Take Me Back to Jefferson: Commedia d’ell arte and Bundren family make for strange bedfellows
Hillbillies and commedia d’ell arte are an unlikely combination, but this is the style delivered in Theatre Smith-Gilmour’s Take Me Back to Jefferson.
In adapting William Faulkner’s 1930 novel As I Lay Dying, Michele Smith and Dean Gilmour rely primarily on physical theatre and the imagination of their audiences rather than on elaborate sets or lengthy speeches.
The dying matriarch of the family wants to be buried in her hometown of Jefferson. Therefore, her poverty-stricken family attempts to comply, meeting the extreme challenges of flood, fire and impassable roads along the way — not to mention one of their number losing his mind, a second breaking his leg (stupidly cast in concrete) — while their selfish patriarch bullies them all, the pregnant, teenage daughter of the house tries to arrange for an abortion and a little cruelty to animals is thrown in for good measure. …