Inherit The Wind: Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been A Monkey

My little dearie
There's a Darwin theory
Telling me and you
To do the Monkey Doodle Doo.
   --- an Irving Berlin lyric from the Broadway musical The Cocoanuts, 1925

Being referenced in a song from a hit Broadway show starring The Marx Brothers is exactly the kind of thing a group of businessmen from Dayton, Tennessee were hoping for when they asked substitute teacher John Scopes to teach Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in a high school science class, assured that he would not serve any jail time for breaking the state's brand new law prohibiting the teaching in publicly funded schools of any theory that denies the Biblical story of Devine Creation.  And if Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee were really writing about the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial in Inherit The Wind, which premiered on Broadway in 1955, they might have written about how the American Civil Liberties Union had offered to provide defense attorneys for the first teacher who would agree to be arrested for teaching evolution and how a publicity-hungry town sought out William Jennings Bryan, who opposed Darwin's suggestion of superiorly and inferiorly evolved races, to lead the prosecution.  Or how delighted they were at the prospect of boosting the local economy when they found out the famous Clarence Darrow, the lawyer who saved Leopold and Loeb from being executed for murder with a twelve-hour speech which blamed their actions on being taught Nietzsche's theory of a superiorly evolved superman, was joining the defense team.

But no, just like Arthur Miller's The Crucible, which had premiered on Broadway two years earlier and wasn't really about the Salem witch trials, Lawrence and Lee's target in Inherit The Wind was McCarthyism and those who would censor free thought.  And though many may view the play as a docu-drama, and the script does contain transcript from the actual trial, it's really a work of fiction highly based on history.  Here the teacher is named Bert Cates (Benjamin Walker) and he is truly frightened for what may happen to him.  Prosecuting attorney Matthew Harrison Brady (Brian Dennehy) belives in a strict literal interpretaton of The Bible and defense attorney Henry Drummond (Christopher Plummer) is perceived as the devil by a community devoted to a faith-based lifestyle.

Director Doug Hughes' production is appropriately presented with wholesome Americana small-town pageantry.  There's a lively little quartet of singers happily crooning gospel hymns for our entertainment as we enter the theatre.  Red, white and blue bunting abouds, along with banners voicing the town's resentment of Mr. Darwin.  There's on-stage seating where audience members can watch the play as though they're townfolk, but the idea isn't very effective and it can be bit distracting to see actors sitting among them dressed in Santo Loquasto's period costumes broadly reacting to the procedings while paying customers in contemporary clothing just sit and quietly watch.

Making a hero's entrance with his adoring wife by his side (Beth Fowler in a role pretty much limited to looking at her husband either adoringly or with great concern) Dennehy's Brady is a man who is always "on".  The confident, toothy grin of a showman who knows how to play a crowd and the press is flashed genereously as he speaks with a politician's triumphant bellow.  Plummer, in a role that allows for much more complexity, dominates the evening with a perfomance that subtly undercuts the pageantry of the citizens thirsting for Biblical victory and a good show to boot.  In Darrow fashion he plays folksy to the court though the theatre audience can note the character's passion and frustration in what seems like an insurmountable battle in defense of free speech.

Less subtle is Denis O'Hare, who deservedly won a Tony Award for Take Me Out for a performance full of tic infested eccentricities and verbal acrobaticism.  But since then just about every New York appearance of his seems a slight variation of the same character.  Here playing a reporter based on the Baltimore Sun's H.L. Mencken, whose harshly satirical writing helped popularize the event which he named "The Monkey Trial," it's difficult to watch him without being fully aware that it's Denis O'Hare giving a familiar performance.

Though the issue of evolution vs. creationism, or intelligent design if you prefer, is still debated today, it is interesting to consider that now it's those who support the biblical explanation who are fighting for equal treatment in public schools under the same arguments that Darwinists supported in the first half of the last century.  Everyone may love the 1^st Amendment, but it's still a tricky business trying to agree on what it means.

Photos by Joan Marcus:  Top:  Christopher Plummer and Brian Dennehy

Center:  Beth Fowler and Brian Dennehy

Bottom:  Benjamin Walker and Christopher Plummer