WALTON, KY
12-29-2011

Assumption Academy recently hosted a production of G.K. Chesterton’s immortal classic, The Man Who Was Thursday at Our Lady of the Assumption Church.

Based on Orson Welles’s 1938 radio production, this production focused on Gabriel Syme, a poet-cum-detective. He finds himself infiltrating the Council of Days, an underground revolutionary group dedicated to destroying the world. Syme must hunt down each member of the Council before time runs out, culminating in a surprising twist ending. "It can be guaranteed that you will never, never guess the solution until you get to the end,” as Mr. Welles claimed in the original broadcast; “it is even feared—that you may not guess it then. You may never guess what The Man Who Was Thursday is about. But, definitely—if you don't, you'll ask.”

This production was staged as an actual radio show from the period, complete with in-house sound effects (such as coconuts to suggest the clatter of horses’ hoofs and slide whistles for the sound of falling tables). Also included were a number of popular acts from the time period, including the Andrews Sisters and Abbott & Costello.

The play’s themes of the necessity of tradition and suffering, as well as the inherent evils of intellectual anarchy, remain as relevant today as they did a hundred years ago.

In times when the theater is regularly given to shameless expressions of sacrilege and blasphemy (as is the case with recent events in France), nothing helps to combat these errors than support of productions promoting the social teachings of the Church.

The production was performed on Friday, December 16, Saturday, December 17and Sunday, December 18; a spaghetti dinner preceded the Sunday showing. All proceeds benefited Assumption Academy. Those interested in further productions of the academy will note that the upcoming Spring production is Toad of Toad Hall, an adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s classic children’s novel, The Wind in the Willows.

News and photos contribution from Tim Fox.