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6Spoon River’by PAT ADAM (A review)If you’re looking for a different way to celebrate a birthday, our nation’s 200th to be specific, may I suggest seeing Des Plaines Theatre Guild’s production of “Spoon River Anthology?”This is an evening that does more than entertain. It causes you to reflect — on times past, on human nature, on what life’s all about — and with the gentle prod of the poet-philosopher rather than the strident shove of a preachy playwright.Charles Aidman has dramatized the collection of poems by Edgar Lee Masters, originally penned as apocryphal epitaphs on the gravestones of citizens of mythical Spoon River, 111. The result is an array of characters running the gamut of human experience and revealing to us after death the fears, the shames, the secrets of their lives.THERE IS NO plot. The only common thread, the sharing of a graveyard. And yet the drama compels and moves its audience just as Spoon River draws its citizens home. Singers Dawn and Dave Duhaime of Barrington and Joel Cohen of Niles provide folk music that complements Masters’ poetry.Des Plaines Theatre Guild seems to have prepared this Bicentennial tribute with care, under the guidance of director Judy Castaldi.Though there’s only a total of eight actors to portray the 75 characters, each plays his multiple roles with feeling, and all move about the simply set stage in a smooth and unobtrusive manner, like the gentle flowing of the Spoon River itself.
Newspaper Details
Buffalo Grove Herald
Buffalo Grove, Illinois, US
Fri, Jul 18, 1975
Page 5
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
CA 26 Jan 2019
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