The Great Cross-Country Race, or The Hare and The Tortoise at Royal River Community Players

This play from England is a lark, a merry chase, peopled with human-like animals who make better sense than people. Assembled for Sports Day, the animals cannot find anybody to compete with the fleet hare in the cross-country race until the slow-moving tortoise agrees to challenge him. In the course of the race, the scatter-brained hare tends to get diverted by his encounters with members of the human race—stopping to gorge on a fisherman's picnic lunch, getting trapped in the urban-Notcouths' poaching bag, pausing to spy on a pair of "soppy dates," getting pinned up by the ears to Mrs. Stainer's clothesline. Meanwhile, the tortoise plods steadily and relentlessly on to the finish line. Only the animals speak intelligible language. The humans' gobble-de-gook is as incomprehensible to us as to our animal friends.