Pick of the Day 6/28: The Road to Mecca

Silverthorne Theater opens its production The Road to Mecca this evening.  Helen is a South African widow and has been working on a sculpture garden, which is a dream trip to “Mecca.” Her pastor is urging her to move into a senior retirement home, but a Capetown school teacher enters her life and she is encouraged to continue pursuing her art.  The play is based on a real person, Helen Martins, and it’s set in her small cottage in the desert of the South African Karoo. Our Stagestruck guru, Chris Rohmann, says, “It’s an intimate play with an expansive vision, written by Athol Fugard, South Africa’s most eminent playwright, and sensitively directed here by Rebecca Daniels …. The play is heavy with metaphor and insistent symbols of light and darkness, freedom and oppression.”  Check it out tonight through Saturday at Hawks & Reed, 289 Main St., Greenfield, MA. Tickets $18-$20.