Myriam Cyr : I was promoting my book Letters of a Portuguese Nun.
MS : I told you I’d written a play and asked you if you’d read it.
MC : I said I’d read it—and I did. I thought it had potential. It was 90 minutes long, there were only three characters, and the paranormal theme is fascinating.
MS : The main character, James, is a young man who is a psychic channeler. When he goes into trance, he channels a wise, non-bodied personality—or soul—named Simon. For the past decade, James has lived with an older academic named Williston who is writing a book on the continuation of the soul after death.
MC : They have a complicated relationship.
MS : They do. And when the play begins, they are fighting. It’s James’s first reading since the pandemic—and he wants to cancel.
MC : Enter Annie. A high school science teacher who does not believe in psychics. But her soulmate husband died in a car accident two years ago and she has not recovered. So, she’s hoping against hope, this reading with James might bring her some peace.
MS : When Williston tells her Simon says there are no accidents, Annie pushes back.
MC : No spoiler alerts!
MS : Okay, okay. Can you believe this is our fourth time doing Simon? 2007 and 2015 at the Boston Center for the Arts. And 2017 Off Broadway at the Lynn Redgrave Theatre in New York’s East Village.
MC : With the late Brian Murray playing Williston. He was an actor’s actor. He worked a lot with Edward Albee.
MS : And don’t forget all the Annies we had during staged readings in New York—Sting’s daughter Micky Sumner, Bette Midler’s daughter Sophie, and what’s-her-name from the television show, “The O.C.,” Mischa Barton.
MC : I am very, very excited about this current cast—I’ve worked with all of them and they are very talented. Malcolm Ingram —he’s Williston—won an Eliot Norton award two years ago for Reparations (which enjoyed a summer run at the Gloucester Stage Company).
MS : That you directed.
MC : Yes. Simon Says is our third collaboration together. Molly Chiffer—Annie—is an extraordinarily nuanced actor I directed in Party in New York. And Kayode Akinyemi is one of the stars of Vikings: Valhalla on Netflix. He will blow people away as James.
MS : And Simon, of course, will be reprising the role as Simon. Speaking of which, this play has evolved through its own iterations.
MC : It has.
MS : I think we’ve responded to some of the early comments from the critics. And setting the play just after COVID adds another layer of meaning that everyone will understand.
MC : Simon has resonated with audiences from the beginning. Remember that woman who saw it six or seven times in Boston? If you have lost someone you cared about recently—a friend or family member—the play can be healing.
MS : If you are already into people like Edgar Cayce or Jane Roberts or Brian Weiss MD, who wrote Many Lives, Many Masters, then Simon will especially speak to you. But if you know nothing about parapsychology, the play can be a good introduction.
MC : Also Dr. Eben Alexander ...
MS : ... Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife. Great book. There are a bunch of Easter Egg shoutouts to many of these people in the script.
MC : Another reason audiences come back—there are things they may have missed first time.
MS : I love that this is happening before Halloween and next door to Salem, the Halloween capitol of the world!
MC : Did you know the Larcom Theatre was an old vaudeville stage?
MS : No wonder it’s so atmospheric …
MC : And the real James is coming.
MS : Yes. Shortly after the first public reading of Simon Says I was introduced to a psychic named James who lived around the corner from me. The fictional James and the real James share many things in common. So, yes, he’s planning on coming to see the show and we will introduce him.
MC : “Light a yellow candle.”
MS : That’s one of his suggestions if you need a little luck in your life.
MC : He’d also tell you that buying a ticket to Simon Says— will bring you luck.
MS : James attended a fundraiser in New York last month, and the people sitting next to him live in the very same house in Queens he grew up in. What are the odds?
MC : So, if James tells you to see Simon Says, you better listen!
