The Wind and the Rain and Sunny’s Bar and Red Hook
“How do you write a story about time?” That question’s posed at the start of The Wind and the Rain, an immersive, site-specific play written by Sarah Gancher, directed by Jared Mezzocchi, and presented in The Waterfront Museum: a repurposed old barge moored just offshore in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
The “time” story here touches on the English, the Dutch, and the Lenape, reaching back to the mudflats and swamps that receding glaciers left behind after carving out New York Bay. But the play’s core timeline is that of Sunny’s Bar: a neighborhood fixture on Conover Street since 1907, when an immigrant couple from Italy opened it. Their descendants (literal and figurative) have kept it open through Prohibition, mob “protection,” dock workers’ disputes, World War II, ownership lawsuits, gentrification and—the biggest challenge—flooding from “superstorm” Sandy.
Sunny (Pete Simpson) and his wife Tone (Jen Tullock) in a quiet, loving moment between spats. (Photo by Maria Baranova)
Jen Tullock mainly plays Tone (pronounced “tuna”) Johansen, widow of the eponymous Sunny and current owner of the bar. Pete Simpson plays Sunny, as well as some barkeeps and other (mostly randy) characters throughout the 20th century. The other actors in the cast—Jennifer Regan, Paco Tolson, and Pete Lanctot (who also plays guitar in the house trio)—take on multiple roles as the years go by, forward and backward in time.
Time, after all, is relative, as we learn from a book read to us aloud by an audience member plucked from his seat by one of the cast. There are many such moments in the play. Even kids get to speak, though they also get a laugh when some of their lines are, in context, what a grownup would say. Almost everyone watching is willing to declaim a line or two, as a token (a shoe) is passed from hand to hand, and the words one is to speak are projected.
(l-r), Pete Simpson, Pete Lanctot, Paco Tolson, Jen Tullock, and Jennifer Regan, just as The Wind and the Rain begins. Tullock greets the audience and explains how the play will unfold. (Photo by Maria Baranova)
At the end of the play, the audience is led off the barge and across the street to a finale staged in front of Sunny’s Bar. Then we are welcome to go inside, see the place for ourselves, listen to live music, and have a drink—just as if we were locals, and this were our hangout. It’s a fitting coda!
There are too many people behind the scenes for each to be cited here. Suffice it to say that the projections designed by Paul Deziel, the lighting designed by Amith Chandrashaker, the sound designed by Jane Shaw, the props designed by Thomas Jenkeleit, and the quick-change costumes designed by Mika Eubanks are as essential to the unfolding and complex rhythms of the play as the script and the direction.
The Wind and the Rain is scheduled to run through Sunday, October 27. Three more performances have just been added: 8 p.m. Tuesday, October 22; 8 p.m. Wednesday, October 23, and 9 p.m. Saturday, October 26.
Getting to the play, or to Sunny’s Bar itself, is easy . . . if you can take a car, a taxi, or an Uber ride through the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. Getting to the Red Hook waterfront by public transit is not so easy. You have to leave the subway at (for example) Jay St.-Metrotech and walk a block or so to catch to the B61 bus. One of the City’s East River ferries stops a few blocks away, as does Ikea’s ferry from West 39th Street. But the play’s website alerts audiences to check the schedules: ferries may have stopped running for the night by the time the show ends. Click for detailed directions.
Opening photo The finale of The Wind and the Rain at Sunny’s Bar on Conover street (Photo by Maria Baranova)
The Wind and the Rain is produced by En Garde Arts in association with Vineyard Theatre, at The Waterfront Museum.
