There is really no way to write a conventional high school musical review about a project that is not a conventional high school musical. So if that’s what you’re looking for, stop reading now.

There are many iconic Vineyard lifestyles available for the dreaming, but Kevin Keady is living what might be the most romantic of them all: he is a singer-songwriter (his band, the Cattle Drivers, has a cult following here) whose dayjob is a farmhand on Chappaquidick. Yes, really.

Rabbi Caryn Broitman is a wonderful mix of seeming contradictions. She is spirited yet self-contained, outspoken but soft-spoken, a calm bundle of energy. So it is fittingly ironic that Ms. Broitman, at her most vital in the role of rabbi for the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center, is about to take a break.

Or so it might appear. But in fact, the aim of Rabbi Broitman’s upcoming sabbatical is not to take a break from her identity as rabbi; it is to further embrace it.

It’s that time of year. Autumn. On Martha’s Vineyard, that means Potluck Season has begun.

Natives and longtime washashores probably think that potlucks are, if not a universal, at least a widespread American phenomenon. This is not, in fact, the case. Consider these two contrasting anecdotes, taken from real life (or whatever it is I’m living).

You’ve almost certainly seen the shingled building, sitting obvious yet unobtrusive between the dentist and the hair salon on Upper Main street in Edgartown. Perhaps you have heard the skinny: that it’s a dance studio built by a fabulously wealthy man so his daughter, an aspiring ballerina, would have a place to take private lessons for two weeks every summer. According to this tale, the hotel-sized building sits empty the other 50 weeks of the year, and the daughter gave up dancing to study political science anyway.