From biblical locusts to the black plague to Columbine, human beings have always felt an innate need to answer the unanswerable question, “Why?”
Why does a baby die being born? Why are there dust bowls and hurricanes? What made colonial girls dance naked in the woods?
Someone must pay.
Why do bad things happen? In the absence of empirical fact, one convenient scapegoat has been invoked from Salem to “Wicked” to “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”:
“She’s a witch!”
When playwright Suzan Zeder was researching the Depression-era Works Progress Administration, she was struck by the number of oral histories that blame witches for natural disasters. Amid the poverty and economic desperation of the day, we’re told in her 1983 play, “Mother Hicks,” “Not a sane person in this town would make light of witches.”
Of course, it’s that confluence of fear, ignorance and certainty that makes a perfect witch’s brew for prejudice, superstition and intolerance.
That’s the basis for “Mother Hicks,”an earnest and family-friendly play that Firehouse is staging at the John Hand Theatre. It was named “the most significant play of the 1980s” within the children’s theater industry for its lessons in inclusion, identity and redefining family, but to its credit, it never feels like children’s theater.
The year is 1935, the setting Little Egypt, an area of southern Illinois modeled after the Nile delta (which would later become the blueprint for the Colorado town of Greeley).
A chorus of three narrators uses poetry and sign language to tell us about three outcasts whose primary identities are the labels people use against them: Girl is a foundling; the boy a deaf-mute; the old woman a witch. Mother Hicks is in fact a healer, a former midwife who got blamed for the death of a baby — and just about everything else that’s gone wrong in this town. She’s exiled to Dug Hill, where animals instinctively come to her to have their wounds tended.
This is a “Grapes of Wrath”- era tale that focuses on Girl (Danielle Samler). She’s a tattered little hooligan who was abandoned at a state home and has since been passed among foster homes. Fearless, she accepts a dare to go to the graveyard and touch the witch, who comes each night to ritually lay out children’s clothing before a tiny grave. When Girl injures herself, deaf boy Tuc (Patrick Mann) and Mother Hicks take her in, making for the first real family she’s ever known. But you can bet the fearful townspeople are going to go all “Young Frankenstein” over that arrangement.
The signature line comes when Tuc is teaching Girl about deafness: “I can see the sharp sting of honey, and I can taste the sunrise.”
It’s an elegantly written play that’s not quite as elegantly executed on the stage. Sean Coch rane has designed an evocative hilltop stage, but director Kris Hipps hasn’t yet discovered that the most effective positioning for her chorus would be a permanent spot behind a see-through scrim that hangs at the back of the stage. Instead, the pace is continually bogged down by the trio having to clomp out from the wings to speak between each fast-moving scene.
The quick first act meanders, but things stabilize after intermission. That’s our first real chance to meet Mother Hicks, played with unsentimental acumen by proven veteran Linda Suttle. Of course, we’re heading for a new understanding among these people, but it comes in a refreshingly treacle-free way.
The acting ranges from introductory to nuanced. Notable are Mann as the mute boy (a wonderful transformation from his starring role in Theatre Group’s “Torch Song Trilogy”) and Nancy Cain as a caring foster mom. The kids all come from the Denver School of the Arts, which means they’re in training. But in her most natural of moments, Samler evokes uncanny memories of Mary Badham’s Oscar-nominated portrayal of feisty little Scout in “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
The play is brisk at just 95 minutes, which includes intermission. Perhaps the evening might have left a greater overall impact if “Mother Hicks” had been presented in tandem with its prequel, “The Taste of Sunrise,” which focuses on Tuc’s childhood.
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
“Mother Hicks” **1/2 (out of four stars)
Drama. Presented by the Firehouse Theater Company at the John Hand Theatre, 7653 E. First Place. Through Feb. 15. 1 hour, 35 minutes. 7:30 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays and Feb. 2; 2 p.m. Sundays. $10-$17. 303-562-3232, firehouse
This weekend’s theater openings
“Inana” On the eve of the U.S. invasion of Baghdad, an Iraqi museum director desperately plots to safeguard an ancient statue from the looting he fears will come. He flees to London with his young bride, but before he can begin a new life there, he must reveal his own past and the fate of the statue of Inana, Goddess of War. A Denver Center Theatre Company commission and world premiere presentation by Michele Lowe. Through Feb. 28. Ricketson Theatre, Denver Performing Arts Complex, 14th and Curtis streets, 303-893-4100 or
“The Full Monty” Fun musical based on the popular British film. Five unemployed steelworkers (moved here to Buffalo, N.Y.,) come up with a bold way to make some quick cash: by taking off their clothes. In the process they find renewed self-esteem, the importance of friendship and the ability to have fun. Through Feb. 15. Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., 719-634-5583 or
Compiled by John Moore
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