Suppositional history is a specialty of playwright Mark St. Germain, as he demonstrated in Freud’s Last Session, The Best of Enemies and Camping with Henry and Tom, plays of fiction that bring together notable real-life characters, unconstrained by any knowledge of what actually occurred at their meetings.
A case in point is Camping With Henry and Tom, which explores a historical footnote when, in 1921 in the Blue Ridge Mountains of rural Maryland, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Warren G. Harding drove into the woods near Licking Creek, intent on escaping — at least briefly — from the watchful eyes of the Secret Service and the press.
This imaginative collision of the innovator of mass production, the brilliant prolific inventor and the reluctant 29th president of the United States begins inauspiciously when Ford’s car — a Model T, of course — collides with a deer, leaving the trio stranded. So, as these plays go, they have nothing to do while waiting to be rescued but expound on their personal philosophies and get on each other’s nerves.
St. Germain clearly did his homework, injecting into the play familiar quotes from his three articulate, cerebral men, as well as dialogue from his own fertile brain. If this sounds familiar to you, perhaps you saw Camping With Henry and Tom the first time Palm Beach Dramaworks produced it in 2001, when the West Palm Beach company was in its infancy. A popular choice at the time, artistic producing director William Hayes now revives the talky but involving work as part of its 25th anniversary season.
That earlier production was in cramped quarters a couple of blocks west of Dramaworks’ current roomy playhouse, where the emphasis was on the text rather than the design elements. In contrast, the current show boasts a breathtaking sylvan landscape by Bert Scott with towering tree trunks and copious vegetation. We first meet the cast in an amusing faux-vintage black-and-white credits sequence filmed by Adam J. Thompson. None of this is necessary, of course, but it underscores how much the company has grown in its two-and-a-half decades, now known for its stunning production elements as well as its thought-provoking play selections.
The crux of the play is the conflict between the politically ambitious Ford, eager to parlay his affordable mass-produced cars into a run for the presidency, and the man he would probably have to beat for the job, Harding, so uncomfortable in the White House. It takes a while, but Ford eventually shows his racist, anti-semitic attitudes, which convince Harding that he will have to run for a second term if only to prevent Ford from ascending to the office. The third, albeit unequal, leg of this dramatic triangle, Edison, prefers to remain as neutral as Switzerland while his compatriots wage their war of words. He is content to catch up on his reading, though he can be relied upon to lob the occasional pointed punchline into the conversation.
Like all good history plays, Camping with Henry and Tom has resonances to current events whenever it is performed. In 2001, I noted that the Ford character brought to mind a cross between Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan. These days, it is hard to listen to his unfettered hate-mongering and not think of today’s feisty commander-in-chief.
If this three-way portrait of prominent icons between the world wars becomes Ford’s play, that is certainly due in part to the standout pugnacious performance by John Leonard Thompson, egotistical and caustic. Considerably cooler but no less compelling is Tom Wahl’s Harding, physically more imposing than Ford, yet without the taste for the blood sport of politics. And although Edison is the least well-drawn of the three characters, Rob Donohoe leaves a vivid if understated impression in the role.
Director Hayes understands that St. Germain’s script calls for a balancing act between historical drama and lightweight entertainment. That he and his veteran cast achieve that seeming effortless state of equilibrium is reason enough to accept PBD’s invitation to go camping.
CAMPING WITH HENRY AND TOM, Palm Beach Dramaworks, 201 Clematis St., West Palm Beach. Through Sunday, April 27. $92. 561-514-4042.