THEATER REPORT By Marty Crisp
Sunday News Staff Writer
Tad, who ages from 8 to 18 during the course of the action, is both narrator and star of this latest offering from the Fulton's playwright-in-residence. The irrepressible Tad, played by New York Equity actor Matthew Schneck, 26, sees the White House roof as a fort, the White House rose garden as a make-believe burial ground, and the Civil War, unfolding all around him, as a thrilling adventure.
Tad fights with his brother, hates his lessons, and has a consuming passion for the story of Aladdin and his magic lamp. He could be any boy, living in any age That's why the the audience feels his shock and surprise when he discovers that people you love can die in a war, and politics sting when strangers say bad things about your beloved father.
The full New York equity cast includes Stuart Ellis, 23, as Abe Lincoln; Nicole Schiro, 27, as Mary Todd Lincoln; and Rob Wilson, 26, as Tad's older brother Willie. Between performances at a local elementary school recently, the four actors unwound like overgrown children, playing enthusiastic one-on-one basketball on the polished wood of the gymnasium court where "Lincoln's log" was being staged. Schiro giggled as she shot hoops in her 19th-century hoop skirt.
The players needed to nurture the child within in order to pull off this deceptively simple tale of the Great Emancipator's White House years.
The play opens with the strains of "Dixie." As cannons boom and soldiers in blue uniforms scurry to defend the U.S. capitol, Tad gleefully exclaims. "We're smack in the middle of it. What other boy ever had it so good?"
"I usually hate adults in kids' roles," confessed Kornhauser. who sometimes sits on the gymnasium floor with his school audiences to hear their comments and see what they see. "It's a great place to sit." he enthused. "The kids don't know the etiquette of theater, so the feedback is very direct."
As for the ages of the cast, Kornhauser calls it a practical compromise. "It's hard to take a kid out of school for three months for something like this. So we looked for actors who could play children convincingly."
To help them get into the mood. Kornhauser gave each actor some Lincoln Logs (a popular 1950s - vintage building toy still available) before the production began. Kornhauser, who has written more than a dozen plays for young people, said he has always been an American history buff, but three recent events in his life came together to inspire and influence the writing of "Lincoln's Log."
Those events included the death of Kornhauser's own father last year; the death of his close friend Kit Howell, a Unitarian minister, and a random comment from Kornhauser's children - Max. 13; Sam, 10; and Ariel, 7 about what they would do if only their Dad were rich and president instead of just being an award-winning regional playwright.
"Working in the theater means never having a lot of money." Kornhauser admitted ruefully. "Kids think having power and money would make all the problems go away. I wrote 'Lincoln's Log' to show that even extraordinary people have ordinary problems."
Indeed. the Lincoln family, for all of Honest Abe's accomplishments, had more than its share of problems. One brother, Edward, died while still a toddler in Illinois. Willie, the apple of his mother's eye, died at the age of 11, while Lincoln was in office, and Tad himself lived only to the age of 18. Lincoln was assassinated when he was 58, and his wife eventually wound up in an asylum for the mentally ill.
Only the oldest brother, Bob, described in the play as "straight as a rail and twice as stiff," lived anything close to a normal life.
N "Log" also reveals the fascinating and little-known fact that Tad went to Grover's Theater that fateful April evening when his father was shot at Ford's Theater. Tad eagerly attended a performance of "The Oriental Spectacle of Aladdin." and tried hard to persuade his father to go with him But Mary Todd Lincoln insisted the date at Ford's was a political obligation
As Tad recalls the event later, in a journal he is keeping, "All through the night, Father struggled to hang on to life, while I struggled to understand (what had happened). In the end. we both gave up."
Power and prestige? Or hard times and heartaches? It's all in your point of view. according to "Lincoln's Log" Tad Lncoin says more about the U.S. presidency than most children - or adults ever truly understand when he remarks, "This wasn't at all what 1 figured on for coming to the White House."
"Lincoln's Log" presents a little-examined viewpoint brought to vivid life by Kornhauser's prose. Arizona-based director David Saar's vision, and four energetic actors in authentic period costumes. The action takes place on and around a large puppet stage. built to resemble Ford's Theater. Slides, shown on a screen behind the stage, are not visible to those who sit on the sides of the audience. For those who can see them, however, the slides add a note of realism to the Civil War setting.
Kornhauser won the 1993 Distinguished Play Award from the American Alliance of Theater-in-Education for his original play, "This Is Not A Pipe Dream." He won the Bonderman National Youth Play Writing Award for "Another Columbus." His plays have been performed from New York City to Hawaii to Germany and France, and his ability to climb into a child's head and explain what he finds there in striking, visual detail has been proven time and time again.
Lincoln died in 1865, but he never seemed more alive than he does in
"Lincoln's Log," when a crestfallen Tad tells the audience:
"They say he belongs to the ages now. I thought he belonged to me."
"Lincoln's Log" will be performed at 2 p.m. Saturday, March
29, 1997
at the Fulton Opera House, 12 N. Prince St. Tickets are $5. Call
397-7425 for reservations.