Chattanooga Times Free Press - ChattanoogaNow
Final weekend to meet Pooh’s predecessor, Mr. Pim, in Covenant College show
Fans of Winnie-the-Pooh have a chance to get acquainted with more characters from the mind of A.A. Milne at Covenant College this weekend.
The British author who created the beloved denizens of the Hundred Acre Wood was also an accomplished playwright, and Covenant Theatre is presenting the best-known of his plays, “Mr. Pim Passes By.” Producers say it has the same combination of whimsy and wisdom as found in the stories of Pooh and his pals.
“Mr. Pim Passes By” was first performed in 1920, the same year Milne’s son, Christopher Robin, was born. It’s described as a lighthearted, jocular, yet surprisingly serious depiction of the tensions generated between traditional and “new-fangled” ways of viewing love, marriage, art — even pig farming.
Its sad- silly- serious dramatic conflict is set in motion, inadvertently, as the show’s namesake, pleasantly absentminded Mr. Pim (played by freshman Will Payne) passes by the Marden country estate one day. Country gentleman George Marden, ( junior Andrew Lupinek) is content, along with his aunt, Lady Marden (junior Bethany Hicks), to stick to the old ways. Meaning: What was good enough for his great- great- grandfather is good enough for him.
However, George’s gently diplomatic wife, Olivia ( junior Julie Pretorius), is rather more amenable to the young people’s approach to life, love and beauty. When Mr. Pim comes bearing a story that, alas, involves a confusion of names, the stage is set for George and Olivia’s comic but painful struggle to determine what they actually believe to be the true nature of marriage, morality, loyalty and love.
Pretorius says the show’s main theme is a battle between the heart and the law. Ultimately, it questions whether it is possible to wed justice and mercy, though love wins in the end.
As professor Camille Hallstrom, the show’s director, explains, “Milne had a prolific and diverse career as a writer. In addition to his children’s literature and plays, he had successful turns as a journalist, humorist, mystery writer, poet and screenwriter.”
Milne served as assistant editor to Punch, the British satire magazine, for several years and was assigned to “sedentary work,” writing war propaganda, during World War I.
Paraphrasing, Hallstrom says Milne once said he “excelled in writing what it was fun for him to write, not what others thought it was proper for him to write.”
“And in so doing,” she says, “he has provided — as all lovers of Pooh know — a corpus which is lighthearted and companionable yet gently insightful and comfortingly wise.”