Review: ‘Lost Boy Found’

AMANA - 'Lost Boy Found” proves you don't need theatrical sleight of hand when a story is really, really good and really, really compelling.

This play, written by Thomas P. Johnson of South Amana, is based on the curious case of little Ray Elliott, kidnapped from his Marengo home in May of 1893, just shy of his fourth birthday. Fourteen months later, a child matching his description turns up in Waterloo, but is it really Ray? Or is it Roy Burke - or even Louis LeRoy Meskell?

George Elliott believes the boy to be his son and brings him back to Marengo. After much rejoicing, gloom descends when others lay claim to the child. A series of long and convoluted court proceedings ensues, capturing imaginations across the state and from coast to coast. The tale eclipses every iteration of 'Law and Order.” I'm not sure even Goren and Eames could have untangled the mess.

But the Iowa Theatre Artists Company does, in its elegant readers theater staging of 'Lost Boy Found.” It's playing through Sept. 28 in the company's final season at the former Barn Restaurant in Amana.

This is storytelling at its captivating best, where seven polished professionals slide easily between myriad roles, sometimes talking to the audience, other times talking to each other. With scripts in hand, they move through a mixture of lovely Mission-style hardwood chairs and tall, black chairs set an angles, flanking a video screen showing vintage photos and newspaper clippings. The actors are clad in plain black and gray clothing specific to no era. Mournful violin underscores the action.

All of the visual elements unite to create a stylized atmosphere that never detracts from the power of the prose.

Johnson's tightly wound script kept Saturday's (9/13/14) opening night audience riveted and hanging on every word. And just when you thought it couldn't get any more intriguing, the play, written in 2002, now has an epilogue. Modern technology has solved the case once and for all.

But I won't tell you the results.

They actually were reported in The Gazette in 2002, noting that Johnson himself paid $1,000 for DNA testing of two cousins then in their 80s, who were the sons of brothers Roy and Ray Elliott. The results were revealed onstage during a special performance in November 2002, in Marengo's historic Iowa County Courthouse, where the case originally was tried.

The tale is just as captivating now as it was in 2002 and more than a century earlier.

Young Ray disappeared May 12, 1893, while playing in his sandbox. Church was canceled the next day so townsfolk could continue scouring the area for any signs of the child. Even if he were found dead, his mother said that would bring her closure. Reports of gypsies traveling in covered wagons through town about that same time fueled the kidnapping theories.

In July of 1895, Mrs. David Lucas of Independence showed up on the doorstep of a family in Waterloo whose son had recently died. Lucas thought that couple could provide a better life for her adopted child, rescued from a Muscatine poor farm. The Waterloo woman thought little Roy Burke bore a resemblance to the child in the newspapers, and contacted authorities.

The child's memory was foggy, but he gave enough correct information to satisfy Ray Elliott's distraught parents. As more details and doubts came to light, Marengo townspeople were torn. Was the child prompted to give the 'right” answers? And if he was, indeed, Ray Elliott, what became of Roy Burke and Louis LeRoy Meskell?

Grab a ticket and find out for yourself. The answers will curdle your blood.

‘Lost Boy Found'

'WHAT

: 'Lost Boy Found,” by Thomas P. Johnson

'WHERE

: Iowa Theatre Artists Company, 4709 220th Trl., Amana

'WHEN

: Through Sept. 28; 7:30 p.m. Fridays; 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Sundays

'TICKETS

: $22.50 adults, $20 seniors, $10 students at the box office, (319) 622-3222 or door

'DETAILS

: Iowatheatreartists.org