pt at large

"Meeting Across The Water" - Ballads, Blues and Gospel

"Meeting Across The Water" - A gospel group singing traditional and original compositions
The Belmont United Methodist Church
421 Common St., Belmont,MA
May 11, 2013
Sponsored by Tremedal Concerts/Watertown-El Salvador Series

"Meeting Across The Water"? What kind of name is that for a band? Well, when you consider they perform gospel with roots and rhythms from continents from Africa to North America plus a range of blues and pop made famous by both black and white artists, you get the idea.

This is music aimed at your heart. When you come to a concert like this, you leave your cultural identity at the door. You're going to be touched spiritually, and occasionally playfully. Disturbing headlines of the day will dissipate like early morning fog burned off by the sun. You will experience the power of music as a healing and nourishing balm.

Many in the audience were friends of the performers, fellow singers or supporters of Boston's Mystic Chorale, with whom the members of Meeting Across The Water sing. For a non-singer like me, The Mystic Chorale is one of the best-kept secrets around town. Founded in 1990, it’s an amazing group of upwards of 200 people who love to sing. No audition required, just a commitment to show up at every practice and learn to sing with a bunch of people you’ve probably never met before…and produce harmonies that make the world a more joyous place, healing and uplifting for the singers and everyone who experiences them in concert. Anyone from the age of 13 to Grandma Moses may join.

And that is where Louise Grasmere (vocals and percussion), Fred Griffeth (vocals), Jonathan Singleton (vocals, keyboards), and Eric Kilburn (vocals, guitar, mandolin) met and decided to join forces in 2008.

“Meeting Across The Water” turned out to be a meeting across two towns when the venue had to be changed at the very last minute from the First Parish of Watertown to the Belmont United Methodist Church in Belmont.  Since much of the group’s repertoire includes gospel music, a certain degree of divine intervention undoubtedly helped the smooth transition.

The concert begins as the group promenades down the aisle toward the altar singing "People Get Ready.” Halfway down the aisle, they’re joined in song by the entire "congregation".

You would think that singing from an altar would be a marriage made in heaven for musicians. Normally the group sits in a semi circle where they can maintain eye contact and acoustic contact with each other. Tonight, vocalists Louise Grasmere and Fred Griffeth sit on a lower tier of the altar; guitar/mandolin/vocalist Eric Kilburn and guest percussionist Linda Shoemaker sit above them on the next tier. Keyboard/piano player Jonathan Singleton sits off to the side one level below them. Not ideal. This group has not sung together since February and at first the harmonies are little off-balance. Without their customary eye and ear contact, it takes them time get to tuned in to each other.

Louise Grasmere helps coalesce the group with a richly soulful rendition of "Please Send Me Someone to Love," the classic 1952 Percy Mayfield composition. Tentative through the first verse, she downshifts and sings straight from her emotional core, just the way a song like this needs to be sung to do it justice. Mayfield’s bluesy ballad with a social message about discrimination fits right in with most of the Meeting Across The Water repertoire. It’s a sermon in a song and Grasmere delivers it with gritty soulful passion. Louise is locked in.

For the rest of the evening, Louise and Fred Griffeth share the vocal load with Eric Kilburn. After Eric Kilburn’s quiet cover of Blind Willie Johnson’s early 20th century blues “The Soul Of A Man,” he introduces his own “Jesus Ain’t Walking Through That Door” with a pointed anecdote. “The Unitarian Universalist First Parish in Concord, MA, established about 350 years ago, recently appointed its first gay minister." He recalled one of the minister’s memorable quotes: "The road to heaven ain’t always straight." The audience laughs and cheers, fueling an upbeat romp through the gospel tune. 

Fred Griffeth’s solos are surprisingly muted. This is a guy who nails songs with crowd pleasing infectious and creative energy at Toad in Cambridge every Wednesday night. His style and energy could set the place on fire if he lit it up with Louise. Where is the real Fred, I wondered to myself as I listened to him sing songs like "Poor Wayfaring Stranger” and “Sun Gonna Shine In My Backdoor Someday” and "You Send Me." When he didn’t join Louise in her spontaneous scat finish to Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s “Trouble In Mind,” I was dumbfounded.

During the intermission I ask Fred Griffeth about the power of music as a source of healing and comfort.

 “Music calls down the spirit,” Fred replies. Our collective psyches are bathed in its light.

The group assembles for the second set. Louise is nowhere in sight. Fred Griffeth, in a moment of inspiration, waves to a fellow in the second row. “How ‘bout joining me in a song?” The gray haired fellow spritely moves to sit beside Fred. “We haven’t sung this in a while but …”

Fred busts out a lively version “Life Is A Ballgame”, a humorous gospel tune that mixes Bible references with our national pastime. The invited guest adds a perfect bass counterpoint to the lyrics. I wouldn’t believe it possible to locate Job, Moses, Satan, and Jesus on a baseball diamond and make it a spiritual catechism that makes a home run of a life lesson to infectious music. The playful, stylin’ singer I know Fred Griffeth to be emerges. He has the ability to light that church up brighter than a nativity scene. With the exception of " Life Is A Ballgame,” it didn’t happen.

The group takes a brief break and returns with Ms. Grasmere. She returns with a second wind that fills her sails and launches her into the spiritually charged “Hush, Hush Somebody’s Callin’ My Name ” that she belts out with every fiber in her body. Music is truly calling down the spirit.

Eric Kilburn tells the story of Billy Joel’s daughter asking her father where people go when they die. Joel walked into the next room and composed “Lullaby.” Kilburn softly sings the lovely answer to the girl’s question.

It’s hard to underestimate keyboard/piano player Jonathan Singleton’s effect on the music tonight. His subtle underpinning of every song with inventive piano riffs captures the emotional and musical pulse of the group’s singing. Every so often he wheels from his electric keyboard to a piano on yet another level a few feet away. No matter which he plays, you hear a musician remarkably in tune with his group.

The rest of the set is filled with an original Louise Grasmere ode to her late friend and mentor Baba Olatunji and covers of songs by Richie Havens, James Taylor, and Sam Cooke.

The concert ends with the group parading up the aisle singing a muscular version of "Jesus On the Mainline" to which the audience joyously adds choruses, whoops and applause. For this one night, Louise Grasmere is the soul of this group, galvanizing the audience, singing with emotion and soul that truly befit gospel at its best.
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SET ONE

"People Get Ready" – Sung by the group: a 1965 Percy Mayfield gospel influenced composition showing his growing interest in the social and political tenor of the 1960s

"Soul Of A Man" Eric Kilburn sings a Blind Willie Johnson (1902-1947) ballad from the early 20th century. Most of the 30 songs he recorded during a three-year period around 1930 have been covered by scores of musicians and church choirs. Johnson's slide guitar playing is legendary.
http://www.allmusic.com/album/sweeter-as-the-years-go-by-mw0000319069

"Please Send Me Someone To Love" - Louise Grasmere sings another Percy Mayfield composition, a bluesy romantic ballad with a social message about discrimination, fits right in with the kind of songs Meeting Across The Water sings

Heaven please send to all mankind,
Understanding and peace of mind,
And if it's not asking too much,
Please send me someone to love.

Show the world how to get along,
Peace will enter when hate is gone,
But if it's not asking too much,
Please send me someone to love.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/09/29/391787/-Percy-Mayfield-Worthy-Of-Remembrance#

“I Wish I Could Be Free” - Fred Griffeth sings an upbeat version of a Christian Willisohn composition

“Jesus Ain’t Walking Through That Door” - Louise, Fred. Eric and Jonathan rock through Eric Kilburn's original gospel rafter-raiser.

“Baba's Prayer” - Louise Grasmere introduces a song she wrote about her friend and mentor Baba Olatunji, the late Nigerian drummer and activist who was in the forefront of introducing world music.

“A tradition in Guinea is for a singers to gather the community under a banyan tree and sing praises ('Sotemabandani') about great people they have known and pay tribute to the elders, ancestors and teachers.” Louise says. “I was inspired by the tradition to compose this song of praise about my dear friend.” She asks guest percussionist Linda Shoemaker to step down from the tier above her and play in traditional Guinean rhythms. One of the verses, "Love is the only purpose we need to serve," propels the heart of the song. The whole group joins playing mandolin, drums, piano. A gossamer meditative tinge of wistfulness hovers over the song.

"Poor Wayfaring Stranger” Fred Griffeth lead vocal, sings this early 1800s folk/spiritual song

"Trouble in mind" - first recorded in 1924, a slow eight bar blues written in 1924 by Richard M. Jones. Listen to Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s 1941 version to appreciate this one.

SECOND SET
“Life Is A Ballgame” by Sister Wynona Carr, published by Specialty Records
1952, sung by Fred Griffeth and an unidentified member of the audience who supplies a bass line. Fred hits this one out of the park. The lyrics are too much fun not to include below.

The Ball Game by Sister Wynona Carr

Life is a ballgame
Bein' played each day
Life is a ballgame
Everybody can play
Jesus is standin' at home plate
Waitin' for you there
Life is a ballgame, but
You've got to play it fair.
 
First base is temptation,
The second base is sin
Third base tribulation
If you pass you can make it in
Ol' man Solomon is the umpire
And Satan is pitchin the game
He'll do his best to strike you out
Keep playin' just the same.
 
Daniel was the first to bat
You know he prayed three times a day
When Satan threw him a fast ball
You know he hit it anyway
Job came in the next inning
Satan struck him in every way,
But job he hit a home run
And came on in that day.
 
Prayer will be your strong bat
To hit at Satan's ball
And when you start to swing it
You've got to give it your all in all
Faith will be your catcher
On him you can depend
And Jesus is standing at Home Plate
Just waitin for you to come in.
 
Moses is standin' on the side lines
Just waitin’ to be called
And when he parted the Red Sea
He gave Christ his all-in-all
John came in the last inning
When the game was almost done
Then God gave John a vision
And he knew he’d already won.

SECOND SET - AFTER BRIEF BREAK, LOUISE RETURNS

“Lullaby” Eric Kilburn tells story of Billy Joel’s daughter asking him where do people go when they die, Joel walked into next room and composed this song.

“Hush,Hush Somebody’s Callin’ My Name” traditional gospel, Louise, Fred and group

"Here Comes the Sun" – Fred covers this George Harrison song often sung by the late (I have to get used to adding that qualifying word) Richie Havens.

Song by James Taylor, song by Linda. Lovely. Another opportunity for audience participation, to which members in the audience enthusiastically respond.

"You Send Me" – Fred Griffeth covers this Sam Cooke original

"Jesus On the Mainline" – the Meeting On The Waters group dances up the church aisle with this finale. Google the song and find scores of covers of this traditional gospel rocker.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Sheepshearing Festival in Watertown,MA

26th Annual Sheepshearing Festival
Gore Estate, Watertown, MA
April 27, 2013

Late April - spring has sprung. You can smell it, the primordial cells in your DNA can sense it. Growing explosions of pale to brilliant green. You don’t know how much you've missed it, gone from nature's palette since early November.  The pagan in you perks up. You sense renewal, a resurrection of nature after the bleakness of winter.

April is sheep shearing season. Renewal for them, too, being fleeced of their thick tangled lanolin rich winter coat in late spring when temperatures moderate and the shearing wont stress them out. Enter the 26th Annual Sheep Shearing Festival at the Gore Estate in Watertown, MA.

Put together blissful weather when we can shed our own winter coats plus a festival featuring sheep, chickens, horses, a lama, and Australian sheep dogs and you have a huge magnet that has drawn every family for miles around. What a collection. Strollers, babes in arms, toddlers, teenagers doing their best to keep some distance from their parents, and a raft of interested adults eager to get outside in the sunshine. This feels like Disneyland without the rides. There are kids everywhere.

The festival features a boatload of choices: abundant food, crafts fair (88 vendors), Colonial reenactments, live music and Australian sheep dog demonstrations. The main attraction is the sheep shearing demonstrations, a lure for kids of all ages. Kevin Ford, the only professional shearer using the old technique of shearing by hand, is putting on a show.

An arm’s length away from those standing next to the rope enclosure, we smell the wooly sheep and the moist hay-strewn pen in which they nervously wait their turn and occasionally bleat their bewilderment. What a collection: ewes, rams and young sheep – lambs.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1G9lfhOevk

If you listen carefully, you can hear Kevin Ford's old black shearing blades click away as he patiently shears a sheep's entire coat in one  pass, sort of like peeling an apple with one continuous swirl around the sphere.

 

The Sheep Shearing Tent was a huge draw all day long. Note how pure white the inner wool is.

A child holds a handful of lanolin rich wool. I had to wipe my hands clean so I could pick up my camera after holding a chunk of the funky smelling wool.

How often does a city kid get this close to a bunch of real live sheep.

The sheep's outer coat is covered with everything you can imagine after a long winter but the inner side is as pure as the wind driven snow. See the difference in the video.

 

Kevin sharpens his shears then...time to find another customer to shear.

You wonder where the wool for your sweaters, socks, hats comes from?
 

All ages are fascinated by this old fashioned demonstration by an artisan of rare skill.

PHOTO AND VIDEO by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. MORE photos of the day to follow tomorrow...

 

 

Sheepshearing Festival in Watertown,MA Part 2

26th Annual Sheepshearing Festival
Gore Estate, Watertown, MA
April 27, 2013

"Gore Place, the Federal period, historic house and estate of Massachusetts Governor Christopher Gore, includes a small farm with sheep, goats and poultry. The elegantly furnished mansion has been called “the Monticello of the North” and architectural historians consider it to be the most significant Federal period mansion in New England."

 

The sheep, goats and chickens that live on the small working farm on the grounds had company. Horses from the Bolton 4H Club attracted attention. Actually, every animal or bird that was touchable was petted by every kid brave enough to stretch a hand over the fence.

 

Hmmm, what shall we do next? How about looking at the baby goats!

Take a good look, mom. Can you find the kid amongst the merchandise?

With 90 vendors setting up shop, there were artisinal crafts and enough inexpensive accessories to interest every taste.

Dave Kennard and his super smart border collies were a big hit on the other side of the spacious grounds of the Gore Estate.
 

Food vendors, need we say more?

Colonel Bailey's 2nd MA Regiment takes a break between recreating scenes at an 18th century militia encampment. Not sure if kissing the ladies is part of the re-enactment, but one chorus of "Yankee Doodle" is "Mind the music and the step,and with the girls be handy." Enough said.
 
Photos by Paul A. Tamburello,Jr.



 

Boston Marathon Bomber: Last Stand In My Home Town?

Friday, April 26, 2012

 

 

Watertown, MA
Friday, April 19, 2013
3:00 PM

2:33 AM.  Who the hell is calling at this hour?

"This is Detective Connors of the Watertown Police Department. There is an active incident in Watertown right now. Chief Deveaux is asking all East Watertown residents to remain in their houses. If you see or hear anything suspicious please call 617-972-6500."

Now it's personal. One of the Boston Marathon bombers is apparently holed up in a house a mile and half from my home in Watertown. Near one of my favorite restaurants. Near the place I get my car washed. Right off Arsenal Street, one of the busiest thoroughfares in Watertown.

Governor Deval Patrick asked people who live in the entire city of Boston, as well as the nearby communities of Watertown, Waltham, Newton, Belmont, Cambridge, to “shelter in place” — stay inside and not open their doors to anyone, except police with proper identification. That’s over a million people.

Now it's personal. I set my home alarm. For the first time in my life I do not feel secure in my own home. An act of terror rocked the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday, April 15, Patriots' Day. Improbably, the younger of the two bombers identified by the FBI may be making his last stand in an area I drive by everyday. At this moment, he could be on foot in the shadows, like a cornered rat, looking for another refuge. In the semi consciousness of sleep, I register every noise. If I cannot automatically classify it, I wheel out of bed and peek through the shade. I am on edge.

Late last night, the two bombers highjacked an SUV at a 7-Eleven, shot and killed an MIT police officer as he sat in his car,  and led police on a bloody shootout as the SUV raced down a local streets. Hundreds of rounds were fired. One of the bombers, the older brother, was killed in the chase. His younger brother is in hiding in Watertown, my hometown for over 40 years. I recognize every landmark in the background as CNN engages in nonstop coverage. My hometown is a giant televised crime scene. This is surreal.

Hundreds if not thousands of state, local, and federal law enforcement agents of every stripe are forming a thick collar around that neighborhood a mile away. The street outside my door, normally buzzing with UPS trucks, neighbors driving or walking to and fro, and teenagers heading for Victory Field, is empty. Businesses, schools, the public transportation system of buses and subways – closed.  A “Shelter in place” advisory to all. Unprecedented.

Now it's personal. Since about 2:45 PM on Monday, I realized the Boston Marathon would never be the same. As of 2:33 AM, my tiny, under the radar, unassuming, adopted hometown is in the shadow of that horrible act.

Terror used to be abstract. It happened somewhere else. New York City on September 11, Oklahoma City in 1995, and now Boston. The scene of Patriot’s Day carnage will not disappear. We will still fill Fenway Park and the TD Garden and Gillette Stadium and cheer for our hometown teams. Yes, and run in the marathon.

After Monday, it will be more than a city crazy about its sports teams and traditions. It will be an act of defiance.

About to Spring

Watertown, MA
April 11, 2013

One of these days, it’s gonna happen. You’ll walk outside and the whole world will have turned green. And yellow, red, purple, violet, and just about every color in the Crayola box.

At the moment, Spring is in that awkward pre-teen stage. The cheery songs of the early arriving robins fall on deaf ears of dormant shrubs and trees. The predominant color scheme is drab. Brown leaves lie in windblown piles against fences and house foundations. Ribbons of road sand, dumped by the ton from those huge yellow trucks, line the edges of every street in my neighborhood.

The storm troops of spring - snow drops, crocuses, daffodils, hyacinths and their cousins have pushed up and somehow survived temperatures down to the thirties since the official opening of Spring in March. They’re pretty perky. They know what you and I know. Spring is just around the corner.

Some day in the next two weeks, Nature’s hormones will kick in big time. Spring, the kind with exploding forsythia, day lilies, daffodils and tulips, will emerge with the awkward grace of a teenager, with tons of energy and vitality to burn.  

In the meantime, the flora in my little neighborhood is marking time.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

My iPhone: A Lesson In Humility

My iPhone5 is smarter than I am. Exponentially. The first time it rang, I didn’t know how to answer the call. The salesman in the Verizon store smiled, flicked his finger over an icon and said, “Put it up to your ear and talk.”

It knows how to get directions from where I am to where I want to go. It knows where to find the nearest pizza shop, Thai restaurant, gas station and where the nearest theater playing “The Sessions” is located. There’s a ton more it can do. All I have to do is figure it out.  Considering the fact that iPhone-istas say that there’s enough horsepower in an iPhone to have sent the first rocket to the moon, that seems to be a steep learning curve.

Until last week I was the master of my own universe. I could program my DVR, navigate the clicker to play video, DVD, or even old VHS tapes. I could program my microwave to cook whatever I deposited onto the carousel. I could whip out my little two-year-old clamshell LG flip phone, send texts, take a photo now and then, set alarms, and effortlessly make and receive phone calls, which was what I thought was the primary purpose of a cell phone.

Driving along in my car last week, my little phone rang – I pressed the button on the steering wheel to answer. Nothing. Frantic digging around in pockets ensued. I headed to my dealership.  Surely they could make my phone work again.


“The Bluetooth function in your phone has died,” the service tech explained after punching in some numbers on the console and trying to revive my poor little artifact. In the next few seconds, he whipped out his iPhone, fiddled with the console and BAM, his iPhone showed up on my digital console.

“You need one of these,” he grinned.

My friend Christopher, one of many who’ve been lobbying for me to get an iPhone, was thrilled to take me to the Verizon store. An hour after perusing the merchandise, my snappy new iPhone was in my pocket. It chirps, bongs and plays a cool little piano riff, depending on whether I’m receiving a text message, email, or phone call.

Responding to a text is comical. A caveman using a chisel on a smooth piece of bedrock could hammer out a short message faster and more accurately than I. My forefinger is useless at homing in on the letter I want to use. For every correct letter I manage there are two or three I delete. I regularly throw my hands up in utter frustration. This is progress?

Then Christopher tells me about Siri.

When I miraculously learn how to find her, she coos in a soft voice, “How can I help you?” 

He points out the microphone icon, and says,  “Tell her whether you want to send an email or text message to someone in your address book, and tell her whatever punctuation you want and where you want it.”

Siri and I have a moment.

Dear Siri comma I feel like a dope using this phone period It takes me more time to use the keyboard to write a text message than it took Gutenberg to invent the printing press period The only App I can use with utter confidence is the Clock period. Forget the camera period. The shutter button is so sensitive it takes me several tries to make a decent photo that includes a person’s head period And what about the keyboard question mark Can’t you make a larger one so I can hit the right letter every single time question mark I could mail a letter and get a response faster than how it’s going now period. I am aware that the so-called interfaces on the phone are said to be intuitive period Hah explanation mark All men may have been created equal but that does not include equal distribution of intuition period Trust me on this period I couldn’t find my way out of a digital paper bag exclamation point And another thing period Can’t you give a guy more time to compose a message before you say quote ready to send your message  unquote question mark Other than that comma this device comma notice I said device comma nobody calls them phones any more comma might over time comma and we are talking geological time frames here comma still prove to be the cool device that people rave about in commercials during the Super Bowl period By the way comma you have any idea where I could score a good seat for next year’s game question mark smiley face

Photo taken, after several miserable attempts to get the whole phone in the frame, by me with my trigger finger happy iPhone.

Lungs: A Relationship, A Baby, and Global Warming

Lungs, a play by Duncan Macmillan, directed by Bridget Kathleen O’Leary
The Black Box Theater
The New Repertory Theatre in residence at the Arsenal Center for the Arts
Watertown, MA
February 17-March 10, 2013
March 5, 2013

No matter what the New Rep Theatre attempts in their Black Box Theater at the Arsenal Center for the Arts in Watertown, it’s likely to be entertaining, challenging, off -the-wall, unfocused, non main-stream, creative, meandering – often all within the same play. Lungs, a play by British playwright Duncan Macmillan is a case in point.

Within a long stretch of 90 minutes, Macmillan takes on global warming, overpopulation fueled by both irresponsible and planned parenthood, the burden of bringing a child into a world teeming with social and ecological ills, the toll on a relationship of raising a child, and the entire cycle of one specific relationship.

Advertised as a comedy, it feels more like a psychodrama with some really funny lines. The play blasts out of the gate with M (Nael Nacer) floating the idea of making a baby with W his live in girlfriend (Liz Hayes).

W, who happens to be writing a PhD about global warming, is wired like a human pinball machine. Wildly conflicted about the prospect, she goes into hyperdrive, rattling off non-sequiturs, one-liners citing alarming ecological statistics and mugs ferociously.

Nacer as M, offers gravity, calm reassurance, reasoned arguments while managing to check his own ambiguity about becoming a father. (Note: if couples went through this kind of dialogue before deciding to have a child, there would be about one billion fewer people on the planet.)

Hayes is really good as a stream of consciousness woman who scatters facts and figures like a blunderbuss about the fragile state of the planet  and piles her ambivalent feelings about motherhood on top like so many jimmies.

Nacer, as M, can’t say much without setting W off on a tear about small scale personal responsibility of bringing a child into the world and the larger picture of a planet teetering on the brink with diminishing resources and an uncertain future for the generation about to be born.

The scenario is not far-fetched but the random way Macmillan throws in statistics about carbon footprints, a world awash in waste, in the midst of whether the couple should bring a baby into the world feels like driving a square peg into a round hole, more of an erudite filler than an axis upon which to build a hefty element of the play’s theme, which resonates with the angst and conflicting beliefs a man and woman bring to a modern relationship.

Their riffs about the kinds of people popping out platoons of children before they’re of voting age are delightfully non-PC thoughts that liberals might harbor but these two say then feel guilty about. Interspersed with these riffs are their ideas on whether smart people procreate or whether good people create babies knowing they’re adding stress to the planet’s fragile reserves.

The tiny Black Box Theater’s 12’x12’ square stage, surrounded with audience on both sides and center, with its honey oak finish becomes their world. Subtle changes in lighting and illumination of a design suggesting tree roots behind translucent drapery behind the set is all the actors need to portray work, home, a park, a nightclub, even a taxi on the way to the hospital when W’s contractions increase.

Through dialogue and subtle gestures, Nacer and Hayes follow playwright Macmillan’s story line to perfection as the playwright cleverly charts this couple’s relationship from its inception to its demise and beyond.

We hear about the divide between M and W’s parents, the ups and downs of M’s career, W’s commitment to the planet, the breathing exercises used in childbirth, the fading romance, M's infidelity, their separate paths, children (“They grow up, start buying their own clothes, leave home and hate you,” W says.) and a touching scene from their final years. Nacer and Hayes are at their best as they portray, in a matter of seconds, the changing intersections of their lives.

Nacer’s M is steady, gutty and layered. Hayes is great at acting as a very smart neurotic time bomb in nearly every scene but during ninety minutes the role gets stuck in the same mold. A judicious trimming of dialogue would help. Perhaps director Bridget Kathleen O’Leary could have suggested some throttling back or signs of growth that would have given W more dimension.

"Lungs" breathes life into two very complicated, very modern characters.

Photos by Andrew Brilliant/ Brilliant Pictures