In this review, Horn portrays "The Kentucky Cycle " as a mythological study in the American past.

Arriving in Kentucky's Cumberland hills in 1775, the patriarch of the Rowen clan kidnaps for himself a Cherokee bride. When she proves unwilling and tries to escape, he lames her by slashing her tendons. Fifteen years later, this resourceful pioneer coos to his captive bride his sweet memories of their "courtin' days."

Such distortions of memory both personal and historical are at the core of The Kentucky Cycle, the Pulitzer Prize-winning 6 -hour drama that opened last week at Washington's Kennedy Center before heading to Broadway this fall. Encompassing 200 years and nearly 100 characters, the play is not only a darkly revisionist view of American history but a meditation on the process by which history is constructed, varnished and mythologized. In playwright Robert Schenkkan' s vision, the proud frontier myth is itself the source...