Burlington Play-Reading Group the Neighbors Marks 135 Years

Linda Lane reading club history Credit: Daria Bishop

Members of Burlington play-reading club the Neighbors met last week to mark the group’s 135th anniversary. Their forebears, “men and women of unusual intellect and culture,” according to an account of the group’s first 50 years, might have taken issue with the agenda. Rather than confining the evening’s entertainment to readings of Shakespeare, Shaw, Molière and their ilk — as has been protocol since before Henry Ford built a car — the modern members selected six of their own to read aloud the club’s history.

Such a performance might seem natural for a service club such as the Kiwanis or the Lions, but for the tradition-bound Neighbors — whose orthodoxy has dictated even the particulars of food served for refreshments and the color of the punch — it represented a rather bold choice. “Although we were founded in the ‘Gay 90’s,'” Lyman Allen wrote in a 1940 history of the club, “we took ourselves very seriously.”

But no one objected. The two dozen Neighbors gathered at the Bassett House on Burlington’s North Prospect Street — some wearing floor-length gowns and pearls in a nod to the club’s formal-attire period — formed a gracious audience. Club history, after all, contains many elements of a good play: well-drawn characters, dramatic tension and comic relief.

Descended from the city’s Shakespeare Club, the group formed in 1890 as a “Club for Social Readings.” Its objective, an undated constitution says: “to provide social intercourse and intellectual entertainment” during Burlington’s long winters. College professors and clergy, “with a sprinkling of lawyers, doctors and businessmen,” met in each others’ homes every other week, arriving by foot, trolley car and horse-drawn sleigh, Allen wrote. Early members, he continued, included “Mr. Edward Hungerford, rotund and pompous; Professor Goodrich, with twinkling eyes and hair curling over his coat collar; Professor Torrey with his finely chiseled features, dignified mien and surprising sallies of humor.” Wives and children over 18 belonged, too.

The club’s history contains many elements of a good play: well-drawn characters, dramatic tension and comic relief.

Active membership was limited to 60, as few homes could accommodate more. University of Vermont presidents Matthew Buckham and Lattie Coor belonged, as did governor Philip Hoff and his wife, Joan. Other names on membership rosters have included Aiken, Brownell, Coffrin, Hickok, Luse, Perkins and Whiting.

“A lot of those names became streets, became dormitories, became schools,” said current member Marty French, who can trace her Neighbors lineage back to her grandparents, who joined in 1900.

In her 1937 book about Burlington, We Americans: A Study of Cleavage in an American City, nonmember Elin L. Anderson observed that Neighbors meetings “have an undoubted charm,” partially due to the camaraderie among people who are “not likely to do or think anything that is ‘not done.'” The club also, Anderson continued, had “a good deal of trouble in selecting plays, since many of the older members are prone to resent any intimation of immorality.”

Vermont historian Thomas Bassett, French’s father, picked up club history where Allen had left off, writing in 1987: “Although it is true that sex did not rear its lovely head in Neighbors productions until the 1950s, immorality is of course rampant in Shakespeare, which we continue to favor with frequent readings.”

Plays now include modern dramas, and “evenings can get a little salty,” according to secretary Jeanne Keller. But the club retains many of its longtime traditions.

Ruth Wallman (left), and Jeanne Keller reading a play at the Neighbors’ anniversary meeting Credit: Daria Bishop

It meets six times a year on Monday nights. A committee selects the play for each meeting and casts the parts. Members are expected to read when called upon, but no one else knows what the play will be until they arrive and see the playbill. “It’s like a little Christmas present you open up,” Keller said.

Aside from reading one’s part in advance, rehearsals are not allowed. Cast members don’t even know who the other readers will be.

Refreshments, also assigned, include little sandwiches, cookies, nuts and punch, served in the silver bowl that jeweler and member Bill Preston and his wife, Janet, donated some 50 years ago. And, yes, there is a prescribed punch recipe: a bottle of fruit juice, a bottle of ginger ale and a bottle of club soda “so it’s sparkly and fruity,” Keller said. During the years the Neighbors met at the Klifa Club on Pearl Street, red ingredients were forbidden in order to protect the stately building’s carpet and furnishings.

When tasked to provide sandwiches, local actor Ruth Wallman brings the rather quaint cucumber or ham salad. But in many ways, the club has evolved.

It cut back on cookies and introduced fresh fruit. Because recruiting in recent years has attracted fewer men than women, the club has allowed women to read men’s roles — “one can only imagine how this would have played,” Keller wrote in a history of the club’s past 35 years.

The Neighbors met on Zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic — when they allowed rehearsals, though not without controversy — and they no longer consider North Avenue a far-flung address. Neighbors live in Shelburne, Richmond, Colchester, Jericho and South Hero, as well as Burlington. And they would like to further diversify their group.

“There’s a lot of gray hair now,” said Keller, who is 73 and has been a member for some 40 years. “I think this thing is ready for another generation to turn it into what would work now.” To that end, they welcome plays that are still in development, and they plan to deviate from the long-held tradition of issuing personal invitations to prospective members and start posting meetings on Front Porch Forum.

Not everyone has embraced changes over the years. When members stopped wearing formal attire in the 1990s, “one man quit saying he couldn’t bear to see old traditions die,” Keller wrote. “Another member left the first time a reader, being true to the script, ‘dropped an F-bomb.'”

No one quit when the group read The Vagina Monologues last year, though third-generation Neighbor French, 77, did not attend and declined to read. “I’m too old,” she said. “I can’t read that in mixed company.”

Meetings used to last until 10:30 or 11 p.m. One reading in the club’s early years ran long and ended just before the last trolley car was due, Allen wrote, “so most of the Neighbors hurried into their wraps, leaving the refreshments practically untouched.”

The repast is now served at intermission. Meetings run from 7 to 8:30 p.m., which presents a challenge for the play committee. “You can’t do Shakespeare between 7 and 8:30,” Keller said. Unless they choose one-act plays, they often need to abridge. Linda Lane and Mark Conrad, who in 2017 were determined to produce Hamilton even without music, cut 80 pages.

After the reading of club history last week, members mingled over cupcakes, mixed nuts, lemon snaps with ginger and now-sanctioned red punch, then steered their meeting back onto a time-honored course. They reassembled in their seats to listen to The Actor’s Nightmare, a zany one-act play by Christopher Durang.

Chris Bartels played George Spelvin, the baffled young man who finds himself acting in roles he hasn’t prepared. Keller, as “glamorous actress” Sarah Siddons, extended her vowels and tossed her head for dramatic flair. Virginia Hood’s authentic Australian accent imbued demure sophistication into her portrayal of Dame Ellen Terry. Walter Gundel delivered a solid performance as Henry Irving, a grand actor “proud of his resonant voice.” And Lois Price, portraying stage manager Meg, who pretends to be a maid in the play within the play so she can go onstage and whisper lines to George, produced a feather duster and flicked it over the table in front of her.

It was nearly 9 p.m. when the play ended. Members applauded, then pulled on their coats and quickly dispersed. There were no trolley cars to catch, just a snowy drive home.

To learn more, email the Neighbors at kelljonline@gmail.com.

The original print version of this article was headlined “Won’t You Be My Neighbor? | Burlington play-reading group the Neighbors marks 135 years and welcomes new members”