Theater Review: WHAT Brings ‘Sacco and Vanzetti’ Back For A Retrial

 We literally gasped at the set when we were among the first to enter the auditorium of the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater (WHAT) for the world premiere of “Sacco and Vanzetti’s Divine Comedy.” Eerie, elegiac and elegant, it commands the audience: “You’re part of what is about to happen.”

 This set transgresses the fourth wall, for in the first two rows of seats, six abreast, sit a jury. They’re really just bright white mannequins, each posed in a lifelike attitude and each wearing a tan fedora in the style of a man of 1927, but they’re focused on what lies beyond: a stage dressed in big squares of black-and-white checkerboard tile on the floor and lots of jailhouse bars backlit in soft gray. (It’s designed by Christopher Ostrum, who’s also WHAT’s producing artistic director.)

 The play, by Kevin Rice, re-examines the story of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (Christopher Eastland and Jon Vellante), two Italian immigrants attracted to the anarchist movement, who were arrested, tried, and after seven years in prison, executed in the electric chair for two murders that they insisted they didn’t commit. Many think the verdict came not as the result of careful consideration of evidence, but instead after a jury, already prejudiced against dark-skinned new Americans whose English wasn’t the greatest, just got hungry and tired and wanted to get dismissed and go home.

 The play, as it were, re-tries the case at the insistence of Sacco’s assertive widow Rosina (Kathy McCafferty) who, according to the play, was the only woman allowed in the courtroom at the original trial. In this imaginary new trial, it’s Judge Webster Thayer (Stephen L. Russell) who’s the defendant, for the crime of murdering two innocent men. 

 The play uses some humor, even slapstick, and some gentle songs (music and lyrics by Michael Sottile) to get its point across, but it’s by no means a musical comedy. Instead it focuses on the prejudice against newcomers to the American shores. 

 “We are not the same,” the judge yells at his accuser Rosina Sacco, because “I don’t grow tomatoes.” (He says this to assert his upper-class status.) And then he pitches two of hers off-stage, to loud squishing sounds, no doubt to the hurt, anger and disgust of many of us who remember our foreign-born grandparents’ gardens and all the work and love that went into them. And that they sometimes move from almost cartoonish foreign accents into standard American English reminds us that yes, in a generation or two the funny talk will disappear.

 There’s also a theme of clothing as costume, as armor, as conveyor of status. Mostly it’s an exchange between the judge and his bailiff (Robin Bloodworth) about who gets to wear the black robe and be addressed more respectfully during the new trial. But as the story moves to its inevitable conclusion, one of the unforgettable moments comes when Sacco and Vanzetti are ordered to come along and change into the garments that are specially designed to allow the easy placement of electrodes.

 All the actors, ably directed by Tim Habeger, are well up to their roles in this fine and thoughtful play. All the production values (lighting is by Ostrum himself) enhance the show.

 I do wonder about WHAT’s policy of allowing snacks in the theater. Someone behind us had a loud and aromatic bag of popcorn that seemed inappropriate.

 Kevin Rice didn’t rest after he wrote this wonderful piece of theater. He also contributed a heartfelt author’s note to the program. Turns out that his hometown is Milford (Mass.), which was recently the scene of an ICE arrest and detention of a high school student on his way to sports practice, even though the anti-immigration agency’s target was the teen’s father. After vigorous protests all over town, the youngster was finally released.

 But there’s even more to the story: Rice’s maternal side comes from Puglia, Italy and emigrated to Milford, where they lived on Pond Street “in the Italian section of Milford known as the Plains,” wrote Rice, and “[it] was only in the last six months that I read that Sacco, too, lived in one of the four houses on Pond Street and that it’s quite likely that he got to know my grandparents, maybe at one of the many parties or Sunday family dinners on that little street.”

 I am not a Dante scholar and I am sure that there are many references in this play to the “Divine Comedy” that someone else could communicate much better. But I can leave you with food for thought from another source. I recently read a magazine article about an execution performed in another state — in 2025. According to the article, when that state executes someone, the cause of death on the death certificate has to read “Homicide.”

 Do see “Sacco and Vanzetti’s Divine Comedy.” And when you do, try to get into the theater early. You’ll never forget that set.