The Hippodrome delivers Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” with verve and fire
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What happened? How did we get here? Where are we?
Listen, if life imitates art more than art imitates life — and I won’t argue with Oscar Wilde — then it’s fair to say that the Hippodrome has kicked off its 50th season with an artistic offering that is as appropriately depressing as …
… well, as American life has become since COVID forced us all into isolation one from another.
That’s not to scare anyone away from the Hipp’s production of Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451.” Sometimes a dose of downer is exactly the anti-depressive needed to confront life’s ugly realities. And the Hipp’s ensemble delivers up Bradbury’s dystopian drama about government book burners with verve and, yes, fire.
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“Kerosene. Isn’t that a kind of perfume?” This from fireman Montag, who waxes poetic about the seduction of incineration. “We were born of fire!”
But then he watches a woman immolate herself and her hidden library rather than let the firemen do their jobs. But not before she hands Montag a single, slim volume and changes his destiny.
Niall McGinty’s range allows him to easily make Montag’s painful but inevitable transition from arrogance to uncertainty to introspection and, finally, realization and defiance.
Watching his narcotized wife Mildred (Katelyn Crall) gaze with vapid content at “The Mildred Show” on their wall-sized TV, it begins to dawn on Montag that force isn’t really essential to suppress thinking and dissent. In an age of media saturation, too many of us go down that road voluntarily.
“I wish we had two TV walls instead of one,” Mildred sighs.
But if there is an incendiary force in this production it is found in the person of David Patrick Ford’s fire chief. Ford is mesmerizing as Beatty, perhaps the last truly literate subversive still standing. He flaunts his bookishness with the confidence of one who knows that those around him simply won’t get his sly references and innuendo.
When the firehouse crew decides to name their new robo-stalking hound Baskerville, fireman Black (Jay Nixon) innocently wonders “Wasn’t there a book by that name?”
“Did you read it!” Beatty demands.
“No!” Black fairly recoils.
Not to be missed is Jacqueline St. Pierre’s performance as the waifish Alice, who with a few innocent questions in a courtyard encounter becomes Montag’s muse. And pay attention to David Carey Foster’s Faber, a timid professor who, in Wizard Of Oz fashion, becomes the man behind the curtain and literally has Montag’s ear.
The production values with all of the requisite sound, light and fury are up to Hipp standards. And this mixed cast of professionals and students once again validates the Hippodrome’s partnership with the University of Florida’s School of Theater And Dance.
“There is nothing worth knowing,” Montag insists in the early moments of the play. If you walk out of the Hipp still believing that, you weren’t paying attention.
For show times and ticket prices, see The Hippodrome’s web site, thehipp.org.
Ron Cunningham is The Sun's theater critic.
This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: 'Fahrenheit 451' by Ray Bradbury is The Hippodrome Theatre's latest play
