Merry blueberry musical highlights annual Machias festival

MACHIAS – Building a community musical around blueberries is easy down Machias way.

First of all, for a lyric that rhymes with “blueberries,” try “blueberry fairies.”

Blueberries are the natural theme for the annual Machias Wild Blueberry Festival, which concluded Sunday in spite of a rainy Saturday.

As for blueberry fairies, a half-dozen giggling little girls in blue tutus, they are standard fare for the festival’s traditional musical.

Tourists may pour in to the Down East town of 2,400 for the 200-plus craft booths and the same number of blueberry pies. But the locals know the real draw of the festival, always the third weekend of August, is the community production of “Blueberry Blues.”

“It’s Americana,” said Gini King, pastor of the Centre Street Congregational Church that developed both the festival and the musical. “It’s hokey and it’s hometown.”

“Blueberry Blues,” the nickname for the musical, at 29 years as old is as longstanding as the festival itself. More often than not, the production is scripted just a bit too late each spring for its real name to be included in the festival’s printed program.

This year, local lyricists Christine and Doug Guy settled on “Follow the Blueberry Road.” Imagine 30 people crowding the pulpit of the church, singing, “We’re off to find blueberries, those wonderful berries of blue!”

Last year, Marjorie Ahlin wrote “Gone with the Winnower.”

Whatever the spoof, blueberry fairies are always part of the cast. There is a waiting list of Machias-area mothers who want their blonde daughters to turn 4 so they, too, can be considered for the coveted fairy positions.

The musical becomes the toughest ticket in town to score for the Thursday, Friday and Saturday night productions. A full house in the sanctuary of the church numbers about 350, and the $10 price tag promises a memorable evening.

Some people enjoy it so much that they keep coming back as part of the cast.

Norman Nelson has presided in the musical all 29 years. Dick Shaw has been on stage for all but one year when he missed it because of a family wedding. Joy Richardson has taken part for all but two years.

Nelson, the ex-state legislator and former Washington County commissioner, doesn’t like to admit to being 86. But as the elder cast member, he earned the role of the blueberry baron this time.

“There’s just enough ham in me to keep it fun every year,” Nelson said Saturday evening, scarfing down a bean supper across the street from the church, moments before the so-called curtain went up.

There really is no curtain, no stage, no wings and sparse props, and that’s all part of the tradition. What carries each show is the cornball comedy and familiar songs with lyrics changed to support a new story line about blueberries.

Tambourines are also central to the spectacle. Marjorie Ahlin can take credit for introducing a bevy of tambourine-tapping, high-spirited ladies to the lineup, first included in the 1977 show.

Now they’re called simply the Tambourine Toccatas. They are as annual as the inclusion of blueberry fairies and a barbershop quartet. Always part of the show, too, is Gene Nichols putting a violin bow to a saw for a weird woo-woo sound at just the right moment.

The Toccatas, who number nine because that’s all the pulpit can hold at once, also have a waiting list of women eager to learn the spirited routine for next year.

The 90-minute musical seems to serve as Machias’ most creative moment of summer. The cast – it’s open to anyone who wants to get involved – starts rehearsing in mid-July, three evenings a week.

“Once you get into it, you’re hooked,” said Christine Guy, who spends the rest of the year cooking up fun lyrics with her husband.

The show highlighted a festival that wasn’t intended to spill into Sunday, but did because of Saturday’s disappointing rain. Craft vendors were invited to set up again in the parking lots and lawns near the church, and the weather was better indeed.

Sunday, too, was a thanksgiving service at the church, the traditional end to the festival in a town thankful for the blueberry harvest.

But the real thanks this time went to Nelson and Helen Vose, who shared the festival’s chairmanship for 14 years. They received applause and plaques of recognition at the service.

“Helen carried the brunt of the burden, I can assure you,” Nelson Vose said to those in the pews. “I was more or less an adviser all these years.”

“A very good one, too,” Helen Vose responded.