Brigadoon

Bagpiper Elizabeth Shull greeted patrons arriving at the Woodland Opera House, playing “Scotland the Brave,” and setting the stage for the trip back to 18^th century Scotland before anyone even entered the theater.

The Lerner & Loewe classic, “Brigadoon,” directed by Chesley award winner Bob Cooner, opened for a five-week run and, despite a disruptive toddler running back and forth, talking, and crying in the balcony at Sunday's matinee performance, the production was, in most areas, a success.

Brigadoon is the story of two disgruntled Americans lost in the Scottish highlands, who discover a strange village, learn of its miracle and discover the power of love.

Scott Reese (as Tommy Albright) and Michael Lie Murphy (as Jeff Douglas) are a bit stiff on stage, especially early in the show, but Reese has a wonderful voice and does justice to the role of the young man searching for meaning in his life.

Gina Marchitiello, as Fiona MacLaren, however, is absolutely marvelous as the sister of bride-to-be Jean (Laura Franklin), and a woman who is still “waiting for her dearie” and wondering if she will ever find love. Marchitiello has a beautiful, strong voice and brings a yearning wistfulness to her character. She alone is worth the price of admission.

The opening choral number, beautifully sung, was sung mostly in the dark. If this was by design, it was not a good one. Too many of the townsfolk who only have a brief moment for solo lines were unable to be seen at all. One hopes it was a lighting error at this performance.

As Tommy and Jeff try to figure out what sort of town they have stumbled upon, they meet many of the townsfolk, including Meg Brockie (Marcy Goodnow), a lusty, boisterous lass who quickly gloms onto Jeff and drags him off to her shack where, presumably, some hanky panky eventually takes place. Goodnow gives the role all the gusto that it requires and is great fun to watch in action.

Archie Beaton (Mark Fejta) is the town tailor whose son Harry (Justin Kelley) is in love with Jean and angry about her upcoming marriage to Charlie Dalrymple (Tim Dunlap). Kelley is dark and brooding and dances a mean sword dance, along with Kevin Little, Jon Shaffer and Shane Wright.

Dunlap is a likable Charlie, with a good voice and good chemistry with his bride-to-be, Jean. Laura Franklin is a wonderful dancer, and a less wonderful actress, but the role of Jean requires more dancing than acting, so it works well for her. Her wedding ballet was beautiful.

Jeff Nauer is Andrew MacLaren, father of Jean and Fiona who displays a strong voice in the chase scene, where all the men of the town chase after Harry, who has decided to leave Brigadoon, bringing an end to “the miracle.” (Sadly, the role of Angus is not listed in the program and so I don't know who sang that role, but he had a wonderful voice.)

(Traditionally, there is a funeral scene following Harry's death, and I assumed the bagpiper would be joining the group on stage, but the funeral procession was dropped in this production.)

Jim Lane is just wonderful as the wise Mr. Lundie, the man who holds the secret of “the miracle” (and check those genuine muttonchops!)

This is such a good looking production (scenic design by Jeff Kean) and such care is taken with the Scottish accents, and the sword dance that it is appalling that no consideration whatsoever was taken to make the costumes authentic. As a person of Scottish descent, I know that the plaid of a tartan indicates the clan to which a person belongs. To see the three MacLarens, for example, standing side by side, each wearing vastly different tartans was jarring and it was even more jarring during the parade of the clans at the start of Act 2, when there was no cohesiveness whatsoever. There are even mis-matched tartans, one design at the top of a dress, another for the skirt. Laurie Everly Klassen is too good a designer to make such an egregious error.

Music for this production is provided by pianists Sam Schieber and Chris Schlagel, who are so good one does not notice the lack of a full orchestra.

This is a production with some problems, but the good far outweighs the bad and should provide an entertaining couple of hours for anybody who comes to see it. (Please leave your small children at home!)

Laughter on the 23rd Floor

It is a sad fact that over the years I have been reviewing for The Davis Enterprise, I have seen that a mediocre musical will consistently get a bigger audience than a first rate play. I have often left a half-full theater thinking what a shame it is that people in this area just don't seem to come out for straight plays any more, and how sad that they don't realize what they are missing.

A case in point is Davis Musical Theater Company's new comedy series, which opened with one of Neil Simon's funnier plays, “Laughter on the 23^rd Floor.”

“Laughter” is Simon's homage to the time he spent working on “Your Show of Shows,” the old Sid Caesar weekly variety show, in the waning days of the golden era of television variety shows, and in the middle of the McCarthy era, when the networks were afraid of topical humor and were “dumbing down” shows to be more “family friendly.” The writing staff included some of the greats in comedy – Caesar himself, of course, Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and Larry Gelbart, among others. (Reiner would go on to create his own homage to this period, in the form of “The Dick Van Dyke Show”)

Director Michael McElroy has hit a triple (not quite a home run, but close) on his first directing effort with a fast-paced, funny, well acted production that features a top notch cast.

Joshua Smith is Lucas, the Neil Simon character, who acts as both the narrator, introducing each writer in turn as he or she enters the room, and is also a participant in the action. Smith's Lucas is a fresh-faced, wide-eyed, innocent looking young man who is somewhat in awe of the company in which he finds himself on this high powered writing team. Sadly, actor Smith's lines aren't always distinct enough, so that you miss pieces of dialog or narration here and there, but overall he turns in a believable performance.

The group is writing for “The Max Prince
Show,” and Kevin Caravalho turns in an inspired, frenetic performance as Max, a comic genius whose insecurities cause him to throw up before each show, who pops pills and drinks too much. He rants and raves, throws the telephone, and punches holes in the wall, but he is intensely loyal to his writing staff and is in constant battle with the network to keep the show on the air. Caravalho always gives 110% and this role is no exception.

While this is a generally above-average cast, there are some, like Caravalho, who stand out. Paul Fearn as the head writer, Val, a Russian-Jewish immigrant, who is taking elocution lessons so that he can pronounce curse words properly, is another who lights up the stage when he makes his entrance, transforming “OK” performances into something electric. Val's exit line, at the end of the show, is one of my favorites.

Jeff Labowitch plays the hypochondriac Ira (based on Woody Allen), who arrives late each day and who seems to suffer from the malady du jour, everything from a heart attack to a brain tumor, and dreams of having a virus named after him.

Darryl Strohl is Milt, the womanizer who revels in his flashy dress. It's hard to know which is the more notable—his all white suit, or his red plaid pants (kudos to costume designer Jean Henderson).

Clocky McDowell is the chain-smoking Brian, who is always just about to make it big in Hollywood, once he writes that perfect script. His “shoe fight” with Ira was a very funny moment.

Lauren Miller is Karen, the lone woman on the writing team, who has been around so long she really is “one of the guys” (think RoseMarie in the Dick Van Dyke Show). Kris Farhood is Helen, Max's long-suffering secretary.

Kenny (Brennen Cull) is the peacemaker, the one who seems to be the solid rock of the group, constantly trying to talk sense into the other writers. By Act 2, when it becomes obvious that the show is on the way out, Kenny remarks, poignantly, “Maybe we'll never have this much fun again in our entire lives.”

Kenny was probably right, but Simon made sure that the fun didn't die entirely by recreating it in “Laughter on the 23^rd Floor,” which will give the audience a taste of what it was like to turn out one of the best variety shows in the history of television.

Fortunately, Davis Musical Theater Company has done well by the script. Treat yourself to something other than a musical and revel in the humor of a bygone day—and remember what television was like when the likes of Sid Caesar and his writing team ruled the airwaves.

Moving Midway

Miss Mary was not happy.

It was Dena Williams’ first Christmas at Midway Plantation and she decided to set up the Christmas tree in the parlor (“what we would call the living room,” she explained).

Williams’ husband, Charlie Silver tried to warn her that it was Miss Mary’s special room and that she wouldn’t want the tree there, but Williams was adamant that it was the best place to put it. “We put the tree in the parlor and had it all decorated and then, in the middle of the night we heard a crash and found tree down, but only one ornament broken. Miss Mary had been gentle but made her point,” she laughed.

“Miss Mary” was Silver’s great-great aunt, Mary Hilliard Hinton, the tiny matriarch, who dressed as her heroine, Queen Victoria, who was the teller of all the family stories, and who died in 1961. Miss Mary’s ghost (along with several others, including a cat) inhabits Midway Plantation.

(“How do you know the ghosts are there?” I asked Williams. “We see them,” she replied, with her husband adding that since these were relatives he knew in life, their ghosts don’t appear scary. Williams had some discussions with the spirits when she and Silver first married and moved to Midway Plantation. “I walked around from room to room and asked them to be nice to me and wait until I felt comfortable before showing themselves. They waited and they’ve always been very nice.”)

The spiritual side of Midway Plantation is only one aspect of a fascinating documentary which will kick off the Fifth Annual Davis Film Festival, This year's festival features films on topics ranging from movement and music to community and the consequences of war, and includes innovative short works by new filmmakers as well as feature-length films from around the world.

"Moving Midway" is an acclaimed documentary and multiple film festival award winner and an excellent choice to start the 2008 festival. In its simplest form, “Moving Midway” is the story of moving a family home from one location near Raleigh, North Carolina to another, but in the process of documenting the move, film critic turned filmmaker Godfrey Cheshire not only shows the mechanics of relocating an historical building, but also traces the importance of the Southern plantation in American history, gives us a glimpse into his own ancestry, and discovers a whole new side of the family, and more than 100 cousins he never knew he had.

The land on which Midway Plantation and two others (The Oaks and Beaver Dam) was built (420,700 acres) was given by the British crown to Miss Mary's family in 1739, before the American Revolution. Midway was built in 1848 as a wedding gift to Miss Mary's father, David Hinton. Over the years, the house became the gathering place for all the family and Godfrey Cheshire remembers happy times playing with his cousins, Charlie (Nicknamed "Pooh"), Winston ("Winkie") and John (Possum").

Things had changed in 2004, when Cheshire went to visit Silver, who now owned Midway Plantation. Where once lay a dirt wagon track, now was a major highway with more than 55,000 cars a day passing the home. Instead of looking out at rolling hills and trees, the former plantation faced a McDonald's, a bank, and several other shops in a strip mall. Silver's 80-something mother was looking to the house's upkeep and had rented it out, but she was getting calls from developers every day offering to buy the property and it had become a burden on her.

Silver and Williams decided to move into the house to make things easier on his mother. They lived there only two years before the couple made the fateful decision to buy another plot of land and move the house to a new location. What was most important to Silver was preserving the house for future generations, and he realized that in its present urban setting, his children didn't experience the house he remembered from his childhood. "I realized that none of my children would what to live in it, and that spelled doom for the house," he said. "Our big concern was to make sure the house was attractive enough to have someone else in the family live there.” They had offers from developers to make it the center point of the new mall development, or to tear it apart and reuse timbers. But Silver was adamant that the best thing for the house was to pick it up and move it. It would allow them to rebuild the aging foundation and the chimneys and to make improvements that would make it last another 150 years."

They even hired Rick Lambeth, a consultant who does historic architectural finishes who examined the house and told the couple what all of the original colors were in the whole house—trim, walls, outside, shutters, etc., so that they could restore it to the original appearance.

Godfrey Cheshire immediately felt there was a story to be recorded, but even he didn't realize where that story would lead.

The extended family had mixed emotions about the move, expressed at the last Christmas party held at Midway before the scheduled moving of the house. Midway was always a party home and always looked its best when filled with people. Brother Winston (Winkie) said that growing up in Midway was like nothing any child ever experienced and didn't believe that Charlie was actually going to move the house. "I'll believe it when I see it," he laughed. Brother John ("Possum") made his views on the moving of the house known in no uncertain terms. "I thought he was full of sh*t!" he said emphatically.

Silver and Williams were also concerned about how the ancestors would feel about the move. "We literally sat on the steps and talked to them. 'We hope you guys are all right with this,'" he said.

A part of the history of the house concerned the slaves who once worked on the plantation. There were records showing that the original slave was a man named Mingo, who had been a gift when the house was first built. (Previous work had been done by indentured white laborers.) The family Bible also held a photo of an African American man, Ruffin Hinton, who looked very much like Charles Lewis Hinton, the plantation owner (who also served two terms as State Treasurer of North Carolina). It was generally acknowledged that Ruffin was the result of a relationship with the house cook.

As Godfrey Cheshire was preparing for his film about Midway, a letter on some unrelated topic from Robert Hinton, a professor of African American Studies at NYU, appeared in the "New York Times." In the letter he mentioned that his grandfather, Dempsey Hinton, had been born on Midway Plantation in 1860. Cheshire made arrangements to meet with Hinton and through comparing their various family stories, they realized that Hinton's grandfather had been a slave at Midway Plantation. Hinton was invited to Midway Plantation to meet his cousins and travel around the grounds where the slave quarters had once been, and to explore the slave cemetery.

“I always thought I would meet another Hinton, but I hoped it would be someone I wouldn't like," Robert Hinton smiled.

Charlie Silver found a 47 acre plot of land three miles from Midway Plantation and purchased it. Mike Black, a professional house mover, was hired to handle the actual move of the main building and several of the out-buildings. When the day came to move the house, Robert Hinton was invited to join the rest of the family in breaking a bottle of champagne over the metal bars which held the house on dollies before the truck started to slowly pull the house over back roads to its new location.

"I felt it was important to help launch the move and represent my family,” said Hinton.

It took four days to move the house the three miles and set it down on its new foundation.

One of the most hair-raising segments of the journey involved crossing a narrow bridge. "We didn’t know for sure if the bridge would hold the weight," Charlie said. It had been designed by twins brothers and it had been their first job out of college 8-10 yrs before. They did lots of calculations to see if it would hold the weight of the house. The bridge was also so narrow that the house cleared the guard rails by less than an inch. The supports actually scraped the rails as it crossed over the bridge.

It was two years before the house was ready for parties again. When it held its first social gathering, several of the descendants of Ruffin Hinton were invited to attend, including Abraham Lincoln Hinton, Ruffin's grandson, born in 1909.

“I think in order to be a healthy individual, you have to know where you come from and how you got to be who you are. I cannot make sense of myself without understanding this house and being involved with the house,” said Robert Hinton.

And the ghosts? Did they move with the house? “We know that my dad has moved,” said Charlie Silver. “My great great aunt also moved and the ghost cats have moved. The 'nice lady' has moved. (We think it’s my grandmother. We haven’t seen her really clearly, but my granddaughter does.) Miss Mary came with us and has been very pleased. We usually see her as a wren. She came and flew thru the house.”

But employees at PetSmart and Target, which were built on the land once occupied by Midway Plantation, have reported strange things happening at night, with items being moved and found in odd places, so apparently some of the Hinton clan stayed behind to watch over the land as well.

Cyrano de Bergerac

At the risk of pandering to an obvious pun, Sacramento Theatre Company's current production of Edmund Rostand's “Cyrano de Bergerac” hits it right on the nose.

Sandford Robbins, the founder and director of the Professional Training Program (PTTP), one of the top ten dramatic education programs in the country, and "Cyrano" director Peggy Shannon adapted Rostand's classic especially for Sacramento Theatre Company. The result is a romantic tale of a 17th Century French cavalier poet, a master swordsman as skillful with the pen as with the sword, in love with a beautiful lady, but afraid that his protuberant proboscis will get in the way of his search for true love.

John Pribyl brings dignity, humor, and panache to the role of Cyrano, a man who covers up a lot of his insecurities by laughing at his own physical oddity, while inside pining away for the love of the beautiful Roxanne (Jackie Vanderbeck). Pribyl's diction is impeccable, as he delivers long discourses, equally eloquent on subject of love, or on put-downs of his own prosthetically enhanced nose.

Instead of embarrassing himself by declaring his love for Roxanne, Cyrano becomes the mouthpiece for the handsome, dashing, but somewhat inarticulate cavalier Christian (Brett Williams), helping him woo and win the hand of Roxanne by putting words in his mouth and in his pen, the words that Roxanne longs for and that ultimately help her fall in love.

Williams does a fine job as Christian. Most roles in this play are subordinate to Cyrano and Williams does not stand out.

Vanderbeck is a lovely Roxanne, swept away by the eloquence of Cyrano's words, which she feels are coming from Christian, only to realize, much too late, that the man with whom she has been in love for so many years is really Cyrano.

Matt K. Miller, who has become a master at playing the snide villain undergoing some sort of ultimate noble transformation does not disappoint as the Comte DeGuiche, with his own designs on Roxanne, outwitted at the last moment by Cyrano, who arranges a hasty marriage before Christian is sent off to war.

(Times were apparently different in the 1600s and it appears that even cads respected the bond of marriage.)

Others in lesser roles all performed well. Adrian Roberts is a commanding presence on the stage as Cyrano's lifelong friend LeBret.

Lynn Baker is Roxanne's Duena, and later in the play dons the habit for a role as a nun in the abby where Roxanne retires following Christian's death.

Michael RJ Campbell is resplendent in pink as Cyrano's enemy, the actor Monfleury.

Doug Kester is Ragueneau, a pastry chef with a particular love of poetry.

John Dalmon is the poet Ligniere, whose life Cyrano saves by single-handedly battling 100 men.

Incidental music is provided by Moises Rodriguez, softly playing the guitar at one side of the stage, occasionally as accompaniment for on-stage choral singing, or solos by Erik Smith, who has a pleasant, if not memorable voice.

Chris Uchman-Douglas, playing the role of the Vicomte Valvert is also credited with fight choreography and has done a masterful job of creating the feel of a band of cavaliers for whom swordplay comes as second nature.

Kudos to Todd Roehermann for his magnificent costume design. The costumes, particularly of the cavaliers gave a wonderful richness to the look of the show.

Arthur Roch's scenic design was utilitarian, though nothing spectacular, primarily dictated by the number of people needed to be on stage in several scenes. The abby scene, however, was especitally lovely. I took particular offense, however, to his "man in the moon" rising across the nighttime sky. As this production seems to have been designed more for realism than for fantasy, a big yellow moon with the face of a man on it seemed jarringly out of place.

"Cyrano de Bergerac" is a classic with a contemporary feel. Director Peggy Shannon's production is wonderfully accessible and with a tragic triangular love story and all the swash-buckling battles that take place on the stage, it should have broad appeal across the spectrum of audience members.

Putnam County Spelling Bee

If you want to get a real feel for "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," the touring Broadway company production which opened last night at the Sacramento Community Center, go see it with a teacher.

Through all the stress, the angst, the mayhem and the fun, my friend was nodding her head. “I believe it all,” she said after the show, remembering the years that she helped to put on spelling bees in her school in Wisconsin.

The Tony-award winning musical comedy is based on “C-R-E-P-U-S-C-U-L-E,” an original play by the Farm. The book for the musical is by Rachel Sheinkin, conceived by Rebecca Feldman with music and lyrics by William Finn, perhaps best known for his “Falsettos” trilogy, about a man dying of AIDS.

There are no such heavy themes in “Putnam County Spelling Bee,” which is peopled not only by a delightfully zany cast of characters, but also assisted by four volunteers from the audience (there is an opportunity to sign up to become one of the on-stage members of the spelling bee team in the lobby, before entering the theatre). The audience members participated for a surprisingly long time and each received rounds of applause when they eventually misspelled a word.

How can you make a children’s spelling bee an interesting nearly two hour musical (it is performed without intermission)?

You start with the delightfully over the top Rona Lisa Peretti (Roberta Duchak), a former spelling bee winner and real estate agent, who now runs the annual spelling bee. Her delivery would do an aging Beauty Pageant participant proud.

Her cohort, and reader of the words and the delicious definitions and sentences is Douglas Panch (James Kall), now back from that unfortunate incident five years ago. He’s much better now, he reassures the audience.

Mitch Mahoney (Kevin Smith Kirkwood) is the guy who leads the pledge of allegiance, and is the guy who escorts each loser off the stage and presents them with their commemorative box of apple juice. (Kirkwood also has several other smaller roles throughout the evening.)

And then there are the children themselves, each a perfect depiction of a certain type of child. Olive Ostrosky is a latchkey kid whose mother has gone off to India to find herself, and whose father forgot to come to the spelling bee and who doesn’t have the money to enter, but is allowed to compete anyway. She learned to spell because she grew up in a house with an oversized dictionary that she liked to read while sitting on the toilet.

Leaf Coneybear (described as a home schooled kid from Davis) got into the contest on a fluke when both the real winner of the previous spelling bee and the runner up had to attend a bat mitzvah. He insists he’s “not that smart,” a notion which he seems to have picked up from his many siblings, and keeps surprising himself with his correct answers.

Marcy Park (Katie Boren) is an overachiever who speaks six languages, is good in music and in sports and everything else she attempts, but is a girl who just wants to be normal and eventually seeks advice from a surprisingly unlikely source.

Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre (Dana Steingold) is president of the Gay Straight Alliance in her school, has two dads who dote on her, is a budding feminst, and yet wonders “what about me?”

Chip Tolentino (Justin Keyes) won the contest last year and, dressed in his Boy Scout uniform, is confident that he will easily win this year too, until an unfortunate hormonally induced incident spoils his chances. Chip has perhaps the most unusual song of the night—certainly a first for song lyrics!

William Barfee (whose name rhymes with ‘parfait’ but whose size makes him the perfect victim of jokes mispronouncing the name) has a “magic foot” and an unusual technique for figuring out the correct way to spell a word. Eric Roediger is delightful in the role, and his character’s growing friendship with Olive is very special.

You are not going to leave the Civic Center humming any of the tunes from this show (except perhaps the title song), but you will smile as you think back on the enjoyable evening you have just spent.

Is this a show worth seeing? D-E-F-I-N-I-T-E-L-Y.

Moving Midway

Miss Mary was not happy.

It was Dena Williams’ first Christmas at Midway Plantation and she decided to set up the Christmas tree in the parlor (“what we would call the living room,” she explained).

Williams’ husband, Charlie Silver tried to warn her that it was Miss Mary’s special room and that she wouldn’t want the tree there, but Williams was adamant that it was the best place to put it. “We put the tree in the parlor and had it all decorated and then, in the middle of the night we heard a crash and found tree down, but only one ornament broken. Miss Mary had been gentle but made her point,” she laughed.

“Miss Mary” was Silver’s great-great aunt, Mary Hilliard Hinton, the tiny matriarch, who dressed as her heroine, Queen Victoria, who was the teller of all the family stories, and who died in 1961. Miss Mary’s ghost (along with several others, including a cat) inhabits Midway Plantation.

(“How do you know the ghosts are there?” I asked Williams. “We see them,” she replied, with her husband adding that since these were relatives he knew in life, their ghosts don’t appear scary. Williams had some discussions with the spirits when she and Silver first married and moved to Midway Plantation. “I walked around from room to room and asked them to be nice to me and wait until I felt comfortable before showing themselves. They waited and they’ve always been very nice.”)

The spiritual side of Midway Plantation is only one aspect of a fascinating documentary which will kick off the Fifth Annual Davis Film Festival, This year's festival features films on topics ranging from movement and music to community and the consequences of war, and includes innovative short works by new filmmakers as well as feature-length films from around the world.

"Moving Midway" is an acclaimed documentary and multiple film festival award winner and an excellent choice to start the 2008 festival. In its simplest form, “Moving Midway” is the story of moving a family home from one location near Raleigh, North Carolina to another, but in the process of documenting the move, film critic turned filmmaker Godfrey Cheshire not only shows the mechanics of relocating an historical building, but also traces the importance of the Southern plantation in American history, gives us a glimpse into his own ancestry, and discovers a whole new side of the family, and more than 100 cousins he never knew he had.

The land on which Midway Plantation and two others (The Oaks and Beaver Dam) was built (420,700 acres) was given by the British crown to Miss Mary's family in 1739, before the American Revolution. Midway was built in 1848 as a wedding gift to Miss Mary's father, David Hinton. Over the years, the house became the gathering place for all the family and Godfrey Cheshire remembers happy times playing with his cousins, Charlie (Nicknamed "Pooh"), Winston ("Winkie") and John (Possum").

Things had changed in 2004, when Cheshire went to visit Silver, who now owned Midway Plantation. Where once lay a dirt wagon track, now was a major highway with more than 55,000 cars a day passing the home. Instead of looking out at rolling hills and trees, the former plantation faced a McDonald's, a bank, and several other shops in a strip mall. Silver's 80-something mother was looking to the house's upkeep and had rented it out, but she was getting calls from developers every day offering to buy the property and it had become a burden on her.

Silver and Williams decided to move into the house to make things easier on his mother. They lived there only two years before the couple made the fateful decision to buy another plot of land and move the house to a new location. What was most important to Silver was preserving the house for future generations, and he realized that in its present urban setting, his children didn't experience the house he remembered from his childhood. "I realized that none of my children would what to live in it, and that spelled doom for the house," he said. "Our big concern was to make sure the house was attractive enough to have someone else in the family live there.” They had offers from developers to make it the center point of the new mall development, or to tear it apart and reuse timbers. But Silver was adamant that the best thing for the house was to pick it up and move it. It would allow them to rebuild the aging foundation and the chimneys and to make improvements that would make it last another 150 years."

They even hired Rick Lambeth, a consultant who does historic architectural finishes who examined the house and told the couple what all of the original colors were in the whole house—trim, walls, outside, shutters, etc., so that they could restore it to the original appearance.

Godfrey Cheshire immediately felt there was a story to be recorded, but even he didn't realize where that story would lead.

The extended family had mixed emotions about the move, expressed at the last Christmas party held at Midway before the scheduled moving of the house. Midway was always a party home and always looked its best when filled with people. Brother Winston (Winkie) said that growing up in Midway was like nothing any child ever experienced and didn't believe that Charlie was actually going to move the house. "I'll believe it when I see it," he laughed. Brother John ("Possum") made his views on the moving of the house known in no uncertain terms. "I thought he was full of sh*t!" he said emphatically.

Silver and Williams were also concerned about how the ancestors would feel about the move. "We literally sat on the steps and talked to them. 'We hope you guys are all right with this,'" he said.

A part of the history of the house concerned the slaves who once worked on the plantation. There were records showing that the original slave was a man named Mingo, who had been a gift when the house was first built. (Previous work had been done by indentured white laborers.) The family Bible also held a photo of an African American man, Ruffin Hinton, who looked very much like Charles Lewis Hinton, the plantation owner (who also served two terms as State Treasurer of North Carolina). It was generally acknowledged that Ruffin was the result of a relationship with the house cook.

As Godfrey Cheshire was preparing for his film about Midway, a letter on some unrelated topic from Robert Hinton, a professor of African American Studies at NYU, appeared in the "New York Times." In the letter he mentioned that his grandfather, Dempsey Hinton, had been born on Midway Plantation in 1860. Cheshire made arrangements to meet with Hinton and through comparing their various family stories, they realized that Hinton's grandfather had been a slave at Midway Plantation. Hinton was invited to Midway Plantation to meet his cousins and travel around the grounds where the slave quarters had once been, and to explore the slave cemetery.

“I always thought I would meet another Hinton, but I hoped it would be someone I wouldn't like," Robert Hinton smiled.

Charlie Silver found a 47 acre plot of land three miles from Midway Plantation and purchased it. Mike Black, a professional house mover, was hired to handle the actual move of the main building and several of the out-buildings. When the day came to move the house, Robert Hinton was invited to join the rest of the family in breaking a bottle of champagne over the metal bars which held the house on dollies before the truck started to slowly pull the house over back roads to its new location.

"I felt it was important to help launch the move and represent my family,” said Hinton.

It took four days to move the house the three miles and set it down on its new foundation.

One of the most hair-raising segments of the journey involved crossing a narrow bridge. "We didn’t know for sure if the bridge would hold the weight," Charlie said. It had been designed by twins brothers and it had been their first job out of college 8-10 yrs before. They did lots of calculations to see if it would hold the weight of the house. The bridge was also so narrow that the house cleared the guard rails by less than an inch. The supports actually scraped the rails as it crossed over the bridge.

It was two years before the house was ready for parties again. When it held its first social gathering, several of the descendants of Ruffin Hinton were invited to attend, including Abraham Lincoln Hinton, Ruffin's grandson, born in 1909.

“I think in order to be a healthy individual, you have to know where you come from and how you got to be who you are. I cannot make sense of myself without understanding this house and being involved with the house,” said Robert Hinton.

And the ghosts? Did they move with the house? “We know that my dad has moved,” said Charlie Silver. “My great great aunt also moved and the ghost cats have moved. The 'nice lady' has moved. (We think it’s my grandmother. We haven’t seen her really clearly, but my granddaughter does.) Miss Mary came with us and has been very pleased. We usually see her as a wren. She came and flew thru the house.”

But employees at PetSmart and Target, which were built on the land once occupied by Midway Plantation, have reported strange things happening at night, with items being moved and found in odd places, so apparently some of the Hinton clan stayed behind to watch over the land as well.

Resting Place

Seven year old Ashley is dead. We know this because a huge grave stone dominates the set for the world premiere of “Resting Place, a new play by local playwright Richard Broadhurst (whose play "Benched" was given its world premiere at STC in 2001 and whose holiday comedy "Crib" was performed at River Stage in 2005).

Ashley’s grave is the meeting place for Ashley’s mother Margaret (Kelley Weir), who seems to be a very uptight and angry woman and the cemetery’s groundskeeper Paulie (Robert Sicular), a man of limited intelligence and education, lonely and desperate for company.

The first meeting does not go well. Margaret is angry because she feels Paulie is desecrating her daughter’s grave, though softens somewhat when she discovers he is the groundskeeper. When she tries to end their encounter, he seems desperate to keep her there, talking.

As the two talk, it becomes apparent that both have secrets they have buried and that both need a “resting place” where they can just get away from everything.

Paulie reveals a childhood of neglect and abandonment, a life lived in detention centers and then, saddest of all, his decision to rob a bank to get money for medical care for his grandmother. Prison, he confesses, taught him a trade and when he was released, he deliberately violated his parole so he could go back to prison and continue his education in gardening.

Margaret eventually reveals the marital abuse and alcoholism that drove her to leave her husband and the circumstances of Ashley’s death, for which she blames herself. She also confesses to estrangement from her younger daughter.

A casual friendship develops between the two, though each has more to reveal which will result in plot twists the audience does not see coming.

In attempting to hold on to Margaret’s friendship, Paulie suggests the two assume fantasy identities, Paulie a pirate, and Margaret “Monique,” a woman of mystery. This was perhaps the weakest part of the plot.

Though this is a serious story, there are lots of funny lines. In places the script seems not to ring true and it’s difficult to know if this is the part of the script itself or of Weir’s delivery, since it is her character who is the less believable of the two.

Sicular is excellent as a man who has never had to learn proper manners, but who is trying to be polite to this very proper woman. His persona is enhanced by his costume, the rough-hewn clothing of a man who is accustomed to working with the soil. Costumer Jessica Minnihan has added perfect little touches, like the heavy horn-rimmed glasses held together with duct tape.

Weir’s Margaret is an uptight woman whose grief over her daughter’s death is buried deeply and gives her a hard edge. The edge cracks at one point and anyone who has lost a loved one, particularly a child, will be able to identify with her pain.

The third member of the cast is a non-speaking child, dressed, head to toe, in a skeleton costume. The role is shared by Jack Hughes and Andrew Standriff.

Scenic Designer, Steve Decker, has created a realistic cemetery, somewhat hampered by the short space between the back of the stage and the front row of seats. In order not to step on “graves,” the actors always seemed to be close to stepping on the toes of those sitting in the front row.

Lighting Designer Dale Marshall has done some wonderful work, including a beautiful “morning,” as Paulie wakes up from a night of drinking. The “sun through the leaves” effect was perfect.

“Resting Place” is a show about coming to terms with the secrets in our past and learning to deal with them, to forgive ourselves for our past transgressions, give ourselves a “do over,” and to move forward. `

Fate and Spinoza

Any idiot can say God works in mysterious ways but only the scientists are proving it.

This is one of the central themes of "Fate and Spinoza," a new work by Granada Artist-in-Residence and 2007 Pulitzer Prize Finalist Rinde Eckert, with music composed by Eckert and Rich Gaarde, which premiered at the UCD Main Theatre on Friday evening. Gaarde also provides the musical accompaniment for the show from a spot off to the side on the stage.

Writers use lots of material as inspiration for plots of books or plays or musical works, but it seems fair to say that “Ethics” by Spinoza, a philosophical treatise based on geometric principles, would probably not be high on the list. But then Rinde Eckert is no ordinary playwright, as his large body of work will attest. Still, Eckert manages to make it all work, in a visually pleasant production filled with rich vocabulary and a gorgeous choral work which seems to come from out of nowhere somewhere in the middle.

“Fate and Spinoza”is more “philosophy driven” than “plot driven,” but the story revolves around April Lansky (Hope Mirlis), a wife, mother and engineer who designs satellites and telescopes. Lansky is inexplicably compelled to revisit a hotel from her past that is about to be torn down. There she encounters the ghost of artist David (Spinoza) Cornell (Matt Moore) and also the Devil (Timothy Orr) and, in conversation with them, reflects on her life choices and begins to come to terms with her present.

The action of the play is seen from the viewpoint of April. Through dialogue with the characters in the room that once was the artist's studio, she recovers that which she lost 20 years earlier.

The room seems to be a magical place, not necessarily a rational place. Things happen which may not happen in the real world (such as the meeting with the Devil). By virtue of the fact that April spends the entire play in the room, she is separated from her family but is still able to witness what they are going through.

There are a lot of story-telling issues that go into a study of something so complex and Eckert uses several devices to do it. Anna Schumacher plays April’s daughter Delia, and is also one of the classic “Fates” who provide much of the narrative. Vicky Zelaya is another of the fates.

Perhaps the clearest bit of philosophy is offered by two tile setters, Victor Toman and Travis Dukelow, who put their lunch boxes down and discourse on the notion of “wasting time.” The particular scene is very funny, yet at its conclusion you realize that you have just been given a lot of very deep thoughts to mull over.

“What do you mean waste of time?” “What do I mean what do I mean ‘waste of time?’ A waste of time is a waste of time! We all know what we mean!” “No we don’t. No one knows what we mean by that.” The character goes on to say that discussing “a waste of time” is in itself a waste of time.

Hope Mirlis is one of the actors who shines in this strong cast of characters, as does Timothy Orr, whose “Devil” is less evil than we have come to expect. His identity is hinted at in the red accents to his costume and the red bath of light in which he stands (costume design by Nancy Pipkin, scenic and lighting design by Carrie Mullen).

“Fate and Spinoza” may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but, as with everything Rinde Eckert does, it will leave the audience thinking about things that they had never thought about before.

And that definitely is no waste of time!