Playwright: Israel Horovitz
At: Paper Moon at the Theatre Building, 1225 W. Belmont
Phone: (773) 327-5252; $24
Runs through: Open run
North Shore Fish is the story of a Gloucester, Mass., frozen fish processing plant on its last legs in the late 1980s, when big business was draining the lifeblood out of smaller New England operations. Through the microcosm of nine characters (assembly line workers, their hot-headed foreman, and the death knell for the plant: a government inspector), we watch as the operation succumbs to a future that doesn't include them. It's a bittersweet story, bolstered by the fact that, during this time, Gloucester was really suffering this kind of economic bloodbath, and workers in the fishing industry, often women untrained for any other kind of work, were facing a bleak economic future.
Israel Horovitz's script rings true with its earthy, often comic dialogue. His characters, salt of the sea types, teeter between desperation and a kind of hard scrabble acceptance of their fate, which is where the joking comes in, as well as the feeble romantic connections. Salvatore Morella (Chris Carpenter), plant foreman, is a womanizer involved mainly with Flo Rizzo (Laura McKenzie), a line worker who talks like a sailor to hide her fear and uncertainty. McKenzie's performance is probably the strongest of the lot; she creates a wholly formed flesh-and-blood woman with whom we can identify and care for, even as we see how her temper and weakness for men are sending her down a path of destruction.
The other workers, ranging from the overweight, hungry-for-love Josie (Melissa Fosse-Dunne who gives a credible, natural performance) to the Flynn mother and daughter team (Barbara Harris and Colleen Gubbins), to 'Porker' Martino (Christopher Harris), the not-too-bright maintenance guy, Horovitz demonstrates his feel for these characters and their plight. Horovitz's play, though, goes for easy melodrama rather than being the serio-comic outing it wants to be. The characters fight, they cry, they entangle themselves wisely or unwisely sexually, they play parent and child to each other … with the end result being a kind of dressed up soap opera set in a blue collar world. It also doesn't help that most of the cast is unable to credibly replicate a true New England accent. These feeble attempts at dialect distract from, rather than enhance the feel of the piece.
Jeff Harris' direction displays a nicely nuanced feel for the 1980s setting, and he moves the play along deftly, keeping the pace spry. He also doubles as the set designer and that, too, rings impressively true, its grainy industrial feel, almost colorless, echoes the character's lives.
North Shore Fish is full of interesting ideas about changing times, blue collar mindsets, and the hunger we all have for security and connection, but it never rises to a level higher than mediocrity. The play needs to somehow be more universal, to help it escape from the soap opera label.