In Centerburg, along with the routine of day-to-day living, the most preposterous things keep happening.īut nothing fazes Homer Price! Ragweeds taller than fire ladders, music that sets a whole town dancing-he solves these problems calmly and efficiently. But there's a subtle and delightful difference. Grampa Hercules and his never-ending tall tales, Dulcy Dooner, the uncooperative citizen, unbusinesslike Uncle Ulysses and his friendly lunchroom, the flustered sheriff, the pompous judge-they are all as American as they come. plays an uninvited guest at the grandfather’s birthday party who knows how to travel from now to then and transforms the pair from trans-generational combatants to allies, then friends, then a mutual admiration society.Centerburg might be your town. They also play grandson and grandfather in the edgier present day. Greg Longenhagen plays young Homer Price and Gil Rogers plays Centerburg’s leading oddball, Grandpa Hercules. Both children and adults, I suspect, will find it fascinating. Fifty years ago it was inhabited by people to whom imagination was food and drink, and it’s the place to go if your own imagination needs a transfusion. Centerburg, Ohio, was not named because of its geography, we’re told, but because its citizens decided its original name, Edible Fungus, Ohio, wasn’t dignified. The Midwestern fascination with tall tales is really the play’s hero. McCloskey sees the same phenomenon as a possible cure for those old uptight blues. When William Butler Yeats wrote “mere anarchy is loosed upon the earth,” he was trying to pinpoint the failure of our times. Rodgers from Robert McCloskey’s children’s books “Centerburg Tales” and “Homer Price,” the play begins as a snappish family satire and subtly expands into a sweetly goofy fantasy.
First out of the gate is PA STAGE with “Centerburg Tales,” a play not specifically about Christmas but very much in the season’s spirit.Īdapted by Bruce E. The holiday theater season lights up this week, as punctual as a municipal tree.
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