Interest/Reading Level: Grades 7 – Adult

Synopsis:
Street is a two act play about a strange reality of a heavily trafficked freeway in England and the two young lovers who live on opposite sides of the street. Main characters are Meg Mirkin, the village witch, her sons, Hannibal and Toomey, Fred Steele, proprietor of the Spotted Pig restaurant, his daughters Lily (who loves Toomey) and Hannah (who loves and is married to Hannibal…although this is revealed late in the play). There are truck drivers who blaze through town with great speed, sometimes “accidentally” hitting a house, destroying it. Random villagers lend their voices to the atrocities of trying to live in the town. 17 years before the opening of the play, Hannibal stole the key to the bridge. The key allowed a gate to span the freeway allowing trucks and cars through as Hannibal’s father allowed. Since Hannibal stole the key, there is no way to guard the access of trucks through the town. As such, trucks speed by every 30-45 seconds making it impossible to cross. In spite of this, Toomey and Lily develop their own “sign” language and fall in love. They hatch a plan to runaway. Meg sees to it that when Hannibal returns, he does not ruin his brother’s life by stealing Lily. When Meg’s magic ring is returned to the Forest, life resumes to the idyllic time of days gone by.

Reflection:
This is a great play for middle or high school students to read and perform. Ms Aiken’s play is wonderfully written. She gives direction as to what needs to be staged for the play from a simple implementation to a full scale production. The book includes beautiful illustrations by Arvis Stewart that resemble wood cuts or at the very least, striking pen and ink drawings. The music interspersed in the play was written by John Sebastian Brown who is Ms. Aiken’s son. Ten songs (music and lyrics) appear at the end of the book. Surprisingly, this play (book) has been in the Library for over 30 years and has never been checked out. The book is a first edition which does not happen often in school libraries. I recently gave it a teacher to read and see if it would be of interest to students. He is working on developing a production of the play for next year. I enjoyed the simplicity of the play and the sweet love story complete with a villain. To produce this play would not be expensive. It would be a nice event for a school to produce and even use the occasion to raise funds for the arts programs that are suffering. ( )