Jefferson's Garden
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- £7.49
Publisher Description
America. 1776.
Christian is a Quaker. His family came to America to live in peace. But he is a young man fired up by dreams of revolution. Should he defy his community and pick up a gun?
Thomas Jefferson is an idealist, with a vision of liberty for all. But America is a fractured coalition
of states, in a bloody war for independence. How will he balance the ideal with the reality?
Susanna was born a slave. But the British promise liberation for those who join their fight against the revolution. Where does true freedom lie?
Jefferson's Garden by Timberlake Wertenbaker premiered at Watford Palace Theatre in February 2015.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At what cost freedom, and freedom for whom? These are the central questions of Wertenbaker's thought-provoking play set in revolutionary America and recorded in front of a live audience earlier this year. Amid the Revolutionary War, a young shoemaker, Christian, leaves his Quaker family and travels to Virginia to meet Thomas Jefferson, whose writings on freedom have entranced him. He is so captivated by Jefferson's words that he joins the fledgling rebel army in its fight against England, an act that leaves him shunned by his family and his pacifist Quaker community. At the war's end, Christian is shocked to learn that the freedom he fought for excludes slaves, one of whom, Susannah, he has fallen in love with. The cast of nine actors is excellent in bringing to life numerous characters, but the standouts are Nate Corddry, who plays Christian with the perfect idealistic naivet ; Gregory Harrison, whose portrayal of Thomas Jefferson balances the man's stalwart and sincere ideology of freedom with his contradictory ownership of slaves; and Inger Tudor, who expertly runs an exhausting gambit of emotions as she portrays both Susannah and Jefferson's slave Sally Hemings.
