The Entertainment Show with Anita Donovan

WBCB Radio, 1490   November 23, 2007

Watch on the Rhine at the Actors’NET - now if your old enough to remember anything about WWII, or if you have studied WWII, this is a  very interesting play, particularly for those of us old enough, you know, to know something about history.

I think most people today I don’t know -they asked somebody the other day when was Lincoln president and the person asked had no idea, not even a century! Watch on the Rhine is about- well it came out in 1941 and was turned into a movie in 1943, so it’s very timely.  It’s set in 1940, which is just before the war began and it appeared on Broadway in April 1941, which was only a few short months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. So Lillian Hellman, as a playwright, really had her ears attuned to what was going on in Europe, and she was really trying to give us a early notice and early warning. Watch on the Rhine is about refugees from Germany who are refugees because they were trying to fight a new regime there. To fight the Hitler regime there- the Third Reich and as they come to this country for safety they find there is no safety and that they have problems when they get here in order to escape some of the people who are chasing them in the old country. So Watch on the Rhine is being done at Actors’NET in Morrisville, and I think a very nice production.

The thing I like about the shows at Actors’NET is they just do the play - they tell you the story and the actors are not full of themselves. They just do what they have to do - they just act their characters and when you come out you understand what they’re doing, you understand the story - they don’t distract you with all kinds of you know, high jinks. I say that because there are some theatres around that seem to me to be more interested in showing off rather than just showing you the play. So I highly recommend Watch on the Rhine, especially if you’re a history buff  and you remember WWII, and you know, you still wonder what was going on there. Especially the question people always want to know: did the German people know what was going on - did they understand what was happening under the Third Reich? And this play I think is one of those answers.  There’re many, many answers but this play, I think, gives us one of those answers - and it’s always good to have a lot of answers - to put them into the note book of our mind and file them there and so that’s why I think this also has a kind of importance.

Its an important play, as well as well crafted, has interesting characters and it’s entertaining as well. So if you’re looking for something a little serious, - again, maybe not for children, although I think that children would understand it - there are children in it. And I think it’s also a good adult outing.

Watch on the Rhine runs this weekend, and then will run next weekend, through December 2. They had a little hard time getting started with this production, so they extended it to December 2.   So if you have an old program or something you may have the wrong dates…