Andrews – The ACT2 Players’ 2023-24 performance season opened Friday night at the Valleytown Cultural Arts Center to a nearly full house with a two-act production of Ray Bradbury’s classic Something Wicked This Way Comes.
Directed by Lori Coffey and assistant Cory Cheeks to spooky precision, the play centers on a carnival’s arrival and effect upon a small town in the autumn. It sets the tone for the recent change of seasons both in metaphorical life and the temporal world.
Impeccably staged by manager Sawyer Bradley and assistant Luisa Edwards, the cast moves readily between backdrops and props, from carnival to library to small town Main Street, the most ingenious of which are the gurney used to introduce the gossamer-clad Ice Woman, played by Liv Daughtry; the blue-lit chair for Mr. Electrico, played by Russell Frederick; and a human carousel of animal-costumed performers.
The supporting cast of characters amply displays their talents with inspired moments throughout the performance, though few they do make the most of every scene. Particular standouts are Sarah Reynolds as Miss Foley, the former ingénue turned elder teacher, and Kellen West as Tom Fury, the lightning rod salesman.
While primarily a treatise on the classic trope of good vs. evil and the conflicting natures that exist within every human, the play also works to serve as a cautionary tale of giving in to our more primal desires and how everything that glitters is not the gold we may perceive.
A story of youth and aging as well, Something Wicked centers on 13-year-old friends Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade, played by Mackenna Cresmen and Lilly Graham, respectively. Casting teenage ladies to play teen boys provides a cheeky twist to the early Elizabethan dramatic practice of men exclusively playing female roles on the stage, as women were not allowed to participate in productions or performances in days of old.
Cresmen and Graham’s onstage presence and rapport lends easily to the palpable camaraderie of childhood friendship and loyalty, which often sets the foundation and tone for our future social interactions and adult relationships.
Cresmen’s Will serves as a sort of burgeoning moral compass. Her projection of innocence is spot-on in capturing the fleeting moments between childhood and the precipice of adulthood, in those wavering moments when we think the world is still a wonder waiting for our discovery and conquering.
In her first leading role, 15-year-old Cresmen makes her bones with a talent belying her age and is certainly going to become more involved in future productions. She became involved in last year’s production of Sleepy Hollow with the stage crew, and enjoyed the play coinciding with the spooky season. She decided right then that she wanted to explore the acting side of productions.
Graham’s Nightshade is played to impish perfection to offset Halloway’s goody-two-shoes persona as Jim is the more vulnerable of the two, given to both flirtation with darker sides and devil-may-care urges and impulses to attend and experiment at the carnival.
An eight-year veteran of several shows with Community Youth Players, Graham said her siblings got her interested and involved at first. At 17 years old, Graham is destined for more leading roles, having established herself as a versatile actress in a variety of plays.
As Mr. Halloway, Will’s father and protagonist, Philip Dekle perfectly captures the melancholic essence of the typical middle-age man.
In his first of two most touching soliloquies, Dekle embodies a soul struggling with the burdens of desire: for youth, for vigor, for sanctification and satisfaction. Long past the age of accountability, Mr. Halloway looks back wistfully upon his late-start in life, and Dekle tackles the role with aplomb and takes the pathos to perfect pitch.
Next, Dekle muses on the evolution of the human mind, spirit and soul with a nostalgic recap of lives both unexamined or examined perhaps too closely, versus our struggle with the concepts of eternity and its infinite limitlessness as opposed to our finite time on earth. His earnest cardigan and librarian’s demeanor execute to perfection his confessed “wrestling match against the self.”
Involved with CYP since elementary school, Dekle is a longtime veteran of the local stage and a delight for audiences.
Brychan Reynolds brings everything menacing to his role as Mr. Dark, the carnival’s leader. As the devil himself, Reynolds brings to life that which we are often afraid to acknowledge in ourselves.
His dramatic lumbering entrance walking through the audience distributing handbills is at once thrilling as it’s unexpected but then it turns chilling when you see that devil’s mask upon his face.
Reynolds, a staple thespian at CYP/ACT2 and the arts center, relishes his role and adds a certain nonchalance to the play: the true devil-may-care attitude. Mr. Dark’s menacing and heretical confrontation with Halloway in the library makes for a tremendous climax.
Building tension with a background heartbeat track, the two adversaries quickly engage in a battle of words with Mr. Dark offering the possibility of recaptured youth to Mr. Halloway who insistently declines although that is his dearest desire. Dayna Jones, entering as The Dust Witch, truly steals every scene she appears in with her sorceress swagger, flowing gypsy skirt and finger daggers and her rhythmic Shakespearean intonations. As she waves her magic daggers over Halloway’s body, trying to stop his already-weakened heart with her incantations, Halloway has an epiphany: only love and joy, of which we are all principally capable, can combat and ultimately destroy true darkness and evil.
Reynolds’ loping pace and mocking sing-song cadence as he stalks the young boys he’s in search of allow the audience a glimpse of pure terror.
In the rousing finale, “the bullet trick” act performed by Mr. Halloway and Will saves Jim’s life, frees the minions of the traveling sideshow and allows everything wicked to be vanquished because those things that travel into our lives are put into perspective, for they
can leave as quickly as they enter.
Final weekend showtimes for Something Wicked This Way Comes are at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 3 p.m. Sunday.
ACT2/CYP is excited for this new season of performances and encourages anyone who is interested in learning more about their mission to volunteer.
Details: vcahs.com, ACT2/CYP page on Facebook.