  
Crusoe (Eric Hissom) and Friday (David Heron)
Robinson CrusoeBy Jim Helsinger
Adapted from the novel by Daniel Defoe
February 8 to March 19, 2006 World premiere!! A dynamic new adaptation of the Daniel Defoe novel by Festival Artistic Director, Jim Helsinger. Defoe’s tale of one man’s shipwreck and isolation on a desert island comes to vivid and remarkable life in the Festival’s Goldman Theatre! To purchase single tickets:If you know which show, date and seating section you want, go directly to our Online Ticketing Box Office. If not, we have plenty of information to help you, just follow the steps below: - Select your date using the calendar below, or by going to our new Season Calendar.
- Choose your seating section - Go to Stages
- Go to our Online Ticketing Box Office and purchase your ticket!
or call the Box Office
407-447-1700 x 1
Crusoe (Eric Hissom) and Friday (David Heron)
or call the Box Office
407-447-1700 x 1
Crusoe (Eric Hissom) and Friday (David Heron) REVIEWSA Wild Ride... Terrific... Action Packed... A Heck of a Trip!The Orlando Sentinel
Review by Elizabeth Maupin  Crusoe (Eric Hissom)
Robinson Crusoe calls it the Island of Despair.
Friday calls it the Island of Death.
But the folks in the audience at Robinson Crusoe, Jim Helsinger's new adaptation of the classic novel, may call it the Island of a Million Possibilities. It seems as if anything can happen to Robinson Crusoe -- and does.
The Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival gives Crusoe a wild ride, filled with shipwrecks, cannibals, ferocious animals, religious conversion, faithful friends and a journey into self that leaves Robinson Crusoe a changed man. With so much action packed into a slim couple of hours, chances are you'll barely have time to catch your breath.
You could call Daniel Defoe's 1719 novel an adventure story, but it's a lot more than that -- an exploration of man's desire to master everything he meets, a look at 18th-century European morals and how they're transformed by extremity. In this new adaptation, Defoe's themes are infiltrated by Helsinger's, so that this Crusoe is a Crusoe for the 21st century -- family-friendly, yes, but exhilarating all the while. And with Eric Hissom playing Crusoe, you can be sure of surprises along the way.
This adaptation has been through a journey of its own through the festival's new-plays program, which presented a reading of it as a one-man show last winter at PlayFest and then as a two-man show this past fall. The cast has grown steadily, but Helsinger, the festival's artistic director, has capped it off at three. That's plenty for a story whose terrors are more terrifying when they spring from your mind.
Take Crusoe's shipwreck, which strands him alone on a tropical island. Thanks to the wizardry of the festival's designers, you may think the little Goldman Theater is awash in sea water, even though most of that water is created by sound and lights.
Crusoe (Eric Hissom)
In fact, Britt Sandusky's enveloping sound design is almost another character in Crusoe's story. Add Eric T. Haugen's ominous lighting and Bob Phillips' multilevel set, with its sail-like screening on either side, and it's all the
But he doesn't need any help in the imagination department; he has plenty of his own. Crusoe fears cannibalistic savages, and Spaniards, and mutineers; he's afraid of beasts in the forest, and fever, and the sun. In the hands of Hissom and director Michael Carleton, these fears are both utterly real and often very funny. You feel for Hissom's lonely Crusoe, who is so eager to communicate that even his own journal is his salvation -- but you can't help but laugh at a man who confides in a parrot, a dog and a goat.
Hissom digs deep inside this man to find both the self-important European colonialist of his time and an iconoclast who rails at a God in whom he can't believe. True to form, there's also a wacky side to Hissom's Crusoe: The actor makes you realize, beautifully, that even Crusoe knows he can be ridiculous. It's a tireless performance, yet what's most interesting is some of the quieter moments -- the look in Hissom's eyes, say, when Crusoe looks at his old world in a startlingly new way.
Jamaican actor David Heron makes a terrific Friday, fearsome, fearful and touching in his eagerness to do what's right and true. In fact, the camaraderie between Heron and Hissom is so appealing that you may find yourself sorry that the play has to end. Helsinger has had to cram so many adventures into his two-act framework that the second act can feel a bit rushed. "Just one more scene!" you may think when rescue arrives.
Brett Mack is fine as the rescuer and in one or two other small roles, but the journey is Crusoe's and Friday's, and you're with them all the way. Robinson Crusoe takes you over oceans and up mountains; the Shakespeare Festival's Robinson Crusoe makes it a journey into the heart and the mind. It's a heck of a trip. ROBINSON CRUSOETHEATER REVIEW
by PETER P. ROCCHIO
Crusoe (Eric Hissom)
Who doesn’t know about Robinson Crusoe being shipwrecked, stranded on an island and his relationship with his man, Friday? There is however, a visceral difference between knowing the story and feeling the story. Currently on stage at the Shakespeare Theatre in Loch Haven Park is a Jim Helsinger adaptation of the Daniel Defoe 1719 novel which puts the audience in the middle of the action. Central Florida’s own Jim Helsinger has written this play which focuses on the very small isolated world of Crusoe spanning some thirty years. As one would imagine, life under these circumstances can only be boring at best but boring is not what we experience. We are put into the middle of a major hurricane off the coast of South America as it ravages and founders a ship headed for Africa to pick up a cargo of slaves. The ship is located to the rear of the audience and we see Crusoe make his way through the turbulent sea and be tossed upon this uninhabited island. Crusoe eventually makes a raft, which he uses to take himself back and forth from the ship to scavenge what stores he might eat to sustain himself, as well as other items to help him survive. This Crusoe is not without a sense of humor, as well as being a man of faith. Eric Hisson as Crusoe delivers a tour d’force performance. We feel his loneliness, his despair, his hope and his determination to make the best of an unfathomable situation. In his twenty-fourth year after a skirmish with cannibal natives from another island, which results in all but one being killed, Crusoe has a companion, Friday. The process of teaching Friday to speak English, and to understand the theology of a Christian God are amusing as well as genuine. The role of Friday is played consummately, by Jamaican, David Heron. Michael Carleton’s brilliant direction brings the audience into an upclose and personal look at the ravages of nature and the strength and nobility of the human spirit. Defoe himself would be proud to see his story brought to the stage with such integrity.
Friday (David Heron) |
