THE GOLDEN AGE
As the play begins two young gentlemen, Peter and Francis (Reid Ostrowski and Matthew Schaefer), are having an adventure in the wild. Peter is a wealthy geologist; Francis is a have-not with some trepidations about exploring. After discovering a dead body covered with flowers and with gold bits in his mouth, the two are led by a wailing, snarling young girl to an odd community in the midst of what used to be a much larger village.
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This is no Xanadu, however. The five inhabitants speak in a strange English that combines dirty songs with daily speech. Their dress is a weird conglomeration of bits and pieces from traditional society. The village’s matriarch, for example, Queenie Ayre (Marcia Riegel), uses her umbrella as an ornament, almost like a crown. And the community has a decidedly theatrical bent: their first action upon greeting the two strangers is to put on a play–a five-minute, wildly strange and funny version of King Lear–and then pass the hat.
The rest of the play, which follows the characters through the end of the war, deals with the impact of this decision on everyone who has come in contact with the unhappy outcasts. It shows the slow degeneration of the group itself, of Peter’s father, and of Francis, who as a soldier in Germany learns about true evil.
Natalie Mills as Betsheb and Trey Nichols as the retarded Stef do adequate jobs with very difficult roles. Matthew Schaefer is stiff and unexciting as Francis, unfortunately one of the play’s main characters.
