"Pride and Prejudice"

February 28, 2020 — After reading Pride and Prejudice, Mark Twain said he wanted to dig up author Jane Austen and beat her over the skull with her shin bone. Too bad he didn't live to see Kate Hamill's re-imagining of the Austen classic as performed by theatre KAPOW at the Derry Opera House in Derry, New Hampshire. I'm sure he would have been pleased.

You could enjoy this madcap, irreverent adaptation of Pride and Prejudice without having read the book, but familiarity with the characters and plot would help. I never read it, but I may have seen one of many TV adaptations sometime in the past. The names Bennet, Lizzy, Mr. Darcy and Pemberley had a familiar ring to me.

All the players were dressed in stunningly beautiful, white 19th Century formal attire, except for the sneakers of various colors they all wore. Surprisingly, there's no credit for a costume designer in the program. Two actors who played dual roles, Peter Josephson as Mr. Bennet/Charlotte Lucas, and Rich Hurley as Mary/Mr. Bingley, simply donned floor-length white sashes when playing their female role. Josephson also placed a ribbon on his head held in place by a chin strap.

Jess Vaughn moved the play along with her vocals, mostly from the '80s, sung in front of the live band at the back of the stage. Making the band clearly visible rather than in a pit was the right decision. Vaughn also played the dual roles of Lady Catherine and Miss Bingley.

Glittering costumes, witty dialog, broad physical comedy, all executed perfectly by one of the largest casts I've seen in a tKAPOW performance made for a thoroughly enjoyable evening. Among the players not already mentioned were Laurie Torosian as Mrs. Bennet/Servants, Emily Karel as Lizzy, Carey Cahoon as Jane/Miss de Bourgh, Victoria Volokitkin as Lydia, Bretton Reis as Mr. Darcy and Nicholas Meunier as Wickham/Mr. Collins. The band consisted of music director Jake Hudgins on keys, Ben Ferrari on guitar, Tate Pinyochon on bass and Alex Fellows on drums.

Artistic director and tKAPOW co-founder Matt Cahoon was director and production designer. Once again, Tayva Young's lighting expertise brightened a tKAPOW play. Trey Haynes was the light board operator.

"Amelia"

"God will punish us for what we have done here." —Mary Chesnut after seeing Andersonville prison

February 23, 2020 — Bryan Halperin brought his play, "Amelia" by Alex Webb to the Winnipesaukee Playhouse (the "Winni") in Meredith, New Hampshire, a year after a successful four-performance run at the Hatbox Theatre. Halperin, one of the co-founders of the Winni, directed this very moving two-actor performance.

Set designer Hannah Joy Hopkins' minimal set consisted of a large wooden four-sided platform lying horizontally on the stage floor, open in the middle, with a post at each corner, and a screen in the background on which dim photographs of the Civil War era were projected.

Sheree Owens portrays Amelia, a headstrong young 19th Century southern woman, opinionated and outspoken, a feminist and women's rights advocate long before these issues were fashionable or even heard of. The program lists Wayne Asbury as "Ethan and others," the others being many diverse characters, male and female, among them Amelia's father, mother, a Union soldier, a Confederate soldier, a slave and others, all without costume changes or any change in his appearance, but masterfully with demeanor, attitude and inflection, in such a way that his many characters are always identifiable.

The play begins just before the Civil War. Amelia simply doesn't know her place in the opinion of her parents and others, shocked by her outspokenness, but Ethan finds it amusing. His tolerance of her opinions lead to a warming of their relationship. When news reaches them that rebels have taken Fort Sumter, Ethan and all other able-bodied men are eager to join Union forces and defeat the Confederacy, a job predicted to take no more than ninety days. Typical of her style, Amelia proposes marriage to Ethan before he reports for duty.

Amelia and Ethan exchange letters early in the war, but after more than two years pass in the estimated ninety-day conflict and Confederate victories pile up, Ethan's letters cease. This begins Amelia's harrowing journey to find Ethan, traveling alone through war zones. Along the way, she encounters a number of Asbury's characters. She's protected by a Union soldier, then later threatened by a sadistic Confederate.

Information Amelia is able to glean about Ethan's whereabouts eventually leads her to Andersonville. In desperation, she cuts her hair, dons a Union uniform and poses as a man. There was little to prepare the audience for the emotional impact of this play. The rather lighthearted beginning gives no indication of the gut-wrenching path it's headed for. Two excellent actors bring home all the brutality, savagery, appalling death toll and deprivation of the war.