“He who stirreth up trouble in his own house shall inherit the wind.” –Proverbs 11:29
Strawberry Theatre Workshop has had good luck reaching back through time to present plays that capture society at dramatic junctures. But their latest production, 1955’s Inherit the Wind, by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, resists their activist intentions. It’s entertaining enough, but too creaky at the knees for real force.
Where their recent Laramie Project came to bruised, bleeding life onstage, this Inherit the Wind (through October 8 at Erickson Theatre Off Broadway; tickets: $30, $15 students/seniors, Thurs. half-price) only occasionally feels charged by a long-festering conflict. Though the play contains a famous line about journalism afflicting the comfortable, this production goes down remarkably easily in the company of fellow liberals.
Putatively “about” the Scopes Monkey Trial, when a Tennessee school teacher was found guilty of teaching evolution, Lawrence and Lee’s play had some McCarthy-era fish to fry: Demagogues who stir the pot don’t come off well.
Yet, the play is set in the “not so long ago,” and director and scenic designer Greg Carter runs with the notion that it’s not simply a history piece. Though the central, raised courtroom is rough wood, its sky is a blue-glow projection on a large screen (Ben Zamora’s light design). It’s a mythic, myopic past, where people wear braces and dress in white linen suits, but also appear not to notice that atheist, ACLU-representing lawyer Henry Drummond (Reginald Andre Jackson) is black, or that Judge Coffee (Alycia Delmore) is a woman.
(You could also argue that Carter is making a statement about solidarity, perceived identity, and social roles with his casting; that it’s not all that clear is a weakness, I think.)
It’s a little the reverse, then, of Laramie, in that the result is that you are not allowed to forget these are actors, and the past is the past, and today is today. Or not:
“How old do I think the earth is? You know what, I don’t have any idea,” said the Texas governor when asked about his position on the issue by a woman and her son. “I know it’s pretty old so it goes back a long long way. I’m not sure anybody actually knows completely and absolutely how long, how old the earth is.”
Perry regarded evolution as “a theory that’s out there” and one that’s “got some gaps in it.”
Matt Staritt’s sound design features old-time music to go with the old-time religion; Melanie Burgess’s costumes mark out class distinctions; overalls are used as a “common man” uniform.
The crux of the play is the prize-fight atmosphere (echoed by the boxing-ring-like courtroom) surrounding two old bulls, the champions of distinct affinity groups. In this corner you have Jackson’s Drummond, shipped to town by Baltimore publisher EK Hornbeck (a tart-tongued, brash Nick Garrison, whose “out”-spoken Hornbeck would likely also have met Matthew Shepard’s fate), and in the other Matthew Harrison Brady (Todd Jefferson Moore), defender of the common rube and self-admitted Biblical scholar.
Jackson’s Drummond sounds like Jimmy Stewart, has a crush on Brady’s wife (Delmore), and flies into towering rages at being forced to act like a lawyer, and argue the case’s legal merits. (Drummond’s plan is to cow the fundamentalists with scientific witnesses, but that’s not really at issue–the case rests on the ability of the state of Tennessee to proscribe what’s taught in a classroom.) Moore’s Brady is charming and courtly, a sort of Bill Buckley, Jr. (except for his support of suffrage), in love with the sound of his speech-making.
In the play, the two are old friends whose paths have diverged–in life, William Jennings Bryan, on whom Brady is partly based, disliked Darwinism because of his moral disgust at the social Darwinism of his day. At a time when people were justifying theories of racial superiority with Origin of the Species in hand, Bryan, the program notes inform you, believed in the Bible’s “law of love.” (Carter has the two actors also play the two schoolboys who, at the outset, argue over evolution.)
Less involving is a subplot involving school teacher Bertie Cates (Patrick Lennon) being engaged to Rachel Brown (Emily Chisholm), the daughter of fire-breathing preacher Jeremiah Brown (Evan Whitfield). It’s a restatement of the “inherit the wind” theme–Reverend Brown literally stirs up trouble in his own house–but there’s not a lot of depth to these straight-from-the-heart characters. (Rob Burgess has a wonderful Jimmy-James oiliness as the mayor, who intends the town to profit from the sideshow, no matter who wins.)
The question remains, Why? Why Inherit the Wind? It’s of course a treat to watch Strawshop’s talented cast, but while this political season features plenty of these self-same conflicts between beliefs in what’s fundamental (Has the truth been revealed or is it yet to be discovered?), no one needs two hours of analogy to figure out that the past is not even past. This is not a play that reconfigures everything you thought you knew about fundamentalism vs. evolution.
The let-down here, I think, is that, in a play about a clash of ideas, there’s little to be gained wrestling with a dead question. That’s not to say that the conflict is resolved today, only that no one has trouble choosing sides. Who in a Capitol Hill audience, besides Mark Driscoll, is really going to do anything but applaud the triumph of a progressive atheist?
Our At-large arts editor, Jeremy Barker, rightly convicts theatre of more often than not salving liberal consciences rather than pricking them–other people’s biases are generally the problem, if you’re counting. When Carter casts Jackson as Drummond (for whichever reason), I think he just misses the chance to heighten the original drama. After all, if the audience doesn’t feel Brady’s already created an amazing legacy, why should they care if an old man believes his Bible?
But if Matthew Harrison Brady is black, for example, if in another time he could have marched with Martin Luther King, could have the civil rights bona fides of Jeremiah Alvesta Wright, then the liberal heart is divided, not placated.
White Seattle is nervous about race, and religion. It seems a shame for an activist theatre to let us wriggle off the hook on both accounts.
