By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
In “The Great Cross Country Race,” Horizon Youth Theatre again let animals talk and deliver very human lessons.
Last spring, “Honk!” was a lesson in humility. This fall’s production for older troupe members is a lesson in perseverance and impulse control. And it’s clear the cast and crew, 28 in all from 13 different schools, have learned their lessons well about how to work together to entertain an audience.
Ms. Fleet (Scarlet Frishman) brags to Ms. Sloe (Sophi Hachtel).
Alan Broadhurst’s elaboration on the Aesop’s Fable “The Tortoise and the Hare,” directed by Cassie Greenlee, is on stage at the Otsego High School auditorium Saturday, Oct. 8, at 2 and 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $5.
Now there’s really not much to the original tale, a skeleton of a story with a moral tacked on to the end: slow and steady wins the race.
The only characters are the plodding tortoise and the over-confident hare.
In “The Great Cross Country Race,” the tortoise, Ms. Sloe (Sophi Hachtel) gets a back story as an imported pet from a nearby household who wanders into the woodlands.
This strange creature baffles the woodland animals who can’t tell even if it’s alive, or just a rock.
They’re too busy arranging for their animal sports games. None of which are competitive because they are so tailored – like grass eating – to the qualities of particular animals. In the course of this we meet a variety of animals: the bunny, Ms. Warren (Amanda Cloeter); the hedgehog, Mr. Spiney (Grace Holbrook); the rat, Mr. Paddle (Isaac Douglass); the squirrel, Mr. Brush (Maddox Brosius); and the crow, Mrs. Dark (Calista Wilkins).
Only the cross country race offers any competition. But the fox, who is the only creature who would have a chance against the conceited hare Ms. Fleet (Scarlet Frishman), has stepped aside because of an injury.
An exhausted Ms. Fleet (Scarlet Frishman) collapses at the end of the race as the dog (Thomas Long) tells her hw t escape from his owners played by Terra Sloane and Anita Kukeli.
This is most troubling to Mr. Sett (JJ Poiry) who is organizing the games. Then Ms. Sloe offers to compete, a challenge Ms. Fleet brushes off. Only when faced with the disgrace of losing by default does the hare deign to run.
Well, we all know how this plays out in the fable, but here there are more complications than just the hare taking a nap.
The troupe maps out the entire three-mile course. That means the tortoise and the hare are moving about in the aisles, and there are scene changes for the various posts along the way. Each post poses a challenge – often food that tempts the scatter-brained hare, causing her to get trapped or sick, and lose ground to the determined Ms. Sloe.
Scarlet Frishman makes her character just obnoxious enough to root against, and plenty ridiculous enough to laugh at. Sophi Hachtel imbues Ms. Sloe with a stately grace, never lumbering, always sure of herself, and unmoved by the notions of others.
The competitors and the other woodland animals must navigate through a host of clueless human beings.
The dog Mr. Basket (Thomas Long) serves as the mediator between the human world and the woodland world, at home at both.
Long does a great job of interpreting dog behavior as being more intentional than people perceive.
The woodland creatures duck for cover whenever the humans are around, and Mr. Basket does his best to divert their attention.
The principal humans are the sisters played by Terra Sloane and Anita Kukeli, who spend the play dashing about trying to corral their dog and find their tortoise.
Other humans who intrude on the woodland scene are: a romantic couple Georgina (Bella Truman) and Maude (Sky Frishman); a family of boisterous urbanites, Bob Walters, Katie Partlow, Narnia Rieske, and Alexandra Roberts-Zibbel; the farmer who chases them from his field (Daniel Cagle); and an old woman who grows delicious carrots (Anne Weaver).
The biggest challenge for the young actors portraying the humans is that the script calls for them to talk gibberish, so the animals can’t understand them.
Keith Guion wrote out the gibberish, which is just barely understandable. The actors’ gestures and inflection though leave no doubt as to their meaning. No subtitles are needed.
This serves to set off humans as strange beings, but no wiser, less so even, than the animals, who do take a dim view of them.
As Mr. Sett observes: “Humans can’t do anything properly, yet they rule the world. Remarkable!”
Certainly in this world it is the tortoise who delivers the life lessons. After getting Ms. Fleet out of another jam, Mr. Basket complains about the hare’s unwillingness to return the favor. But Ms. Sloe replies: “If we only do kindnesses in hope of reward, they are no longer kindnesses.”
By delivering such messages, along with a few hearty laughs, the Horizon troupe again earns the reward of applause.
