By STEVEN JUPITER
WEST RUTLAND—When I was growing up in New York, my idea of Vermont was that it was full of hippies eating sprouts and making macrame. That perception, I dare say, is probably not uncommon among people who’ve never lived here. Once I moved to Vermont, though, I realized very quickly that the state’s renowned hippies—the original “back-to-the-land’ers”—were a rare breed and becoming rarer with each passing day. Alas, the hippie fever that overtook Vermont in the 60s and 70s had cooled, with many of the Aquarius crew either reassimilated or concentrated in discrete and diminishing pockets of the state.
“Going up the Country,” an entertaining and informative new musical adapted from Yvonne Daly’s book of the same name and produced by the Vermont Actors’ Repertory Theater, takes a hard-yet-affectionate look at the fate of those rebellious, crunchy folk and at the legacy they left Vermont, a legacy that reverberates through the Green Mountains to this day. The show was written and composed by Eric Peterson and John Foley, and directed by Kimberlee Moyer, who all clearly have great fondness for the “hippies, dreamers, freaks, and radicals” who moved to Vermont to escape the suffocating expectations of American society but found that a life of total freedom wasn’t the utopia they’d imagined.
The show begins with a glimpse of the late Yvonne Daly, back when she was a young, broke hippie poet who talked her way into a writing job at the Rutland Herald. She ended up working there for decades, writing stories about anything and everything in Vermont. She eventually wrote the book this play is adapted from.
From there, the production interposes informational segments, dramatic vignettes, and original songs.
The vignettes follow the relationship of Steve and Melanie—a young, naïve couple trying to make a go of it as hippies.
The original, often-funny songs by John Foley perfectly capture the folky, bluegrassy, Americana-inflected music of the era. The ensemble cast sings and plays acoustic instruments, including guitar, mandolin, and banjo. Mr. Foley said in a conversation at intermission, “There was more substance there than we thought at the time. We wanted to take another look at [the era.]”
The informational segments relay the true stories of hippies who eventually left the commune and found some sort of conventional success, including the famous Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield (of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream) and the not-so-famous Lisa Lindahl, Polly Smith, and Hinda Schreiber (who fashioned the first commercially successful sports bra out of two jockstraps). These segments are presented with humor and pride: hippies were smart, resourceful people. They had to be just to survive those early years when they bought cheap land with no idea how to live on it.
Which brings us to Steve and Melanie, whose first scene finds them wondering how much wood they’ll need to survive the impending winter (answer: much more than they thought). They befriend a young man from a neighboring farm who initially helps them out of sheer pity but eventually comes to embrace their culture even as Steve and Melanie struggle to maintain it themselves. The stresses of the hippie life and the deep-seated American desire to achieve eventually take a toll on the relationship. Alanah Grant and Eric Ray play Melanie and Steve with compassion and authenticity, particularly Ms. Grant. They’re the only two cast members with sustained character arcs, though the rest of the ensemble (Scott Forrest, Vanessa Mills, Olivia Olson, and Donovan Thacker) do an excellent job playing all the peripheral characters that surround the couple. Mr. Thacker has a number of very funny moments as the young farmer who takes a shine to the hippie life.
Director Kimberlee Moyer called the production a “docuplay,” and said she wanted to emphasize the bonds forged between the newcomers (interlopers, even) and the native Vermont farmers who took them under their wings and taught them how to wring subsistence out of the Vermont soil. For her first directorial effort, Ms. Moyer does an admirable job juggling the history, drama, and music.
“They learned to tolerate and accept each other,” said Moyer. And that hard-won relationship, between the hyperliberal hippies and the hyperconservative Vermonters, still offers us lessons for coexistence in today’s political atmosphere.
The set design by Ian Holmquist, Vanessa Mills, and Ms. Moyer, was simultaneously minimal and maximal. The actual stage was kept somewhat spare but the auditorium was covered with groovy posters bearing era-appropriate slogans, like “Don’t hate what you don’t understand.”
The heyday of the hippies may have passed, but their impact on Vermont is lasting. So many new Vermonters who were too young for the original granola boat still came here to find some vestige of it, or just to enjoy its lingering echoes off the Green Mountains.
Anyone who has a fondness for the era, whether they lived through it or not, will certainly have fun getting to deepen their understanding of that moment in Vermont history and of the hippies who made it happen.
“Going up the Country” will play again at West Rutland Town Hall (35 Marble Street) on Friday, May 5 and Saturday, May 6 at 7:00 p.m., as well as on Sunday, May 7 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $20 at the door.
