DARK OF THE MOON
Though it’s likely the Theatre Guild never regretted its choice, Dark of the Moon did open in New York in 1945 and enjoyed its own success: an extended Broadway run and a long life later as a favorite with amateur and college theaters. This production by Chi-Town Revelers is more amateur than Broadway, and wildly uneven. The first act makes you wonder why the play was ever produced, but in the second the many merits of this delightful folktale come through.
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As the ill-fated lovers, Michael Hargrove and Rebekah Smith certainly convince us of their undying love. Even when the story becomes a struggle between good and evil, between the church and a witch, we still root wholeheartedly for the witch. They exude so much wholesomeness, however, that they seem better suited to the Oklahoma! lovers than to the witch-boy and his wife. Smith, a perky blond with a sweet voice, lacks the fierce sexuality of a woman who has “pleasured herself” freely and conceived a child before marriage. Hargrove, long-legged and gangly, is all boy and very little witch. John says, “Sometimes being human’s more’n I kin stand. . . . sometimes I feel I jes’ got to git away.” And yet Hargrove does not show that restlessness, or the way John feels tempted to fly with his eagle again or return to the three sultry witches who were once his playmates.
