(Host) For ten years, Brattleboro’s New England Youth Theatre has offered young people a chance to learn new skills and try on new identities while producing first-rate shows.
Its current offering is "Truth." The original musical is a collaboration between company founder Stephen Stearns and Brattleboro music educator Peter Amidon.
The play employs a "once-upon-a-time" setting to explore some thoroughly modern issues concerning the nature of love and friendship.
VPR’s Susan Keese takes us Backstage.
(Chorus sings) "The wars are over, hail to the goddesses and gods of love…"
(Keese) The musical "Truth" opens with what looks like a happy ending. There’s a gathering of nuns and royal subjects – dressed in Medieval costumes – singing joyfully outside a cathedral.
It’s a royal wedding and it marks a peace treaty between two warring kingdoms, Gruvich and Arle. The King of Arle has come to the rescue of Gruvich by providing food during a recent famine.
The King of Arle’s son, William — played by Brattleboro Union High School sophomore Clark Glennon – will seal the peace by marrying the daughter of the King of Gruvich. The two royal youngsters have forged a deep bond while traveling the kingdom handing out food to the starving people.
(Prince William Sings) "It seemed we never stopped talking. Time slipped by so fast. And truly I tell you I thought this was lasting…"
(Keese) But when the moment comes to say, "I do," Prince William shocks everyone by saying that he just can’t. There’s a hole in his heart, he tells her, and he alone must make it whole.
(Stearns) "And the question is why. And that’s where the whole drama really unfolds."
(Keese) Stephen Stearns, the well-known mime and this company’s artistic director, has worked with successive groups of teens and pre-teens in the area for at least a decade now. The influences he’s written into this play are as familiar to the young actors as they are to their multi-age audience: a little bit of Shakespeare, hints of French comedy and mistaken identity-farce, stretches of Monty Pythonesque repartee …
(Shouts) "There’s only one thing to do!"
(King) "Yes! Only one thing! What?…"
(Keese) Katherine’s father, Bosvick, king of Gruvich, is furious that his daughter has been jilted at the altar. He’s also under the sway of two devious if not too smart advisors, more interested in power than in lasting peace. Though his daughter the foresaken Katherine – played by Shanon Ward — says she forgives William, the two henchmen fan the flames of the king’s anger. Bosvick throws the king of Arle and his family into the dungeon and begins plotting to seize his crown and build his empire. William takes to the road, masquerading as a traveling troubadour.
Justin Kenney, who plays the easily swayed King Bosvick is a high school junior . This is his first role with the New England Youth Theater. He says he found it easy to slip into and kind of seductive.
(Justin) "For me King Bosvick is a person who has very low self-esteem. He’s not very intelligent and he knows that. And that’s why throughout the show he’s manipulated. But in this scene, everything he’s always wanted, you know justification, people telling him he’s good at something. And it’s like a drug and he can’t get enough of it."
(Justin Sings) "I am King of Gruvich now…"
(Keese) By the time this scene happens, everyone has turned up at the same farm, just over the border in the Kingdom of Arle. It’s the kind of coincidence that can only happen in the theater.
The farmer’s son and marriageable daughters add their own complicating love interests to the plot. And the way the young people sort themselves out and solve the kingdom’s problems is surprisingly thought provoking and up-to-date.
For VPR News, I’m Susan Keese, Backstage in Brattleboro.