The historic Rosewell ruins in Gloucester provided the backdrop for a performance Sunday afternoon of “From Colony to Country: The Revolutionary World of John Page and Lewis Burwell.”
The first-person interpretive program, written by Lee Ann Rose of Shades of Our Past and performed with the ruins towering overhead, featured a cast of a dozen costumed performers who enacted scenes that very well could have occurred in the parlor of Rosewell during the run-up to the Revolutionary War.
In the play, Rosewell Plantation owner John Page (played by Bill Rose), a revolutionary who would go on to serve as a Virginia Congressman and as the 13th governor of Virginia, entertains Fairfield Plantation owner Lewis Burwell (Michael Pfeifer), a justice of the peace, sheriff and member of the House of Burgesses. They discuss the news of the day—Patrick Henry’s “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech and George Washington’s recent ascent to command of the Continental Army, which is “adopting a stance o...