Pretty poster art by Leon Friedman
Presented by Cunning Folk Theatre
Based on a short story by Y.L. Peretz
Adapted and directed by Catherine Alam-Nist
Translated by Giovanna Truong and Ruthie Davis
Guitarist: Gabe Nixon
May 28 – 29, 2025
BCA Plaza Black Box
539 Tremont St.
Boston, MA 02116
Critique by Kitty Drexel
75+ minutes with one intermission
BOSTON — Cunning Folk Theatre has shown significant growth from 2023’s Selkie Play at the Somerville Armory to this week’s Stories playing at the Boston Center of the Arts’ Plaza Black Box theater. Stories is an ambitious project with moments of delightful artistic freedom, and its writing is overwhelmed with too many layers of meaning. The creative team should be proud of their progress, and also aware of how much farther they’ve yet to go.
Adapter and director Catherine Alam-Nist based Cunning Folk’s Stories (Yiddish: מעשות ) on a short story by Polish, Jewish poet, essayist, dramatist, and lifelong socialist Y.L. Y.L. Peretz. We’re introduced to Noah (a studious Laila Perlman), who receives Klara (Sophie Rossiter) in his apartment, where he romances her with folktales in exchange for her pleasant company. When Noah realizes he doesn’t have a story to tell Klara at their dinner that evening, he plumbs the depths of his imagination for a new story to tell. We meet a host of characters played by the ensemble from townsfolk to fantastical beasts influenced by European fairytales, stories from the Hebrew Bible, Shakespeare, rabbinic folklore, and events from Jewish history as Noah spins a new story instead.
The Cunning Folk Theatre summary for Stories says, “Stories is ultimately concerned with the narratives which shape how we understand our histories, ourselves, and our relationships, and suggests that, while we may not be able to change the events which brought us here, we have plenty of ability to determine what happens next.” It’s an over-ambitious mission for a young fringe theatre company producing a 75-minute play with a modest budget. I sympathize with anxious theatre artists who desire to tell an impactful story richly layered with psychological meaning, ancestral history, and enough dynamic staging to make a theatre mentor cry.
But, theatre is better served by telling a story well. Without complications. Without trying too hard to get it right. We are at our best when we stop trying to enrich and embellish and simply tell the story.
Cunning Folk Theatre has a lot of grand ideas. Some of them are great ideas. Not all of these ideas serve the story they are trying to tell. Stories is about a forbidden romance. And ritual. And Jewish folklore. And antisemitism. And faith. And the hero’s journey. They act as independent themes forced into one show, rather than used as narrative tactics to express one or two unifying themes.
Additionally, the audience is repeatedly hit over the head by these themes; we aren’t allowed to discover them on our own. Good art lets a viewer receive the themes that speak to them. Stories audience deserve the opportunity to decide on its own what it will take from the performance.
The best, most sincere moments of Stories are the ones that allow its actors to play freely with the script and play off each other. There’s a moment at the start of the show when Noah offers Klara his umbrella. The two are joined onstage by the ensemble playing various townspeople avoiding the rain. At that moment, the cast isn’t trying to impress upon us the significance of this burgeoning romance. Instead, we’re shown the story of humans escaping the weather. It is believable because it is without artifice.
Later, Noah tells us the story of a sleeping princess and the prince who falls in love with her. The ensemble meets center stage and divides to play animals, children, and other characters. This story within a story is sweetly acted and sincerely received because the actors, again, are focused on telling us this new story and not whether they’re Doing It Right for the audience. I wish more segments in Stories were as delightful to watch as this one.
We see this yet again when corrupt police officers bang on the door of a Jewish family trying to observe their faith. The cast’s focus is on telling this important story. They aren’t thinking about the undertones of the scene. They are in the moment, worried for their lives. So, we get to worry with them.
Tell the story. Let the audience decide, rightly or wrongly, if it fulfills the play’s mission.
There are missing credits from the production’s online program. The lighting design had some moments of brilliance. It looked like it really was going to rain in the Plaza Black Box. Using two work lights as house lamps in Noah’s apartment was a nice touch. I wish I knew whom to properly credit for this work.
The guitarist Gabe Nixon played well. Congrats!
It’s a cardinal rule of theatre practice to never let your props unintentionally pull focus in a show. Please don’t give the bread baby a face. Please cover it fully so we don’t know it’s bread.
Cunning Folk Theatre has made great strides in its two seasons. It could fast-track its growth by connecting with its contemporaries – other growing fringe theatre groups with a dream but limited resources – to better distribute production work. I say this as an artist who was in this position over twenty years ago and as someone who has spent the last 13 years watching each new theatre make the same mistakes and fizzle out. Cunning Folk Theatre is in the lucky position that it doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel. Just as The Huntington shares an audience and designers with SpeakEasy Stage and the Lyric Stage Company, and as Hub Theatre shares props, actors and rehearsal space with Fresh Ink and Company One, Cunning Folk Theatre has contemporaries it could also align with. Your community wants you to succeed. I do, too. You might as well succeed together.
UPDATE, May 31, 2025: The guitarist was previously unlisted. Their name is Gabe Nixon.
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