A Play by Allen J. Frantzen
May 20, 2006

A SON AT THE FRONT
by Allen J. Frantzen
Directed by Anna C. Bahow

Cast (in order of appearance)

WILLIS Nunley McGrath, the son at the Front	Pat Murphy
ARMY officer	Karla Seratto
PATRICK Elmer McGrath, Will's father	Mike Sherman
RUTH ANN, Pat's housekeeper	Karla Seratto
BILLY Elkhair, Will's friend	Eric Labanauskas
MATTIE McGrath Hill, Will's mother	Elyse Pancheri
ALFRED Hill, Will's step-father	Jill Ann Gretter
EMMA, Will's girlfriend	Brook Enhelder
BOND salesman	Laura Deger
SALLY, Bartlesville worker	Karla Seratto
MLLE. CATHERINE Ferré Lefevre, a touring French singer	Karla Seratto
Card players, Soldiers	The Cast
NURSE	Laura Deger

Special thanks to Melissa Dickman, production manager, and to Vincent Bruckert

SYNOPSIS

PROLOGUE: Somewhere on the Western Front

ACT 1, scenes 1, 2, 3: Bartlesville, Oklahoma, Christmas Eve, 1916

ACT 2, scenes 1 & 2: Bartlesville, October, 1917
scene 3: Army Hospital, Doullens, France

ACT 3, scenes 1 & 2: US Army Hospital, Fort Sill, Oklahoma, December 1918
scene 3: Bartlesville

This play has been written to be set to music. It concerns an idealistic college student from Oklahoma who volunteers as an ambulance driver in World War I; the drama explores the effect of his decision on those who love him. Will leaves for France in December 1916, before the U.S. enters the War. He is a magnet for the ambitions and aspirations of his family and friends. The Son at the Front emerges as a composite of ideas expressed in his letters; of details, facts, and rumors about him reported by one person to another; and of fleeting impressions he leaves behind.
The Son remains unseen for most of the work and appears only at the beginning and end, but he is heard throughout the text because he sings (or, in in this version, recites) his letters as other characters read them; he often repeats their words, so those passages of dialogue overlap.
The title and some plot elements were suggested by Edith Wharton's A Son at the Front (1923), but this is an American story set in Oklahoma, not Wharton's Paris. When the Great War began, in August, 1914, organizations in the U. S. began offering relief of all kinds. But neither public opinion nor President Wilson favored a declaration of war. The sinking of the Lusitania in May 1915 and further loss of American lives in similar attacks roused sentiment against the Germans, and the disclosure of an attempted alliance between Germany and Mexico in January 1917 forced more Americans to realize that

the war did, after all, directly involve their interests. One of Wilson's most famous speeches before the war was made in Omaha in October, 1916 (moved here to St. Louis, same date), and is instrumental in motivating Will to leave. Although he was re-elected on a platform of peace in 1916, Wilson called for a declaration of war in April 1917. A massive mobilization began at once (seen here in Act 2).
Oklahoma had an unusual political profile at this time, having only recently become a state in 1907. The new state had a high percentage of poor tenant farmers who were even poorer than the Delaware and Osage natives whose land they worked. The hero grew up on such a farm; Billy Elkhair, the hero's best friend, is a Delaware (Lenahpe; "Elkhair" is a Lanahpe name; the tribe's headquarters is located at Bartlesville). The state was also bursting with newly discovered oil. The resulting disparities in wealth made the state an exceptionally rich organizing ground for various socialist groups, including the International Workers of the World. Odd though the conjunction might seem today, it is a well-documented and distinctive aspect of Oklahoma political history that the socialists supported and were supported by evangelical Christians.
Oklahoma people, events, and activities form part of the background to the drama. In addition, certain details of the hero's life and his family history have been drawn from the papers of the Elmer Patrick McClarney family, some of whom lived in Vinita, Oklahoma, until the mid-1990s (two of Elmer's sons fought in the War; one of them, also Elmer, is on the cover). Certain details of the family history that seem typical of sharecroppers' lives at the time have been folded into the plot, but to be sure nothing in the libretto claims to represent the McClarneys' views as their papers preserve them. In the libretto "McClarney" has become "McGrath" (which means "son of grace").
--Allen J. Frantzen