NEWS
The Davidson Community Players Production of “Yankee Tavern” Abounds with Conspiracy Theories and Thrills
Theories about the conspiracy to assassinate JFK, the moon landing, and many other world events, including 9/11, are tossed around. Realistic, perhaps, or even outlandish! I never knew there were so many disparate suppositions about what happened on September 11.
In Yankee Tavern, four superb actors take center stage to express their opinions and doubts about events that occurred in recent years. The latest Davidson Community Players (DCP) production opened last week and will run each weekend through October 8.
(John McHugh photo)
DCPs Armour Street Theatre is the perfect venue to stage Yankee Tavern, a conspiracy thriller written by Steven Dietz, known as “the most ubiquitous American playwright whose name you may never have heard.” I hadn’t.
Yankee Tavern’s Director Matt Webster honed the nature of the drama’s characters with precision—all four are great! He is assisted by Frannie Williams. And I love the costumes Della Knowles designed.
The setting, designed by Joshua Webb, is a simple, small pub where locals tend to meet—just like the taverns found around the side streets of New York. Yankee Tavern is owned by Adam, a graduate student working on his thesis, played by Matt Stevens, who is becoming a favored actor of DCP plays.
Cordelia Hogan, a charming newcomer to the Davidson stage, plays Janet, Adam’s fiancé. She wonders why so many wedding invitations have been returned marked, “unknown” and asks Adam
(John McHugh photo)
if those names were made up.
Ray, a resident who lives above the tavern, bursts in. The outlandish, loud, cynical character is portrayed by Bill Reilly, a versatile performer who has been seen on various stages around Lake Norman. Sure, they’re made-up people from upstairs or maybe even ghosts, he confirms. He gave their names to Adam for the wedding invite list.
Pacing at a rapid clip, Ray spouts an interminable litany of conspiracy themes—or maybe paranoia. “The moon we landed on, we cannot see,” he claims, and has a rock to prove it. Ray never lets up.
Janet had seen Ray at a bookstore signing books he didn’t write “The author never showed up,” he said, “so I just did it.” Fed up, in disbelief, Janet asks her fiancé not to let Ray make a toast at
(John McHugh photo)
their wedding.
While Ray continues to proffer endless theories, a fourth character, Palmer, portrayed by Steve Schreur, in his third role with DCP this year, enters the tavern and silently sits at the bar. The focus, by then, is intensely discussed around 9/11. What about Building Seven by the Twin Towers?
By the second act the plot has thickened, entwined by then, with issues from all their personal lives. Janet reveals Adam’s theory that people will believe anything they have not been given a reason to disbelieve. Surprising, entertaining, questionable, frightening, amazing, believable, Yankee Tavern is dramatic in a crazy, humorous way.
Yankee Tavern has food for thought. Realistic? Ludicrous? It’s a rapid-paced, well-produced, entertaining play. At any rate, it’s worth shimmying up to the bar for a beer or a glass of wine, then settling down in an Armour Street seat to dream up theories—or conspiracies of one’s own.
Connie Fisher
Connie Fisher, neé Consuelo Carmona, is a Davidson resident who grew up in Mexico City where she became a journalist and acquired a taste for the theatre. Her preference for work behind the scenes led to an interest in writing reviews—Yale Rep among her favorite troupes. Connie is the author of Doing it the Right Way, the biography of an Italian hatmaker. Her prose appears with 87 other international writers in The Widows’ Handbook. An active, founding member of Lake Norman Writers, Connie just released her latest book, "The Mongrel, Bi-cultural Adventures of a Latina-Scandinavian Youth," a memoir about her years growing up in Mexico.