ICC Theatre’s Last Show No Great Fall

EAST PEORIA — Don’t be fooled by the title of the latest play at Illinois Central College. If you thought that you are going to see Humpty Dumpty sit on a wall and then fall down, you would be wrong.

On April 18 through April 27, the ICC Arts and Communication Department Theatre Program presented “Humpty Dumpty” in the studio theatre of the Performing Arts Center. The story focuses on four friends who decided to stay a week at a cabin in the woods, to get away from it all. But when something happens it has them staying a bit longer than they’ve had planned. Probably sounds like something we would see in a scary movie.

“This play had a bit of everything from drama to comedy and even a bit thrilling that had me saying ‘wow’,” said Joanna Carter, 45, of Peoria, about the play.

For the entire show, the setting of the play was in one set. The set was a two-floor vacation cabin with everything from a fire place, kitchen and stairs. The style was set in like a bottle episode on a television series.

The lighting in the production changed a lot of times during the show moved on, as it represented day and night with brightness of the sun for day and dark with moonlight for night. Along with the lights, the music, which had some real eerily sounds, really helped set the tone of the scenes of the story.

One interesting moment during the show was when intermission came and the actors kept on playing their characters on the set. Audience members got to see what happens in that time frame between those 15 minutes as the story jumps ahead a couple of more days.

There were a few characters that stood out. Spoon, played by Hannah Gidcumb, stood out in this production. We seemed to learn about her throughout the story that she seems to be sweet, caring, wants to have a good time and never stuck up for her.

There was a scene when Troy was arguing with her about her drinking cider, since she wasn’t suppose to drink any alcohol or she would become a wild person. Depite knowing this, Spoon did argue back and stood up for herself.

“I really felt sorry for her,” said Carter. “When I saw her arguing back at Troy I felt happy that she stuck-up for herself.”

There were a couple of mistakes during the performance as a couple of actors stumbled on a couple of words but it wasn’t a big deal and they didn’t lose their character.

One audience member mentions that in the story that some of the things that happen weren’t realistic. He mentions that when one of the characters put a bottle of wine in the freezer saying that you’re not suppose to put wine in there. Also he mentions that when the sun was rising it was facing west and not the east and the other was when Max got the peanut butter out of the cabinet that the jar lid was not on.

Humpty Dumpty is a modern tragedy with farce that deals with people in a closed environment during a nature crisis. In a way it does deal with the same concept as Humpty Dumpty, but only in a psychological way.

The play was also important for college students to see, as it explored dependency on technology, terrorism and world infrastructure. There were as many things to learn while viewing Humpty Dumpty as there were things to entertain.