BLOG

Crew Review

By Daniel Smith, Dramaturg for Boojum! and Caffeine Theatre Associate Artistic Director

Cora’s protest sign, Carl’s pool cue, and Errol’s parasol are important weapons for these characters.

In Lewis Carroll’s poem “The Hunting of the Snark,” the Snark-Hunting Crew has ten members.  Boojum! writers Peter Wesley-Smith and Martin Wesley-Smith have whittled the Crew down to eight.  While the Bonnet-Maker and the Broker missed the cut, each of the remaining crew members has been given a name and some fascinating cultural baggage.  Director Jimmy McDermott, costume designer Philip Dawkins, and Props Designer Jessica Rosenlieb collaborated on creating distinctive looks for each crew member, drawing on the information provided by Carroll’s poem and the Wesley-Smiths’ libretto. 

Part of McDermott’s vision for the crew members’ gear was that it should simultaneously convey character and have the potential to be weaponized in order to help fight the Snark.  The most important weapons against the Snark are repeated in several stanzas of the poem as follows:

“They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway-share;
They charmed it with smiles and soap.”

These weapons (particularly thimbles, forks, railway-shares, smiles, and soap) are present in Boojum! and are supplemented by others that have significance for each individual crew member’s occupation, national origin, or personal idiosyncrasies.

The Bellman, named Wal (played by Michael Reyes) is the leader of the Crew.  In the poem, he describes the characteristics of the Snark and affirms the Baker’s description of how best to hunt for the Snark.  In Boojum! he introduces the rest of the Crew and frames the nonsense logic (“What I Tell You Three Times is True”).  The Bellman carries a blank map and does not appear to be a particularly competent sea captain.  As a result, the Crew is frequently on the verge of mutiny.  In the second act he sings “Jubjubby,” a kind of sequel to “Jabberwocky,” in an effort to keep up the Crew’s spirits.  The Bellman’s costume incorporates a visual pun: at the beginning of the show he wears a diving bell headpiece.  He also carries a bell that serves as a versatile communication device.

Cora the Boots (Laura Deger) is a downtrodden bootblack with attitude.  According to the Bellman, “The chip on her shoulder’s a thirty-foot pole.” Cora carries a protest sign that can be wielded as a political message, as a blunt instrument, or as a wooden stake.  She also carries a thimble, one of the main anti-Snark weapons mentioned in the poem.

The Banker, Al (Stephen Rader) is presented as a slick American businessman who carries a martini shaker and glasses in his briefcase.  Al provides the railway-share that is intended as a bit of cajolery to threaten the Snark’s life.  Al has a bitter enemy among the Crew: Carl, a Russian Billiard-marker (Kevin Bishop).  Carl’s weapons are a pool cue, a triangle, and a red billiard ball.  The Bellman states that Carl is reporting on the Snark Hunt to TASS, the state-controlled media of the USSR.  Cold War enemies Al and Carl also portray the constantly carping twins Tweedledee and Tweedledum. 

Errol, the Barrister (Kevin Grubb) has a history in Hong Kong and sings a bluesy number about his ability to negotiate, incorporate, manipulate, complicate, exaggerate, litigate, and otherwise orchestrate legal proceedings.  His parasol is both a weapon against the Snark and a photographic accessory for Dodgson and Alice.  Errol also takes charge of the Crew’s smiles, which “put the Snark at his ease.”

The Butcher, Clarrie (Sara Sevigny) has a fondness for all things Australian, especially the ladies.  (She refers to them as “sheilas.”) She sings a lament for the Southern Cross, the wattle (Australia’s national flower), Vegemite, Violet Crumble, Salvation Jane, and other assorted objects from Down Under.  Clarrie identifies herself as “the butcher from Wagga bloody Wagga,” which suggests a relationship to the Tichborne claimant, a butcher from Wagga Wagga who attempted (successfully, for a time) to pass himself off as Sir Roger Tichborne in 1866.  The Tichborne case is possibly satirized in “The Hunting of the Snark.” Clarrie’s weapons are a meat cleaver and a boomerang.  She also provides the fork for the group effort.

The Beaver in Carroll’s poem spends much time aboard ship making lace and avoiding the Butcher.  Eventually the Butcher and the Beaver are brought together by the cry of the Jubjub bird and the Butcher’s desire to teach the Beaver mathematics and natural history.  In Boojum! the role of the Beaver is taken on by Mrs. Alice Liddell Hargreaves (Heather Townsend).  Her weapons include a croquet mallet (not a flamingo) and a bar of soap.  In discussing how their weapons will affect the Snark, the Crew explains that “the soap puts him all in a lather.”

One school of thought in Carroll scholarship suggests that the Baker is the author’s representative in “The Hunting of the Snark.” The Baker leaves 42 pieces of baggage on the beach, and Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was 42 years old when he wrote the poem.  The Crew has lost its Baker at the beginning of Boojum! and eventually Dodgson himself (played by Alex Balestrieri) is persuaded to take on the role.  As a Baker, he carries egg beaters and other kitchen gadgets.  Dodgson also attempts to maintain possession of his Diary, but that object is often under the control of other characters, notably the Bellman and Mrs. Hargreaves.


Dodgson protects his Diary.