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Also this issue: The Music Man ICE, Baby Artsbeat To Sir, With Love Greek Tragedy |
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June 27-July 3, 2002
artpicks
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People's Light and Theatre Co.'s season closer, Camping with Henry and Tom, plays on two basic principles: 1) politicians do the most scandalous things, and 2) strange things happen in the woods. The show starts with a true premise: In 1921, President Warren G. Harding went on a camping trip with Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. Fact ends there, and playwright Mark St. Germain takes over. In his version of events, the media swamp the trio and Ford smuggles them out of the public eye in a Model T. Deep in the woods, where no one can hear their conversations, walls come down and the three men let it all come out. St. Germain bases some of their dialogue on actual words spoken by the men or on their known philosophical stances. In his program notes he writes, "What is indisputable is that Warren G. Harding is a man who never wanted to be president, Henry Ford is a man who did, and after many annual expeditions, this was Thomas Edison's last camping trip with Henry Ford." That alone sounds like fodder for a juicy series of events on that last camping trip, and St. Germain also incorporates Harding's scandal-plagued presidency, Edison's patent disputes and Ford's not-so-well-hidden anti-Semitism and admiration of Hitler. There may not be any ghost stories at this campfire, but there will certainly be some skeletons coming out of the closet.
Camping with Henry and Tom, through July 28, The People’s Light and Theatre Co., 39 Conestoga Rd., Malvern, 610-647-1900.
