Green Stag Youth Theatre
Dark of the Moon
Green Stag Youth Theatre is an extra-curricular offshoot of Hardenhuish School in Chippenham, Wiltshire. We have been developing our dramatic reputation over the last few years with a series of adventurous, well-reviewed and vibrant productions, and this is our first (definitely not last) festival venture.
Dark of the Moon is a one-off, an American (gothic) stew of hellfire preachers, hillbillies, mountain shamen and saucy southern temptresses. With its unique mix of hokey good-timin' and dark foreboding that demands a robust theatricality, it still exerts a disconcertingly strange spell, both shocking and intoxicating.
Performances:
16th - 20th August
Price:
£4.00 (£2.00) »
This is a powerful play.....performed by a talented cast.
DARK OF THE MOON -
Green Stag Youth Theatre
How do you get to be a human? That's the big question for John, the son of a witch and a buzzard, and therefore a witch himself.
It's Tennessee in the early 1940s and, as far as the residents of Buck Creek are concerned, strangers are rarely welcome, especially a witch-boy.
But John has wearied of witch-company and witch activities - digging around in graveyards and flying in the light of the full moon have lost their charm. This witch-boy has fallen in love with a local girl. And even if it is Barbara Allen, a spirited nineteen-year-old whose wanton ways have made her the talk of the town and the despair of her parents, the good people of Buck Creek are determined he is not going to have her.
So witch-boy John takes himself to the Smoky Mountains to consult Conjur Man and Conjur Woman - the magical local spirits of nature. He forges a bargain with them: he can be a human if Barbara will stay faithful to him for one year.
Barbara truly loves John. They are happy together. What can go wrong?
They just hadn't reckoned on the ferocious forces of small-town insularity and furious, fundamentalist Christianity. This play not only shows the dark of the moon but also the dark side of Christianity. There is more talk of blood and revenge from Preacher Haggler and his congregation than was ever heard among the witches on the Smokey Mountains. The good citizens of Buck Creek, fuelled by petty jealousy and blind morality, turn on the doomed couple. Preacher Haggler and his Buck Creek Christians boil up enough of a seething cauldron of hate and resentment, of emotional brutality and vicious physical assault, to ensure that Barbara Allen - the good-time girl who turns out to be the only one among them capable of real love - is destroyed.
This is a powerful play, admirably performed by a talented cast. Although it has its lighter moments, it won't make you smile all the way through - but it will certainly make you think, and, at the end, your heart might just break for Barbara Allen.
Vale Benson