Kids Play Day at Cambridge School
On Thursday, February 22, the children at the Cambridge Elementary School enjoyed a play called Finn McCoy, brought to them by actors from the Idaho Shakespeare Theatre. The script was loosely based on an old Irish legend about an orphan boy, an evil wizard and a salmon with magical powers.
The story goes something like this. The evil wizard has made Finn (the boy) his charge and goes out of his way to make the boy’s life miserable, even threatening to eat him if he doesn’t comply. At long last the wizard hooks the magic salmon and prepares to eat it on a skewer over a fire. Finn waits for the right moment to touch the magic salmon burning his thumb. He then licks its simmering juices off his thumb, and at that instant the salmon’s magic powers and vast knowledge are transferred to him. The salmon then jumps off the skewer and into the river swimming away and thus begins the tale of a young boy trying to outrun an evil wizard.
With his new found magic powers, Finn changes himself into a number of different creatures in an attempt to stay one step ahead of the wizard. He first becomes a beaver yet gets caught in a net, but is able to chew his way out. Then he becomes a horsefly and flies away in the nick of time. Next the boy becomes a fish while the wizard becomes a hungry Heron who tries to eat him. He changes himself into a marmot, then a bluebird and finally a barley seed all the while with the wizard in hot pursuit.
When all attempts to capture the boy have failed the wizard becomes an evil chicken who lands in a farmer’s chicken coop. Finn being a barley seed landed in the same farmer’s seed bag and was being tossed on the ground to feed the chickens. The evil wizard ate and ate the grain in an effort to eat Finn. He eats so much, he swells up and is unable to move, at which time Finn turns back into a boy before being eaten an places a cage securely over the evil chicken, (the wizard.)
In the end, Finn decides to show mercy to the evil wizard and lets him go free. The moral of the story is not to repay evil with evil but to be the better person and forgive. The four actors were Sam Murphy, Jake Atkinson, Ruth Parsely, and McCarty Garvin. The children really enjoyed this lively play. It was something special in their day at school.
