The News Tribune, April 11, 2014
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| Hailey Jeffers and Jason Haws in Orphan Train. Photo by David Nowitz and Jill Carter. |
The Orphan Train comes rolling into the Washington Center
for the Performing Arts with stories of heartbreak and joy in the form of a
play by Aurand Harris presented by Olympia Family Theater and ably directed by
Kathy Dorgan.
Between 1853 and 1929 approximately 250,000 orphaned
children from the streets of New York City were loaded onto box cars and
shipped to towns out west to be adopted by pioneers. Some found good homes and
some were placed with families that just wanted free labor. Many siblings were
separated never to find each other again. Their deeply affecting stories range
from overwhelming joy to heartbreak, and everything in between. Harris’s play
tells ten of these stories in vignettes with a combination of narration and
performance by a cast of two dozen actors ranging in age from 7 to 65, many of
whom have extensive stage experience and a few of whom have no acting
experience but act like seasoned pros.
Mary (Emma Haws, a veteran at age 11) is adopted by the
mean spirited Mrs. Herndon (Jennie Jenks) who arbitrarily changes her name to
Rebecca and forces her to sleep overnight in a damp root cellar with rodents.
It is a heartbreaking story acted with great passion by both Haws and Jenks, which
ends with a joyful note as Mary is taken away from Mrs. Hendon and placed with
a more caring family.
Maria (Maggie Neatherlin) cares for her infant sister from whom
she had promised her dying mother they would never be separated, but she is
unable to keep her promise when a mother (Edsonya Charles) who has lost a baby
adopts the little sister but will not take her teenage sibling. Maria has to
make the decision to let her baby sister go for her own good.
Frank (played with sassy bravado by Annabelle Sampson, a
third grader at Hansen Elementary now in her fifth play with OFT) is the
toughest kid on the train. He’s adopted by a couple who needs a tough boy to
work on their hardscrabble farm. The only trouble is, Frank is really a girl
pretending to be a boy to survive on the streets, and she is just as sweet as
her male persona is tough. What happens when her adoptive parents find out is
very touching, and Sampson’s ability to convincingly become such different
characters is laudable.
Lucky (Nick Hayes) is another tough, streetwise kid, a
knife-wielding pickpocket whose own instinct toward self-preservation turns out
to be his worst failing. Nick has performed in “Oklahoma!” at Seattle’s 5th
Avenue Theatre and is known locally for his performance as Tiny Tim at Capital
Playhouse. His sister Kate, also a young veteran from the Capital Playhouse
stage, plays Pegeen, a kind Irish lass. Actually the whole Hayes family
including parents Jill and Ned Hayes are actors in this production.
These stories and others touch the audience’s hearts. The
stories are all true, and they present a dramatic picture of a little-known
part of American history. As presented they are realistic and never maudlin. All
are played out in front of a backdrop consisting of two screens with
outstanding line drawings, one of rolling hill and a train track with a small
town in the distance and the other of a train station. Onto these screens are
projected both still and moving vintage images with portraits of the actors in
period costumes cleverly superimposed on these scenes.
The splendid scenes and projections are the work of Jill
Carter. Costumes by Mishka Navarre contribute to the authenticity of the
stories.
Among the more outstanding actors in this show are Jason
Haws in a number of roles, including a drunk, a priest and a cowboy; and Keith
Eisner as a farmer and an unnamed old man. Running a mere 65 minutes with a
15-minute intermission, “Orphan Train” is an excellent show. I would recommend
that teachers encourage their students to see it. It would be great if they
could bring entire classes and build class projects on a study of the true
history of the trains.
WHEN:
8 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 7 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, 1 p.m., through April
20, extra Saturday shows at 4:30 and 6:30 p.m. April 19
WHERE:
Olympia Family Theater at the Washington Center Stage II, 512 Washington St.
SE, Olympia,
TICKETS:
$10-$16, www.olytix.org
INFORMATION:
360.753.8585
So glad to see your interest in the orphan train movement. I'm the author of MAIL-ORDER KID, a biography of an orphan train rider. I think that Kline's novel, ORPHAN TRAIN, which I reviewed, has set off the recent growth of interest in this important historical movement.
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