A Production of The Folk Life ( Inc. 1976)
John McLaughlin and Jamie Downs, Editors
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Book Reviews: The Digital Folk Life. Org
Walden: The Ballad of Thoreau: The final two days Henry David Thoreau spent in his cabin before leaving Walden Pond:
A Documentary Film & Theatrical Play by Michael Johnathon.
Reviewed by John McLaughlin, for www.thedigitalfolklife.org
Feb 2010.
This is a thoroughly charming reading of the relationship of Thoreau (played by Adam Luckey) to his friend and benefactor, Ralph Waldo Emerson (played by Eric Johnson), which is interrupted by the lively presence of Rachel Steurs (played by Jessie Rose Pennington), in an amusing series of interactions which, in this production, filmed before a very live audience, clearly had the audience on the side of Jessie, against the avuncular Emerson and the absent-minded Thoreau, who keeps interrupting the conversation to dash down sudden bon mots which he has come up with, like many the writer we all know.
The wood pile which forms the major part of the scenery and back wall in the play is a continual reminder of the harshness of the New England winters that Thoreau endured in this relatively brief exile of choice, against which the action of the play, largely dialogues between Emerson and Thoreau, with the afore-mentioned stealing of the scenes by Rachel Steurs. This is not upstaging by Ms Pennington; it is written into the play by Michael Johnathon, in a perhaps mildly anachronistic updating of the story.
Then again, 19th century New England women were in fact made of solid stock, as close-grained and hard inside as that looming wood-pile, and if Thoreau seems to more than meet his match in his newfound lady love, that may be closer to the truth than most of us have thought of before. Why, indeed did Thoreau leave his idyllic Walden Pond? Good question and, in my estimation, a good answer: he had done his time, and a strong-willed beauty called. We can only wish them all the best.