Author name: Alan Sydney

Past

Taproot Offers a Joyous Outing in Camping with Henry and Tom

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Recently, Taproot Theatre has placed a number of historical big shots on its stage: Albert Einstein was featured in Relativity and Abe Lincoln, Grant and Lee in A Civil War Christmas. The troupe has outdone itself with its latest production, Camping with Henry and Tom. Playwright Mark St. Germain bases his “what if?” premise on an actual event: Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and President Harding really did go on a much publicized camping trip in the Blue Ridge Mountains in 1921. In actuality, press and family surrounded them throughout the event. Germain imagines the trio off on their own and suffering a car crash with a deer in the middle of the forest. What if these three famous Americans were stranded with each other for a patch of time? The outcome here provides for a wonderfully entertaining evening of dramatic, insightful and often hilarious conversations presented by three skilled actors at the top of their game.

Past

Taproot Theatre Presents A Civil War Christmas

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Taproot Theatre has closed up Bob Cratchit’s ledger book and snuffed out the lights in Scrooge and Marley’s offices to make room for a very different Christmas show. Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel debuted “A Civil War Christmas” in 2008, but it is finally having a local premiere featuring a large, talented cast working in Greenwood. The play’s subtitle is “An American Musical Celebration.” A collection of American folksongs, African American Spirituals and traditional Christmas ballads weaves it way through a busy but compelling narrative occurring on a frozen Washington D.C. Christmas Eve in the late stages of our Civil War.

Past

Powerful Crucible Arrives at the ACT

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Director John Langs has gathered an all-star cast to present one gut-punch of a show with his current production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Written in 1953 and set in 17th century Salem, Massachusetts, the play, with its laser focus on the horrors of fanaticism and paranoia successfully echoes the tumult and angst of the current state of US affairs. Miller lays out a tough road for his audience, allowing the final moral redemption of his hero to become all the more satisfying. For its final production of the season, ACT is offering an essential and powerful night of theater.

Past

Albert Einstein Visits Greenwood in Taproot’s Relativity

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Taproot Theatre lays out a tough question with its local premiere of Relativity. Can a great man also be a good man? Do history’s heroes fail at being good human beings? Playwright Mark St. Germain attacks the conundrum with gusto in his three person period drama. He allows us to drop in on Albert Einstein in Princeton, New Jersey on December 9, 1949 at a time the genius had already earned a great name. Early in the play, characters reference the biographies of Charles Dickens and Sigmund Freud, noting how their domestic success as husbands and fathers falls far short of their meteoric career achievements. Does Einstein also belong in this category of severely flawed men? While the play does not provide a definitive answer, it does offer ample food for thought for its audiences.

Past

Caged Bird Soars at Book-It

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Book-it Theater adapting I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings makes for the perfect marriage of form and content. The anecdotal nature of Maya Angelou’s memoir helps it become a perfect source for this troupe’s unique presentation of literary classics. Each separate scene of the autobiography builds upon the next until we have a complete dramatic portrait of a brave, rebellious and resilient black woman enduring and finally coming into her own.

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