Kenneth Jones' The Alabama Story', now playing at DCP Theatre in Telford, PA, is at once timely and timeless. That's a pretty nifty bunny to pull from a hat!
The play, inspired by historical events, emerges from the flap that occurs when a dedicated--- and unflappable--- librarian, Emily Wheelock Reed, runs into the brick wall of country-fried bigotry after she approves a children's book, 'The Rabbits' Wedding', by renowned illustrator Garth Williams, for the Alabama state library collection.
The book relates the tail of a black-haired hare who thumps the miscegenation laws of The Yellowhammer State by proposing marriage to a white-haired hare.
In 1959, them words meant WAR! And not just war on rabbits!
A state legislator takes up the torch on behalf of Dixieland and demands that the book and its bunnies go back in their holes.
The librarian resists.
And Jones has given us a surprisingly moving play that is every bit as sensitive to the subject of racism as the beloved 'To Kill a Mockingbird', but without the outdated noblesse oblige that Atticus Finch conveyed.
The production is skillfully steered around the shoals of self-righteousness that could have sunk it by the ever-steady hand of its director, Suki, who seems never to let a play--- or its cast--- get too full of itself.
Suki moves 'Alabama Story' at an unexpectedly but highly effective quiet and leisurely pace, so that when a voice is raised or a movement is sudden, it achieves maximum impact. She allows frightening words and thoughts to be heard and digested and responded to in civilized ways; acceptable compromises can be struck without loud outrage; bridges between ideologies can be left unburned.
Jones provides her and us with the perfect template for that increasingly rare theatrical experience---- a family-friendly story that fairly describes a social injustice and that offers both insight and optimism regarding its solution.
That doesn't mean, of course, that the irony is lost on any of us that the state of our nation is in greater peril from racism and white nationalism than it was even in 1959.
Back then we had genuine hope that we could effect positive change. And we did.
'Alabama Story' gently suggests we should keep trying.
The afternoon I saw the play, Bill Joachim delivered a masterful performance as the politely reptilian Senator E. W. Higgins. He moved with grace and in perfect harmony with the distorted cultural views his character championed. Somehow he took a perfectly loathsome figure and made him disarming even to the people and ideas he was terrorizing. That's artful acting, folks. (I say this despite the fact that I could hear only half of what he said, so softly does he speak at times. SIT DOWN FRONT. He'll make it worth your close proximity).
Jay Fletcher was given the daunting task of playing several roles, some of which forced him into breathless costume-and-make-up changes. He managed to pull it off, however, and his Act Two monologue in the character of Garth Williams was the highlight of the show, confiding that when he wrote "The Rabbits' Wedding", "It was never intended to awaken the sleeping giants of hate."
Leena Devlin's librarian at all times felt completely believable as a public servant who remained true to the solid convictions of her profession even in the face of supreme ignorance, intolerance, and career threatening demands.
Patrick Gallagher provided sturdy, even touching, support to Ms Devlin in his role of Thomas Franklin.
Laura Watson (Lily Whitfield) and newcomer Ricky Hicks (Joshua Moore) added a sweetly sad but helpful component to the play as, respectively, a conflicted southern belle and a volunteer soldier in Dr. Martin Luther King's civil rights crusade.
'Alabama Story' continues through April 20.
For tickets, times, and information, please visit www.dcptheatre.com or call 215-234-0966.