The Island Packet, Friday, April 14, 2006, by Gail Westerfield

Young and old can enjoy 'Yellow Dog Crossing'

A truly great play can appeal to the child in us as well as children. It can make intricate literary allusions while remaining a simple, beautiful story.

"Yellow Dog Crossing" truly has something for everyone, and particular moments from the play will remain with you long after you leave the theater.

South Carolina Repertory Company veteran director Tom Evans' remarkable script is reason enough to see this play, running at South Carolina Rep through April 23. But excellent performances also abound, and the somewhat abstract set is a star in its own right.

Director Chip Egan, who directed "Yellow Dog Crossing" at its premiere in 1986, has a light but powerful touch with actors, eliciting dynamic performances and believable relationships, and he skillfully blocks them to create truly memorable images.

"Yellow Dog Crossing" is set in what the program notes call "a wide place in the road," in the rural South, 1903. The deceptively simple plot involves a young boy, Sambob (Winslow Mohr), who's sent to stay with his grandfather, Samuel Robert Kinkaid (Weldon Durham), when Sambob's father dies.

The elder Kinkaid was estranged for many years from Sambob's father -- though the audience does not learn why until late in the play -- and his failing health and sight are almost immediately restored by Sambob's arrival. Nell (Barbara Farrar) is Kinkaid's housekeeper and the reluctant object of his affection. Her nephew Vernon (Henry Layton) is a Bible salesman with woman troubles of his own, as evidenced by his love interest, Charlotte (Pamela Decker), a very pregnant teenager.

Evans' script is well-paced, balancing the laconic pace of the rural Southern life in simpler times with the excitement of the plays events, some as familiar as a thunderstorm and others as strange and thrilling as a shared secret.

The actors sound perfectly at home with hilarious colloquialisms like "ready to fall in bed like a gutted rooster," and "excited as a scalded dog." Durham is an especially strong presence on the stage, utterly believable whether he's tender or crotchety, loving or stubborn. He deftly manages allusions to Samson, King Lear, Icarus and Leonardo DaVinci, while portraying the grandfather any kid (and many adults) would have loved to have had. When decades of pent-up sadness and rage at his pride let loose near the play's end, it's deeply moving.

Farrar, who was memorably paired with Durham in "On Golden Pond" in 2002, works well with him again here, and creates a fully rounded portrait of a woman who is truly her own woman, so much more than the term "old maid" would imply. Tough as nails but with a huge heart, Nell also serves as an "Our Town"-like narrator, stepping out of the action occasionally to include the audience in the story.

Mohr is excellent from start to finish, first as an understandably angry boy, but then as one easily won over by chocolate pie and the attention of his strict but doting grandfather. Mohr doesn't have a single false note or overly precocious moment; his scenes with Durham in the "sycamore tree" and in the play's final moments, in fact, were more natural and restrained than many adult actors can manage.

Layton, who was utterly amazing in last year's "Greetings!," shows excellent comic timing and an odd sweetness. He and Decker are well-paired; she doesn't really look 15, but she balances naiveté well with strength, and genuinely seems ready to get the man she loves at any cost and play her part in the cycle of life and love.

Set design and construction, by Evans and Egan, deserve special notice, and Tony Penna's light design also was impressive and added more magic to this beautiful play.