A hanging set to music
Benny Swim was hung in Woodstock, New Brunswick on October 6, 1922. His body was cut down too soon and survived briefly before being hung a second time.
Swim murdered his cousin Olive and her husband Harvey Trenholm in March of that year in a jealous rage. He was in love with his cousin and acted with violence and brutality before turning the gun on himself. He shot himself in the head but survived. Benny Swim walked for seven miles to the closest farm where the authorities picked him up.
The story is being turned into a musical called The Trials of Benny Swim.
Nick Lawson, 25, of Woodstock is writing the play set for production in mid to late August of this summer. It will consist of three acts totalling 90 minutes. The play is the fourth and final production of 2009 for the Valley Young Company, a theatre company based in Woodstock.
While few facts are known of what went on behind the scenes of the Swim hanging, Lawson will take this opportunity to explore questions of morality, justice and mercy as well as the psychology of someone facing his final days.
“The plot action, the emotional moments and emotional scenes are built from those moments between the facts where you just can’t know what’s going through someone’s head. Especially when they’re on their own or even when there’s someone there to witness it, you never really know,” he says.
“It’s sort of up to the jury to make the call and who are we to judge? That is a strong element of the play itself. The whole thing is sort of set, we see twisting realities in terms of Benny’s memory and Benny’s imagination mixing with his reality. The entire tale is told within his skull almost but it’s told within the view of a jury.”
Truth is potentially more subjective in analysis than it is in practice. When two people look at the same thing, perception can alter it.
A portrait of Benny with his back to society by Laurel Green
“The things you read in the paper, the things people are quoted as having said; can you really trust that they were said and weren’t hearsay?” Lawson asks. “Even now, 85 years later the topic is still emotionally charged in town. It still carries weight, people feel it. They know the name and even have a little scrap of a story. Or they don’t quite know who you mean but they stop and think when they hear the name Benny Swim.”
In preparation for the writing, Lawson has been reading scripture. The book of Job deals with the same themes of judgment and mercy that he wants to explore.
Am I a sea monster, thou that settest a watch over me? – a variation of Job 7:12
“What does it mean to show mercy to monsters?” Lawson says. “The idea of purgatory, heaven and hell…there is a strong element of religion…religiousness…religiousity? I don’t know. I think it was important to people in the 20s. I think it was important to people in the sense of dividing lines. And beyond that, Benny and Olive grew up together and had a hard life, they were poor. That’s not easy for anyone. They had lots of times when they had to have someone to pray to.”
Two hangmen, Doyle and Gill, were hired for the job. Gill was a back up in case Doyle was incapable. Doyle lodged in the local hotel while Gill stayed at the jailhouse where Swim was being held. While there is no documentation regarding any confrontation between Gill and Swim, Lawson is exploring what their relationship could have been.
“If you stay at the jail where you have access to the man who is doomed to die by your hand, what do you talk about?”
Because Doyle proved to be unreliable, Gill was asked to perform the second hanging. As a result an inquiry was filed to determine who cut the rope too soon on the first attempt.
The Trials of Benny Swim marks the second musical Lawson has written. He points to his collaborative team as the driving force behind the creation. Local musician Amy Anderson is writing the music.
“Her experience playing the organ and piano for the church these past few years has certainly given her, I think, an interesting perspective on hymns and so we’re curious to see what she’ll come up with,” Lawson says of Anderson. “The music will be a bit challenging. We take the Benny story very seriously so it’s very important to maintain a mood of solemnity so we’re not really doing the pop tunes all that much. It’s going to be more in the classical vein, sort of a composed style, in some ways operatic. But also in some ways cinematic the way music can underline dramatic dialogue.”
Olive, the tortured voice of reason by Laurel Green
Local artists Laurel Green and Michael McEwing are working with Lawson on set designs, conceptual art and costumes.
Green has produced three charcoal and pastel sketches on cardboard so far including one of a solitary Benny Swim under a large tree. The town of Woodstock is behind him and he sits and waits idly for what is to come.
“It’s more of a ghost of Benny. It’s a rough outline that portrays more emotion than the actual character. He sits very sorrowfully, very lonely under this tree with his back to society, very much the way he feels in the play,” Green says.
The judgment of Benny Swim, by Laurel Green
Through his research, Lawson has found stats indicating that most murders are committed by a person known to the victim. In some cases the act is carried out by a loved one, like Benny Swim killing his cousin Olive.
“It’s not the stranger in the alley,” he says. “So what is it that turns love into such, is it even hatred? It’s just destruction, senseless destruction. And what’s the payment for that? What’s the justice? Does a person have enough to give to set that right?”
These are the questions he wants to ask, but not necessarily answer in the course of the story. He wants it to be more ambiguous. The audience, in this case, acts as the jury. The trials in the title represent more than a courtroom but the human struggle Swim goes through in his life and even death.
“I want to engage the audience. I want them to feel something. I want them to be able to admit that it could have happened this way, that it could have been their Woodstock. I want them to feel embroiled in the play. I want them to have a certain gut reaction with certain characters. They should dislike some characters. They should like some characters. They should root for people even when they know it’s wrong.”
The complexity of right and wrong in the realm of justice and mercy are the themes Nick Lawson will employ to fill in the blanks without being untrue to the known history of Benny Swim’s hanging.
