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Musical about the Great Molasses Flood opens in May - in New York
By adamg on Fri, 03/23/2018 - 9:02am
BroadwayWorld.com reports on the planned May opening of an off-Broadway production of "Molasses in January:"
An original new musical about a struggling family of Italian immigrants who are literally swept up in the Boston Molasses disaster of 1919.
Too soon?
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Comments
Adding to the Realness
An announcement comes over the theatre that owing to the tank explosion that the Atlantic Avenue Elevated is operating with moderate delays between City Square and Battery Stations.
A Boston Elevated spokesperson then adds that they are adding extra street car service from Adams Square to Clarendon Hill to compensate, but also, the East Boston ferry to Maverick is having bilge problems.
Same as it ever was...
The Olde Timey version of 'switching problems'
Is Harry Frazee going to sell
Is Harry Frazee going to sell Dustin Pedroia to the Yankees to fund this?
Hopefully ...
The play will stick around for awhile.
Definitely too soon, Adam :-P
Definitely too soon, Adam :-P
A year too soon
They should wait at least 100 years to even talk about the causes of the disaster, because family!
I didn't recognize the names
I'm assuming that this show is performed by only the best crisis actors available.
I hear that it moves fast at
I hear that it moves fast at the beginning, but then runs super slow after that.
Something I've never understood
Something I've never understood about this event... Every reference I've ever heard of cites the "Italians immigrants" living in the North End who were affected by the flood. But only 4 of the 21 victims appear to me (no expert here) to have Italian names:
Patrick Breen
William Brogan
Bridget Clougherty
Stephen Clougherty
John Callahan
Maria Di Stasio
William Duffy
Peter Francis
Flaminio Gallerani
Pasquale Iantosca
James H. Kenneally
Eric Laird
George Layhe
James Lennon
Ralph Martin
James McMullen
Cesar Nicolo
Thomas Noonan
Peter Shaughnessy
John M. Seiberlich
Michael Sinnott
The rest sound decidedly Irish or Jewish. And it's my understanding that the NE was predominantly Irish and Jewish before become predominantly Italian in the early 20th Century.
Read Dark Flood
By the time the tank exploded, there was already a large Italian community in the North End. Dark Flood does a good job of placing the explosion in the context of American political hysteria at the time: There was a particular fear of Italian anarchists (Sacco and Vanzetti would become household names the next year) and, in fact, the owner of the tank at first tried to blame those anarchists for the explosion, rather than acknowledging its own shoddy maintenance of the tank (which included painting it brown to hide the numerous points where molasses was leaking from it).
The reason is simple...
... though part of the North End, the immediate area around the tank was industrial. The majority of the fatalities were longshoreman, laborers, and men working the North End Paving Yard. They didn’t necessarily live in the neighborhood. Another factor to keep in mind- the North End was originally predominantly Irish. Honey Fitz, for example, grew up there. So, even as late as 1919, it had an Irish enclave.
Actually The North End was pretty English
Up until about the 1850's. There was that French guy as well; Apollos Rivoire, his kid Paul did all right for himself in the neighborhood.
It was Irish for about 60 years, Jewish for about 10 and half minutes, with the Italians moving in starting around 1900.
Flaminio Gallerani killed in molasses flood
Flaminio Gallerani, from Wellesley, MA was one of the people killed in the flood. He was a truck driver. He was swept into the harbor and his body was not found for some time. He left a wife and one son, Anthony Gallerani.
His widow Leonarda later married my grandfather, Albert Pritoni. My father was born to them. In honor of Flaminio, both my father's and my middle name is Flaminio.
Flaminio came from the tiny town of Renazzo, Italy, part of Cento not far from Bologna.