What could be better tonic in this summer of our national discontent than TriArts’ revival of “Hairspray,” that bouncy, happy musical extolling all-American values: resilience, determination, fair play and victory for the underdog? When chunky Tracy Turnblad bounds about the stage exuding optimism, she’s like a cheerleader for the America we miss. Like a chubby tank with something resembling a lacquered animal on her head, Turnblad lives in a mini world that centers on the Corny Collins TV Show, which allows teenagers to dance on camera and maybe even win the Ultra-Clutch Hairspray Company’s annual Miss Teenage Hairspray Contest. Tracy, regularly forced into detention hall by an unsympathetic principal, rushes home daily to watch the show and dream of becoming a regular. But if the play resembles “Grease” and “Fame,” it is wittier, funnier, better natured; and — without pretension — it is more socially and morally aware. It is also unashamedly sentimental, like a greeting card that makes you remember good times. The play, with book by Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan, is a paean to being different, whether fat — like Tracy and her bloated mother, Edna — or black, like Motormouth Maybelle, her son Seaweed and his friends in segregated Baltimore. So Tracy’s goal isn’t only to get on the Collins show and beat her Barbie-doll schoolmate, the plasticized Amber, for the Miss Hairspray crown, but to integrate the Collins show beyond its one Negro Day each year. To do both, she will have to best the show’s producer, Amber’s ruthless, ambitious, bigoted stage mother, Velma. Given Amber’s comic book meanness and Velma’s spiritual void, we know from the beginning Tracy will succeed. But we don’t know that Tracy’s efforts will change Edna, who, embarrassed by her weight, never leaves their apartment; Link, the singing and dancing heartthrob on the Collins show who mesmerizes Tracy; or Motormouth and the black kids who loiter in her music store. Surprisingly, the show spoofs itself with a witty script and sophisticated jokes: As whites invade Motormouth’s music store, a black kid declares, “If we get any more, it’ll be a suburb.” And when Tracy wonders what comes after detention hall, another inmate declares, “Congress.” The music is based on 1960s rock and doo-wop. Songs spring directly from the story and are mostly very good, even memorable. (You’ll likely sing snippets of “Good Morning, Baltimore” for days.) TriArts has cast “Hairspray” from strength. Katie Sarno’s Tracy is an endearing dynamo with a big voice and great timing. Al Bundonis, in the drag role of Edna — memorably played on Broadway by gravel-voiced Harvey Fierstein and in the movie by John Travolta — builds from perhaps too much restraint in the first act to more in-your-face, over-the-top acting in the second. And he’s dynamite in the finale. As Link, handsome Michael Schultz boasts a mile-wide smile and a good Elvis imitation. Amy Leblanc’s Velma is the quintessential stage mother remembering her own brush with fame as “Miss Baltimore Crabs.” Kara Dombroski’s Amber is all shrill laughter and maliciousness, while Kaitlyn Frank’s Penny Pingleton blossoms from malapropisms and thick glasses into a femme fatale in a tight red dress. Jo’Lisa Jones gives Motormouth (who frequently talks in rhymed couplets) dignity and a big voice. Stephen Wormley’s Seaweed is a long, tall stalk of energy, the best dancer on the stage. And TriArts’ favorite, Michael Britt, is Wilbur Turnblad, the perfect short and charming foil for Bundonis’s big Edna; their duet is a show-stopper. Sarah Combs’s direction is a puzzle: While she mostly moves her large cast well, there are times when the show goes flaccid. The same is true for Cindi Parise’s choreography, usually energetic and tight, occasionally loosey-goosey. Erik Diaz has designed a set that recalls “Ed Sullivan Show” and “American Bandstand” backgrounds. Costumes by Lindsay R. Forde are right-on nostalgic. And the superb Lee Harris gives the musical direction verve and an authentic sound. “Hairspray” runs at TriArts’ Sharon Playhouse through Aug. 21. Call 860 364-7469 or go to www.triarts.net for tickets.
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Meg Sher, executive director of the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village.
“I was a library kid. I walked to the library after school,” she said.
For Sher, the library is as much about the people as it about the books.
“Part of the job I love so much is that running the library is such a community,” she said.
She treasures the relationships she has built, whether recommending books, celebrating accomplishments or helping patrons through difficult times.
“I am thankful that our community is so supportive of the library, unlike what is happening in some other places where librarians are villainized,” Sher said.
Sher takes pride in the Hunt Library’s reputation for being “open and welcoming to everyone. People come in and see things and get pulled into things they weren’t expecting. Our library is seen as a positive force.”
Sher came to Falls Village after being awarded a fellowship at Adamah Farm, then a program of the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. She worked at pickling, in the greenhouse and later in the development office. She also worked as a nanny.
At the same time, “I was in the library all the time,” she recalled. “I’m a voracious reader. The library is where I met a lot of my first friends in Falls Village.”
She became assistant librarian at Hunt and worked in that position for almost a decade before becoming the executive director four years ago.
Meg Sher, executive director of the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village.L. Tomaino
Sher met her husband, Adam, while working at Adamah. They had their wedding there in 2012. He now emcees many events which she co-organizes with the Falls Village Recreation Commission.
Sher and her family live near the library.
“It’s an easy commute,” she said with a smile. “My kids run back and forth. I can go home to walk the dog if I need to.”
“My kids have grown up here.” Her oldest son, Eli, “loves volunteering. He helps with Augustfest and often helps set up chairs for ArtWall gatherings.” Her younger son, Noah, is often at events and was eager to taste cookies at last year’s holiday cookie swap.
When she is not at the library, Sher likes to hike with her family. Bella, their Portuguese water dog, often accompanies them.
Sher enjoys seeking out people to offer events at the library.
“I do a lot of different community programming. It is one of my favorite parts of the job.”
Augustfest, featuring food, music and an auction, is the library’s biggest fundraiser.
“This summer we had a record 152 attendees, which was pretty incredible.”
Yonah Sadeh, a filmmaker from Falls Village, inaugurated the VideoWall this year, Sher explained.
“I’ve known Yonah since he was two. It’s wonderful to work with him as an adult.”
The VideoWall complements the library’s ArtWall, which showcases a new artist each month. Sher praised the ArtWall committee for its work and highlighted December’s popular “12x12 Show,” featuring works by local artists, each measuring 12 by 12 inches and priced at $150.
Sher added that some of the artists who exhibit at the ArtWall offer workshops to students at Kellogg School, next door to the library. In September, artist Danielle Mailer worked with the children. Vincent Inconiglios taught a class last November.
Being next to the school, said Sher, is a great advantage.
“Kids are coming after school, to see friends, work on projects, find a great book. Kids that love the library end up using the library as grownups.”
This past year, in partnership with Adamah, the library and school created a garden, with excess produce made available at The Center on Main.
This year is Sher’s second year participating in the Troutbeck Symposium in Amenia with James King, director of the library at Salisbury School. The Troutbeck Symposium is “a gathering of a year of student historical inquiry across the region” in which students “uncover stories that have been overlooked, forgotten, or never recorded.”
Last year, Sher and King began a project with a group of students researching Irish immigrants in Falls Village, exploring ancestry and creating small magazines about their findings.
They continued this year, visiting St. Patrick’s Catholic Cemetery on Dublin Road, cleaning seven gravestones and even righting one with the help of stonemason and gravestone restoration expert Karl Munson. Paul Kozeazny, a representative of the Catholic archdiocese, helped secure access to the site.
A film documenting their activities will be shown at the symposium in spring 2027.
A full schedule of programs and events, ranging from tech help to ceramic mug-making, can be found on the library’s website.
Despite spending her days surrounded by books, and a busy schedule of programming, Sher still loves to settle in with a book at home.
For more information on library programs and events, visit huntlibrary.org
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Touré was born in northern Mali in 1981. His father, the renowned guitarist Ali Farka Touré, came from a family of soldiers and wanted his son to join the army. The younger Touré studied drums and the calabash and practiced guitar in secret. He earned his father’s blessing to pursue music shortly before Ali died in 2006, and they played two tracks together on Vieux’s debut album.
Touré is known for his deft, polyrhythmic playing, and his songs grow out of riffs that repeat and layer to hypnotic effect. He draws on rock, blues, Latin music and various African traditions. This distinctive blend builds on his father’s work adapting the sonic traditions of Mali’s arid north to the guitar.
Vieux’s album “Mon Pays” (“My Country,” 2013) honored Mali’s culture after Tuareg separatists and extremist groups seized the north in 2012. “Samba” (2017) was recorded before about 50 listeners in Woodstock, New York. In 2022 came “Les Racines” (“The Roots”), a return to his father’s desert blues, and “Ali,” on which he and the trio Khruangbin reworked eight of the elder Touré’s songs.
Touré leads the Ali Farka Touré Foundation, which focuses on cultural and educational work in Mali. Around the anniversary of Ali’s death, it holds a festival in Bamako, Mali’s capital. Bamako has been under blockade for much of the past year, besieged by JNIM, an al-Qaeda affiliate. Against this backdrop, Touré continues to carry the music of Mali to audiences abroad.
At the Nov. 5 concert, Touré’s desert blues will share the bill with Gnawa, the music LanGus plays, which developed in Morocco among West Africans who were brought north across the desert as enslaved people. Gnawa is religious music traditionally performed at all-night healing ceremonies called lila, intended to carry participants into trance.
Samir LanGusProvided
LanGus was born and raised outside Agadir, Morocco, and began learning Gnawa from its masters at age 8. He plays the sintir, a three-stringed bass lute made of wood and camel skin. The player strikes a low string with the thumb to create a deep, resonant pulse. Iron castanets clatter over the sintir’s bass line, and vocalists trade call-and-response refrains.
LanGus infuses the tradition with jazz and improvisation. In New York, he founded the ensemble Innov Gnawa. His first solo album, “Gnawa Love,” came out in February.
Touré and LanGus’s Nov. 5 concert is one of the last public events at Race Brook Lodge, which is for sale and ended full-service operations at the end of 2025. The lodge’s final scheduled event, on Nov. 6, is an evening of Rumi’s poetry with translator and vocalist Haleh Liza Gafori, cellist Isabel Castellvi and ceremonial bard James Bird.
For tickets, visit rblodge.com.
James FitzGerald is a student at Yale Law School, where he focuses on ecological restoration and international environmental cooperation. He splits his time between Lakeville and New Haven.
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