Hamilton High School Drama Society presents “The Outsiders” Feb. 13-15 at the Hamilton Fine Arts Center (HFAC). Shows begin at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday and at 2 p.m. for the Sunday performance.
This entirely practical stage adaptation deals with real people, seen through the eyes of young Ponyboy, a Greaser on the wrong side of life, caught up in territorial battles between the have-it-made rich kids—the Socs—and his tough, underprivileged “greaser” family and friends. In the midst of urban warfare, somehow Ponyboy can’t forget a short poem that speaks of their fragile young lives:
Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief,
so dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.
“Robert Frost wrote it,” Ponyboy tells Johnny. “I always remembered it because I never quite got what he meant by it.” While the Socs appear to have everything, the only thing a Greaser has is his friends. As these young people try to find themselves and each other, as the sadness of sophistication begins to reach them and their battles and relationships reach a resolution, Ponyboy’s dying friend, Johnny, sends him a last message … “I’ve been thinking about the poem that guy wrote. He meant you’re gold when you’re a kid, like green. When you’re a kid everything’s new, dawn. It’s just when you get used to everything that it’s day. Like the way you dig sunsets, Pony. That’s gold. Keep it that way. It’s a good way to be.” This is a play about young people who are not yet hopeless about latent decency in the midst of struggle.
Tickets are $8 for adults, $5 for students and seniors. Tickets may be purchased at www.hamiltonfineartscenter.com or at the box office 30 minutes before each performance.
The Hamilton Fine Arts Center is located at W220 N6151 Town Line Rd., Sussex.