[NEohioPAL] Berko review: WOODY GUTHRIE'S AMERICAN SONG @ Actors' Summit

[Roy Berko]

WOODY GUTHRIE’S AMERICAN SONG educates and delights at
Actors’ Summit
 
Roy Berko
(Member, American Theatre
Critics Association)
 
--THE TIMES NEWSPAPERS--
Lorain County
Times--Westlaker Times--Lakewood News Times--Olmsted-Fairview Times                  
 
COOLCLEVELAND.COM
 
If Woody Guthrie, America’s rambling troubadour were alive
today, he’d probably be mixing in with “his folk” at the Occupy Wall Street
Movement rallies.  Yes, Guthrie,
who is the subject of WOODY GUTHRIE’S AMERICAN SONG, now on stage at Akron’s
Actors’ Summit, would be strumming his guitar and telling the tales of the
people he knew and whom he told song stories about.
 
Woodrow Wilson Guthrie was born in 1912 in Okemah,
Oklahoma.  Though he was forced by
dust storms and droughts to leave his Okie homeland, he never let the taste of
the raging sands, the financial hardships and his love of the real people, fall
far from his attention.  
 
Guthrie took to the road early in life and became an
itinerant folk singer, telling the tales of those hit hard by the fury of
nature and the Great Depression.  He clearly developed a vivid musical history of the farm workers, union
members, illegal immigrants, labor strikers, and big and small town
people.  His lyric poems of praise
and protest, classics such as So Long It’s Been Good to Know You, Pastures of Plenty, Union Made, and This Land Is Your Land,
have engraved him as an indelible part of Americana.
 
The Actor’s Summit production, under the creative guidance
of director Neil Thackaberry, makes for a delightful evening of theatre.  The musical arrangements by Michael
Anderson, and the talented cast, bring Guthrie’s ideas to life and teach his
lessons well. 
 
Rather than using the traditional narrator introduces songs
which are sung as individual units, Thackaberry has all of the cast speak the
story lines, alternating and often blending the words with the song
lyrics.  There is no backup
orchestra, the actors play all the musical instruments.  The music is integrated into the
whole.  This is a play about the
people, performed by the people, for the people!
 
The entire cast is excellent.  MaryJo Alexander, Ryan Anderson, Scott Davis, Sally Groth,
Dana Hart, Mark Leach, Emma Pitch and Keith Stevens all have the right spoken
sound of the people and sing with meaning.  Even the costumes, shades of the muddy ground, are era and
setting correct.  The railroad car,
saloon and thrust stage setting all enhance the atmosphere.
 
CAPSULE JUDGEMENT:  WOODY GUTHRIE’S AMERICAN SONG is both
an educational, theatrical, and pleasing experience.  It’s very well worth the trip to Akron!
 
For tickets to WOODY GUTHRIE’S
AMERICAN SONG, which runs through October 30 at Actors’ Summit located at Greystone
Hall in Akron, call 330-342-0800 or go to actorssummit.org. 
 
 
Roy Berko's blog, which contains theatre and dance reviews from 2001 through 2011, as well as his consulting and publications information, can be found at http://royberko.info.  His reviews can also be found on www.coolcleveland.com and www.NeOHIOpal
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