A river of music runs through “The Porch on Windy Hill,” cross-currents of ancient folk tunes rippling alongside streams of Bach and Haydn. Succinctly, accurately billed as “a new play with old music,” the two-hour production at Skokie’s Northlight Theatre is driven by the sonic sprawl of American folk music, a genre with influences as wide as the world itself.
Conceived and directed by Sherry Lutken (with co-writers Lisa Helmi Johanson, Morgan Morse and David M. Lutken), the production has a three-person cast of immensely talented actor/musicians emphatically evoking one of Shakespeare’s most indelible aphorisms: If music be the food of love, play on. Embedded in a roster of tunes that range from “Down in the Valley” to Bach’s Minuets, “The Porch at Windy Hill” becomes a place where the sharpest edges of a yearslong family feud are smoothed over and reshaped.
