By Carol Davis
SAN DIEGO–I’m always thrilled at the quality of the actors who come to San Diego to be a part of the Old Globe’s outdoor summer festival who are able to appear in at least two, if not all three of the shows that are shown in Repertory. After seeing all three, it still dazzles my mind that they can shift characters (and remember all the lines) from a Shakespearean tragedy to a Shakespearean comedy to a non Shakespearean show like Inherit The Wind which is the third in repertory, depending on what show you see first.
Old Globe favorite Adrian Sparks has been performing off and on here for over a period of 40 years. This year will be his third performance under the stars with director Adrian Noble at the helm. He has been a regular since 1976 when he was in Troilus and Cressida and Othello and Corin in As You like It some 35 years ago and again this year. His Uncle Ben in Arthur Miller’s Death of A Salesman was a bigger-than-life character and now what looks to be the pinnacle of his career as Matthew Harrison Brady, prosecutor in Noble’s fine staging of Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s Inherit The Wind, he comes across as bigger than life once again.
In fairness, something the judge (Bob Pescovitz) in the play Inherit The Wind did not see fit to allow, local artist Robert Foxworth as the defense lawyer Henry Drummond, doesn’t take a back seat to anyone, not even Sparks’ Matthew Harrison Brady in the give and take (mostly take) fictional rendition of the courtroom scenes of the ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’ in what was labeled the trial of the century.
Foxworth is as sly as a fox as he confidently weaves his way through the myriad of high faulting, self-aggrandizing and self-satisfying drivel that pours out of Brady’s mouth. He does it with ease and command of the stage most of the time even though frustrated at the constraints put upon by the judge.
Scopes (in the play he is Bertram Cates played by Dan Amboyer), a schoolteacher, was actually represented by the famous self-professed atheist, Clarence Darrow who was defending ‘free speech/thinking modernists’. His opponent, William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential hopeful and noted orator and Christian fundamentalist, defended the revealed word of God and the Bible in a rather trumped up debate over creationism vs. evolution after Scopes talked about Darwin to his students.
The teaching of evolution was banned in Dayton, Tennessee, and at the time the ACLU said it would challenge the law if anyone agreed to teach about Darwin. Scopes took on the challenge. The local businesses thought the attention of a trial would generate out-of-town dollars and welcomed the publicity. The trial became so big that it was covered on the radio and reporters from all over attended.
On a broader canvas, however, the playwright placed the story in ‘a small town’ during the 1950’s rather than in 1925, the year of the actual trial, as a statement against the scourge of McCarthyism that had everyone looking under their collective beds for communist infiltrators including those free thinkers in the entertainment business.
To say that the Scopes trial was the trial of the century was an understatement. The debate over evolution and creationism as it is taught, or not, in schools still rages on in the 21st century and has even far more reaching ramifications when it comes to the separation of church and state which several states still refuse to abide. But I’ll leave that to the constitutional lawyers to figure out.
Inherit The Wind is an exciting piece of theatre (if you love that kind of drama) in that it pits two friends, who are on opposite sides of an issue and courtroom table and let’s them go at it as only skilled orators and cunning lawyers can do in that setting. The temperature in that Dayton courtroom then was as hot and stuffy as were most of the good citizens who came to gawk and cheer their respective sides on. But the book highliights the lawyers and how they both practice their craft, craftily!
Looking on with a critical eye, those who came from out of state to witness this sham included an H.L. Menken proxy in the form of an E.K. Hornbeck played smoothly and coyly by Joseph Marcell. (Menken was a syndicated columnist who followed the trial). Other than Cates’ love interest, Rachel (a sympathetic Viva Font), who ironically was the Reverend’s daughter, there wasn’t much support for the young man.
But for the principals, the remainder of the cast does best in ensemble scenes as when they welcome Brady to their town and put on a big spread for his wife and himself. Robin Moseley does her best as the restrained Mrs. Brady who looks after her pompous husband with true concern especially when his blood pressure rises, as does the thermostat in the courtroom. Fans whip back and forth to cool the nerves. Charles Janasz has the right look as the righteous Reverend Brown. The two witnesses chosen to represent the jury fit the local look to a tee. They are seated in the audience, looking on.
Deirdre Clancy’s costumes also fit in with the proceedings. Brady is dressed in all black with Drummond tastefully dressed in shades of browns. The one dapper Dan that stands out is the H.L. Menken character, E.K. Hornbeck. Joseph Marcell is perfect strutting his stuff looking more and more as the outsider than does Drummond. It’s perfect. The rest of the cast has the appropriatef period look.
Ralph Funicello’s idea of a non-descript set with tables and chairs stacked up against each other or butting against each other forming platforms of different levels some even forming pathways into and out of the courtroom gives the production another layer of ‘somewhere out there this happened’ with the townsfolk’s looking down on the proceedings. It also gives the players room to walk freely in front of or around the proceedings. My only complaint was worrying whether anyone would stumble stepping off from table to chair to stage. I’m happy to report that nothing happened on my watch.
Legal issues we thought were laid to rest play out before the citizens of Dayton, Tennessee while also allowing a window into the world of how narrow and small-minded thinking prevalent in so many states is making its way back into the public arena and this one incident shows how easily it all begins and how quickly it mushrooms.
In the program notes, director Noble makes it clear that this Inherit The Wind is not “historically accurate” but rather looks to create a ‘historical docu-drama from the material and to create a passionate defense of intellectual freedom in the face of fundamentalism that owed more to the era of McCarthyism than it did to the actual events’.
Coming on the heels of Scottsboro Boys and Parade and with the current political climate, ‘attention must be paid’.
See you at the theatre.
Dates: Playing in repertory with “Richard III and “As You Like It” through Sept. 25th
Organization: Old Globe Theatre
Phone: 619-234-5623
Production Type: Drama
Where: 1363 Old Globe Way, Balboa Park
Ticket Prices: starting at $29.00
Web: theoldglobe.org
Venue: Lowell Davies Festival Theatre
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Davis is a San Diego-based theatre critic. She may be contacted at carol.davis@sdjewishworld.com