By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Horizon Youth Theatre’s first production of 2025 “Back to the Summer” has a message: No matter how upset you are refrain from the urge to press the button on the time machine.
Who knows where you’ll end up. You may even come face-to-face with your own mom as a teenager. Embarrassing!
The Horizon Youth Theatre will present “Back to the Summer” by Wade Bradford Friday, Jan. 10, and Saturday, Jan. 11 at 7 p.m. and Sunday, Jan. 12 at 2 p.m. in the theater upstairs in the Grand Rapids Town Hall. Admission is by donation.
The show offers the audience a chance to see the building blocks of theater. The production not only features a young cast of actors 11-14, some in their first shows, but also a production team of students led by director Alice Walters, a high school sophomore, who also choreographed and arranged costumes for the show. Other members of the production team are Eve Barman, producer and lighting, Owen Close, music director, Liz Robertson and Harley Partlow, set design, and Xander Sands, graphics.
Fittingly for students now returning to school after holiday break, the story finds Scott (Casey Snyder) and Liam (Gavin Snyder) lamenting that they have to return to school as the summer ends.
‘Time flies when you’re having fun,” the school principal (Nadia Chung) tells them. But the boys’ friend Shelley (Adelaide Jurack, who also serves as dance captain) has been spending her summer creating a time machine. So they can just press the button and return to the beginning of summer. Well, maybe being youngsters, they are not aware that playing around with a time machine has its complications.
Instead of going back a few weeks, they land in 1988 where they meet Jessie (actor identified in program simply as Carolion) who is practicing to be a super hero.
The setting is established by a couple songs from the time. From the opening “Here Comes the Sun” the show is dotted with familiar tunes.
Liam notes the aspiring super hero has the same first name as his mother, then realizes it is his mother. That’s right before she presses the button and winds up in ancient Egypt where she is greeted by the queen (Carina Motisher) as a future ruler. As character after character presses the button and winds up in a random time we get to meet some notable figures including Shirley Temple (Ruby St. Louis) who in an altered timeline ends up ruling the world as well as a pirate (Devin Rogel) and cowboy (Sam Forman), who become friends.
In the end, all this gets sorted out.
The cast also includes: Harper Kutz, Oliver Mclure, Calan Amos, Emmy Forman, Aurora Zientek, Livy Emch, and Harper Kutz.
If one had a time machine and could move up a few years, one would find how this nascent effort has evolved in highly polished shows staged by HYT and other troupes. But then it’s probably better just to wait. You never know what will happen if you press that button.
