Blue Bridge Theatre’s adaptation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow has a bit of a twist.
Sleepy Hollow was primarily chosen for its autumnal atmosphere and Halloween associations, but the more Blue Bridge president and art director Brian Richmond and adaptation playwright Andrew Bailey dove into the story the more intrigued they became with the themes found in the original publication.
“Washington Irving’s Sleepy Hollow, I think it’s a satire specifically on an element of what he saw as the rather provincial mentality of early America,” says Richmond, adding that Bailey has taken a different focus. “He certainly stayed true to the satiric intent of Irving’s original, but I think his focus, because he’s a writer existing in 2024, is different. I would say the satirical focus is on a community that holds really antiquated views around the role of women in society and the disparity between the rich and the poor in that society.”
Richmond calls Sleepy Hollow a play within a play.
“[It’s] set in 1960 in New York City, and it’s being presented by a fictional company that [Bailey] calls the Coalmine radio players,” he says. “And they are engaging in what is the last radio broadcast for this station.”
On the antiquated views in question, Richmond looks at the main character, Ichabod Crane, to find the values being satirized by Irving, and newly explored by Bailey. There’s a particular focus being given to the newfound social mobility developing in early America.
“His attraction to Katrina is all about money, that she’s the heiress to a very large amount of money that her parents have accumulated. And that is matched to Ichabod with his enormous appetite,” he says. “Using appetite in the literal sense, his desire for food… So he immediately uses his position as a supposed man of education in the community in order to work his way into the dining rooms of a number of the young women in the community.”
The radio show, which is being used as the framing device, is also looking at a shifting status quo; Richmond thinks it’s a highly relevant topic to be considering.
“It’s right on the cusp of radio stations in North America turning into all news and all music radio stations and essentially eliminating radio drama,” he says. “It’s also, of course, on the cusp of one of the more famous American elections in history, which is the Kennedy-Nixon election of 1960.”
Richmond says the timing of the performance was a coincidence, but one that will be top of mind of audience members.
“We’re on the cusp of what’s probably going to be one of the more famous US elections in American history,” he says, “just a couple of days after we finish, basically.”
The relevance of the subject matter, however, is no coincidence. Richmond says that it is the duty of those performing classics to bring the themes of the story into a modern context of understanding.
“They create challenges for us because the world has just changed so significantly in terms of its values and the way that it sees these stories,” he says. “So I think if you’re engaged in the classics in 2024, you have an obligation to reinterpret them, and that can mean re-adapting them to make them meaningful to a contemporary audience.”
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
8 pm Friday, November 1
2 pm and 8 pm Saturday, November 2
2 pm Sunday, November 3
Tickets sold out but wait list being taken
bluebridgetheatre.ca