Reviews 2001
Reviews 2001
✭✭✭✭✩
by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, directed by Richard Monette
Stratford Festival, Festival Theatre, Stratford
August 14-November 3, 2001
"Still All Too Relevant"
“Inherit the Wind” is the best production Richard Monette has directed since “Amadeus” in 1995. It helps that the play is not a comedy he thinks needs improvement. It helps that the play presents issues in black and white and that the characters are not complex. It also helps that the courtroom setting for most of the action prevents his falling back on the all-purpose blocking pattern he has used far too often. Monette’s forte is the creation of atmosphere and here with the help of Peter Hartwell’s period design and Kevin Fraser’s effective lighting, he transports us back to the small fictional town of Hillsboro, Tennessee, in the 1920s when one of the most important trials un US history takes place.
The play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee was first produced in 1955, the same year as Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible”, and like Miller’s play deals with the paranoia of the McCarthy era in the guise of an earlier event in American history. While Miller chose the Salem witch trials for his much subtler examination of the anti-communist witch hunts of his own day, Lawrence and Lee choose the so-called “Scopes Monkey Trial” of 1925, that pitted two of the greatest lawyers of the day, Clarence Darrow and Williams Jennings Bryant, against each other over the question whether Darwin’s theory of evolution should be taught in schools. Such teaching was illegal in the state of Tennessee (and technically remained so until 1967) and the trial of substitute teacher John T. Scopes became a test case over the separation of church and state in the classroom.
Both the specific issue of faith versus science and the more general issue of “thought-control” are, unfortunately, still relevant. The main flaw of the play is that it presents these issues in an entirely one-sided way. The townsfolk of Hillsboro may be pious but they are all portrayed as bigoted, closed-minded yokels proud of their ignorance. Schoolteacher Scopes (renamed Cates) and his girlfriend Rachel are the only exceptions and become the local Romeo and Juliet in the authors’ hokey attempt to give the controversy a personal angle.
The mass rallies of placard-waving populace in support of Bryant (renamed Brady) are meant to remind the audience of the rallies in support of the dictators of World War II and the Cold War. Darrow (renamed Drummond) enters the town like Daniel into the lion’s den. With all odds against him, he is set up to be our hero. Whatever he says is Right and whatever Brady says is Wrong. The coup de théâtre of putting Brady on the witness stand functions to ridicule Brady’s literal interpretation of the Bible and Brady’s subsequent collapse and death and the turning away of his followers is made a sign of abject defeat of belief at the hands of logic.
The play is highly theatrical and the parts of Brady and Drummond are great roles for two strong senior actors, but there is no doubt the play merely preaches to the converted. The authors do nothing to present the townsfolk as other than mean-spirited fools. Here, making the most important directorial choice in the play, Monette steps in. By cross-casting the show with “The Sound of Music”, Monette is able to make the most of the frequent singing of hymns mentioned in the text. Given a powerful body of singers, these hymns so beautifully sung go a long way to suggesting that faith can also produce something of value and strength.
With the outcome of trial and the verdict of history already known, the dramatic interest falls to the interaction of the two great lawyers. One could not ask for more well-matched sparring partners than James Blendick (Matthew Harrison Brady) and William Hutt (Henry Drummond). With his strong, sonorous voice, Blendick easily conjures up the three-time presidential candidate who has come to believe his own publicity. Blendick masterfully captures the full range of this character from his smug self-importance, the self-doubt confessed to his wife, his confusion as he falters under Drummond’s interrogation to his despair as no followers stay to hear his final remarks.
William Hutt’s character does not have such a wide emotional arc, but Hutt has always been an expert in giving a character’s unspoken thoughts as much force as his words as when Drummond recovers himself from his anger at having all his expert witnesses rejected only to conceive a new plan. He gives us a character whose logic and self-control masks the passion of his commitment to justice.
Claire Jullien (Rachel Brown) and Tim MacDonald (Bertram Cates) give fine performances in the underwritten parts of the young lovers. Robert King (Reverend Jeremiah Brown) does not have the power or presence a revivalist preacher should have. As a result the prayer meeting before the trial has nowhere near the impact that it does in Stanley Kramer’s classic 1960 film. The conflict between father and daughter, necessary to give the subplot weight, is also not presented as forcefully as it should be.
Peter Hutt is a Baltimore journalist, E. K. Hornbeck, sent to cover the trial. He plays Hornbeck as such a thorough cynic we wonder why he shows such anger at the verdict. Douglas Chamberlain (the bumbling Mayor), Domini Blythe (Brady’s wife) and C. David Johnson (the Judge) all make the most of their minor parts. But for many the most memorable star after James Blendick and William Hutt, will be the 22 people who play the townsfolk, jurors and spectators. Monette manages their crowd scenes cinematically while still giving each member individualized characteristics. Ultimately, it is the townsfolk who give the play its realism and the hymns their emotion.
As a plaidoyer for tolerance and the right of the individual to think freely, the play would be more effective if it did not so blatantly make use of ridicule. Yet, its spectacle, its music and its two powerful central performances make it the one play on the Festival stage you won’t want to miss.
Photo: James Blendick, C. David Johnson and William Hutt. ©2001 Stratford Festival.
2001-09-02
Inherit the Wind