The Bromfield Drama Society took its production of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” to the semifinals of the Massachusetts High School Drama Festival at Westford Academy last weekend. The Bromfield cast and crew won two acting awards but did not advance to the finals. About 110 schools competed in the annual festival, with 42 making it to the semifinals.
“I wanted to do something spooky and funny,” director Martha Brooks told the Press. And this production of “Sleepy Hollow” was definitely both. The gullible schoolmaster Ichabod Crane (played by Liam Wang) listens avidly to every ghost story the local residents cook up, then quakes in fear at every shadow as he walks through the haunted woods. Both Crane and his rival Brom Bones (Nick Schelzi) seek to woo the coquettish Katrina Van Tassel (Fiona Nash), who skillfully uses their rivalry to her own purposes. And Bones takes full advantage of Crane’s credulity, appearing as the fearsome Headless Horseman in the climactic scene.
Fiona Nash, as Katrina Van Tassel, frightens Ichabod Crane (Liam Wang). (Photos by Lisa Aciukewicz)
The other members of the cast—Nick Thornton, Emily Rypinski, Taylor Caroom, Brooke Caroom, and Thea Eiland—rose to the challenge of playing multiple roles ranging from students in the Sleepy Hollow school to local farmers, the parson, and several horses. All the actors displayed some fine comic timing, whether it was as students bedeviling their hapless teacher or as the plodding nag totally misnamed Gunpowder (Eiland).
In the semifinals both Wang and Nash received acting awards. Nash, Rypinski, and Taylor Caroom had received acting awards in the first round of the competition. Stage manager Erin Flynn and sound technician Tyler Hill had also won awards in the first round.
Liam Wang surrounded by, from left, Brooke Caroom, Taylor Caroom, and Thea Eiland.
The play used a stage set of gray vertical boards with spaces between them, like large fence pickets, that created the impression of walls for interior scenes or tree trunks for the forest scenes. And the spaces between the boards allowed spooky figures to lurk in the background, visible but partly obscured, during the ghost stories. Led by stage manager Antonio Bibbio in the semifinal round, stage crew members Dallas Briggs-Adams, Curtis DiNapoli, Helena Justicz, Shea Oldham, Lauren Walling-Sotolongo, and Perli Walling-Sotolongo all moved walls and changed set decoration swiftly, as well as strewing fall leaves across the stage to set the autumnal mood.
Mood lighting
Director Brooks said retired Bromfield drama teacher Michael McGarty had made the trip to Harvard to do a workshop with the cast in preparation for the festival. She also credited Jason Ward, a Bromfield parent, for his work when the school’s new lighting board was installed and for his help in training several students in using the lighting system. Brooks gave special recognition to costume designer Beth Drummey, who has worked on many drama society productions.
Lighting, as operated by Owen Cameron, was a major factor in “Sleepy Hollow,” creating the eerie mood in many scenes and setting off the blinding flash when the Headless Horseman bursts out of the woods. Unfortunately, the lighting system at Westford Academy did not allow for the full range of color effects that the lights in Cronin Auditorium had been able to create, Brooks said.
Of the 42 schools that competed in the semifinals at seven different venues, 14 will go on to the final round, to be held in Boston March 28 through March 30. Among them will be Wayland High School and Westford Academy, against which Bromfield competed last Saturday. This is the 88th annual drama festival organized by the Massachusetts Educational Theater Guild.
