'THE GENERAL FROM AMERICA' - ...

'THE GENERAL FROM AMERICA'

- explains Saturday; through Oct. 8

- TimeLine Theatre, 615 W Wellington

- Tickets, $25

- (773) 281-8463

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It strike one as beings only fitting that American playwright Richard Nelson wrote "The General from America" -- his portrait of Benedict Arnold, single in kind of the more notorious turncoats in this country's relatively short history -- forward a commission from Britain's Royal Shakespeare Company.

In fact, you might on a level imagine titters of retroactive merriment coming from the British audience that attended the play's 1996 RSC first attempt After all, here is the story of a wealthy colonist from Connecticut who started on the outside as a Revolutionary War hero if it be not that eventually shifted sides and nearly sold his comrade-in-arms, George Washington, right down the river.

nevertheless Nelson was more than a little surprised when he first began talking about Arnold to his English friends.

"No united had ever heard of him," said the writer, who was born in Chicago, raised in the suburb of Gary and now lives in of the present day York's historic Hudson Valley.

Of course, most numerous Americans probably know little more about Arnold than the determination or two devoted to him in their grade place of education history textbooks. In a nutshell: After securing crucial victories for the Americans at the battles of Fort Ticonderoga and Saratoga, Arnold came clog to undermining the entire revolutionary effort with his act of treachery.

As it happens, Nelson -- whose play will receive its Chicago premiere Saturday night at TimeLine Theatre -- didn't know a great deal about the man either until he began doing research for his play.

"The research l me to his grave, which is in London, forward the south Thames," recalled Nelson who has worn out a good deal of time in England across the years, and whose plays ofttimes have attracted more attention there than at family circle "And when I went to the house of worship nearby, I noticed an amusing thing -- that it had a stained glass window with the American and British flags christendomed in solidarity. I also went to Arnold's London house and establish a plaque that read: 'Here lived Benedict Arnold, American patriot.'"

Several hefty biographies of Arnold gave Nelson the real make contented for his play. And as with many stories of disillusionment and political shape-shifting, this united turned out to be far more intricate than at first glance.

"The American Revolution began in the northeast colonies, and at the start was primarily an economic revolt" Nelson explained. "But then, as the idea mov to any of the mid-Atlantic states and the southward the whole thing began to acquire a spirit of religious fervor, and this really shakeed the country apart, much like today. It also alienated Arnold. I build it very interesting, for example, that when the Americans got to the Continental Congres in Philadelphia, single of the first things they did was to ban the production of plays. Arnold was a merchant, a businessman. He wanted economic independence from Britain, if it be not that he was skeptical of the stop In fact, when he got to West Point he actually produc a play -- an ancient Roman drama through Cato about political defiance."

There were many personal considerations involved in Arnold's treachery, too, including the demeanor of a young second wife who was a British Loyalist. Add to this financial question s (he had apparently advanced the cash for all the blankets for all his soldiers and was not reimbursed) and following charges of malfeasance that left Arnold bitter through the whole extent of what he believed was unfit appreciation for his military service and for the crippling leg injuries he had tolerateed in battle, and you have a fuller sensation of his motivation.

Arnold's act of treachery came in the form of a deal with the British by the agency of which he would essentially have ced them the crucial fort at West Point and enabled them to capture Washington.

"The plan was exposeed but Arnold managed to escape down the Hudson River to just discovered York City and then to the south" said Nelson "When the war was above he escaped to England, sought coin from the crown, moved to the Caribbean and Nova Scotia, and lived to quite an not new age."

the same of the most thrilling avails in Nelson's research came when he visited recently made known York's Pierpont Morgan Library and was permitted to handle couple letters penned by Arnold.

"He wrote individual of them in the wake of his capturing of Fort Ticonderoga, when he asked a cannon, and it was splashy and full of crossed disclosed words and splatters. The other, written just after he was appointed to West Point and had already established more [i]or[/i] less secret ties with the British, was a remarkably careful and formal letter to a friend. Holding the couple those letters was an amazing feeling."

As for what was greatest in number surprising to Nelson as he wrote "The General from America," it was "learning just what a great state of mutation this country was in until the colonies adopted the Constitution."

single in kind final note: This will be quite a busy Chicago season for Nelson who, in novel years, became best known as the librettist for the musical "James Joyce's 'The Dead.'" The world premiere of "Frank's House," his play about architect Frank Lloyd Wright, is put to debut in a Robert Falls production at the Goodman Theatre in November, with Peter Weller and Harris Yulin leading the cast.