in Gilead, Percy reports to the local sheriff, Joe Sutter. He leads her through the deserted streets to a ramshackle diner called the Spitfire Grill, run by a crusty old widow, Hannah Ferguson, who has a bad hip and a sharp tongue. Joe persuades Hannah to take Percy on board and give her work as a waitress.
Percy sets to work in a swirl of small-town suspicions led by Effy, the postmistress and village busybody ("Something's Cooking at the Spitfire Grill"). In the face of all the gossip and Hannah's constant haranguing, Percy begins to wonder whether she made a mistake in coming to Gilead ("Coffee Cups and Gossip"). Her thoughts are interrupted by a cry from Hannah, who has tripped on the stairs and broken her leg. Over the protests of her fiercely protective nephew, Caleb, Hannah has Percy take over the Spitfire. When it comes to cooking, though, Percy is clueless ("Into the Frying Pan"). That night, without explaining why, Hannah reluctantly asks Percy to wrap a towel around a loaf of bread and to leave it near the old stump out back of the grill.
Percy is joined at the Spitfire by Caleb's wife Shelby, an excellent cook. In the heat of the kitchen, the two women are drawn together. Shelby tells Percy about Hannah and Gilead's past, the day her childhood hero went off to war and her hometown changed forever ("When Hope Goes").
Wanting to escape painful memories, Hannah has had the Grill on the real estate market for 10 years with no takers. In a moment of inspiration, Percy proposes a way for Hannah to get rid of the Spitfire and make some money at the same time: a raffle. For $100 and an essay about why they might want the Grill, anyone can enter. At first, Hannah resists, but slowly, something about the craziness of the idea convinces her that it just might work. As the rest of the town watches the long Wisconsin winter stubbornly give way to spring ("Ice and Snow"), the women at the Spitfire plan the details of the contest. Percy and Shelby share a vision of life as they wish it were, while writing the advertisement for the raffle ("The Colors of Paradise").
Critical reception
In New York magazine, John Simon wrote, "It is not often that material moves me to tears, but this was one of those occasions. The Spitfire Grill has the heart and soul that your Producers and Full Montys cannot begin to approach. What even in normal times would be a joy is, in these troubled ones, sheer nourishment." He later included the show in his Best of 2001 list. Other critics also commented on the show's poignancy after the September 11, 2001 attacks. "If after the events of recent weeks you need any reason at all to embrace life again, the musical you've been waiting for has arrived. The Spitfire Grill is one of the most heartfelt musicals of recent years, its homespun charms as inviting as a warm winter blanket", wrote Matthew Murray reviewing the show for Talkin' Broadway. The Wall Street Journal's Amy Gamerman wrote, "The Spitfire Grill feels as if it has been transplanted to Times Square directly from an obscure patch of the American heartland. The longing for a place like Gilead, well removed from the big, troublesome world, is real enough – perhaps now more than ever. The show's creators tap into that longing with unembarrassed directness. At a time when cynicism seems downright unpatriotic, sophisticates may find themselves powerless to resist. Well before the show reaches its conclusion, many of the New York city slickers in the audience may be ready to enter Percy's raffle themselves." Elysa Gardner in USA Today wrote that the score offered "some of the most engaging and instantly infectious melodies I've heard in a musical in some time. Valcq's resonant, folk-based orchestrations make the fetching tunes even more accessible and poignant. Open your heart and visit the Spitfire Grill."
Victor Gluck of the Associated Press described it as "a lovely new musical in the Rodgers and Hammerstein tradition." In Show Business Weekly, David Hurst wrote, "The score by James Valcq is a mixture of country, bluegrass, and Broadway-styled pop ballads that is always stirring and pure Americana in sound with heartfelt lyrics by the late Fred Alley." According to Billboard, "In a genre known for being big and brassy, it's always a pleasure to come across a musical that revels in its quiet moments. That's why The Spitfire Grill is like a breath of fresh country air." Jonathan Frank wrote in Sound Advice, "The Spitfire Grill has a simplicity and emotional resonance that has become all too rare in musical theater. This is a show that succeeds by not trying: it simply is." He described the score as "simply astonishing, due no small part to Valcq's stunning arrangements, which consist of folk instruments and instrumentations, acting as a character unto themselves." Variety's Joel Hirschhorn wrote that "Valcq's numbers are consistently exciting, aided by carefully devised orchestrations. More than most musicals, the underscoring feels like an extra character, brimming with creative cello, violin, mandolin, guitar, and keyboard solos. Fred Alley wrote lyrics that contain the ring of plain-spoken, believable truth."
Awards and nominations
The New York/Off-Broadway Production received an Outer Critics Circle Award nomination for Best Off Broadway Musical.
The New York/Off-Broadway Production received a Drama League Award nomination for Best Off Broadway Musical.
The New York/Off-Broadway Production was nominated for two Drama Desk Awards: Outstanding Actress in a Musical (Garrett Long) and Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical (Liz Callaway).
The London production received Best New Production of a Musical (Fringe/Regions) in the Broadway World UK Awards.
The Washington DC production received 2 Helen Hayes Award nominations.
The Los Angeles production received a Dramalogue Award nomination for Best Musical.
The Laguna production won the OC Award for Best Musical. Actor Misty Cotton (as Percy) received a nomination for Best Performance in a Musical.
The Chicago production received 3 Joseph Jefferson Award nominations.
The San Francisco production won the Bay Area Critics Circle Award for Best Musical.
The Dallas production received 4 Leon Rabin Award nominations including Outstanding Production of a Musical, and won 2.
The Florida production received 3 Carbonell Award nominations.
Original cast recording
The off-Broadway cast album of The Spitfire Grill was produced by Playwrights Horizons in conjunction with the composer, and has been re-released as a digital download.
In other media
The song "Shine" was featured on the VH1 reality series Off Pitch in 2013. "Shine" was performed by Teresa Fischer on her 2013 album Let It Go. In 2015, Liz Callaway included the song "When Hope Goes" on her career-spanning retrospective album The Essential Liz Callaway. Broadway actress Caitlin Kinnunen sang "The Colors of Paradise" with Spencer Glass on a 2020 segment of the BroadwayWorld web series It's the Day of the Show Y'all dedicated to The Spitfire Grill. The posthumously-released collection It Would Be Enough For Me (2002) features co-creator Fred Alley singing "Digging Stone" as well as the unused song "I Thought I Knew".