Global Courant
Old North Church played a vital role in the country’s struggle for independence and has been an active house of worship for 300 years.
Today, one of Boston’s most popular tourist attractions is also, for the first time, a theater hosting an original play.
Set on the day before the start of the American Revolution, “Revolution’s Edge” is a dramatic portrayal of the interactions of three real people of differing beliefs whose lives are about to be turned upside down by the impending war , and explores what the events will mean for their families.
The play’s opening Thursday is set just hours before two men hung two lanterns in the church’s bell tower on April 18, 1775—to signify that British soldiers were crossing the Charles River into Lexington and Concord. The event is immortalized in the line “One if by land, and two if by sea” in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1860 poem “Paul Revere’s Ride”.
“This is a moment of intense drama and a moment of critical importance to the lives of these three men,” said playwright Patrick Gabridge.
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One of the characters is Minister Mather Byles Jr., who remains loyal to the British Crown, while another, member of the Vestry, Capt. John Pulling Jr., is a staunch patriot and one of the two men who would hang the lanterns in the tower.
Cato, who has no last name, is a man enslaved by Byles.
Gabridge is the producing artistic director of Plays in Place, an organization that partners with historic sites and cultural institutions to create site-specific plays and presentations. To ensure historical accuracy, he spent six months painstakingly researching historical archives.
Actor Brooks Reeves, who plays Mather Byles, center, receives help with his costume ahead of a dress rehearsal for the play “Revolutions Edge” on June 12, 2023 at Old North Church, in Boston, Massachusetts. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
“Ultimately it has to be a dramatic piece that will appeal to an audience and it has to be a piece that is suitable for a modern ear,” he said. “But we want to make sure we’re not telling things that we know aren’t true.”
A play seemed like a natural way to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the church in Boston’s North End, said Nikki Stewart, executive director of Old North Illuminated, the secular nonprofit that operates the historic site, which draws about 500,000 tourists a year. and is also still home to an active Episcopal congregation.
The organization’s primary purpose is to teach — and a play fits that perfectly, she said.
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“The reason we teach history at Old North Illuminated is to help people understand how we got to the present and then to help people think about and feel inspired to change or influence the future,” she said .
It’s a message Gabridge took to heart. The three people in the play are not fictional characters; they were real people. They walked the floors of the church’s sanctuary, where the play will be performed, and sat in the pews where the audience will sit.
“I think for a play like this, we want them to appreciate that the people in our past were real people who had complex decisions to make and real lives,” said Gabridge. “Sometimes we look back in history and feel like it was easy for them to make their choices. You know, ‘it was so much easier back then.’ But I think when we look at them as really complex people, we realize that, like us today, they didn’t know what was going to happen next, just like we don’t know.”
Nathan Johnson, the actor who plays Cato, says it’s one of the most important projects he’s been involved in.
Johnson, who is black, promised himself early in his acting career that he would never play an enslaved person. But the portrayal of Cato and the importance of the play’s message made the role too compelling to pass up.
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“I want everyone to see that we can all contribute something to our history,” Johnson said. “I want everyone to see it’s not a matter of black and white. It’s a matter of America. It’s a matter of progress. It’s a matter of commitment, it’s a matter of tension. And not just for Pulling. ” and Byles, but also for Cato.”
The 45-minute play, funded in part by a grant from the Mass Cultural Council, will be performed at the church three times a week until mid-September.
“One thing I hope people will feel is that after they see this piece, they’ll never see the Old North the same way again,” Gabridge said. “They will have a different relationship, a deeper relationship with this place than before.”
