INHERIT THE WIND Begins Performances at the Goodman Theatre

Previews begin this weekend for Goodman Theatre’s 99th season’s opening production—a major revival of Inherit the Wind,directed by Henry Godinez. The 19-member company features Harry Lennix (as defending attorney Henry Drummond), Alexander Gemignani (fundamentalist attorney Matthew Harrison Brady), Mi Kang (wisecracking reporter E.K. Hornbeck) and Christopher Llewyn Ramirez (small-town educator on trial). Written in 1955 by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, the play covers the Scopes “Monkey” Trial of 1925, which became a national sensation when a schoolteacher was prosecuted for teaching evolution to his students. Chicago’s own WGN Radio aired the proceedings, making it the first live-broadcast trial in American history. 

Inherit the Wind appears in the 856-seat Albert Theatre September 14 — October 13 (opening night is Monday, September 23 at 7pm). Tickets ($25 - $95; subject to change) are available at GoodmanTheatre.org/Inherit or by phone at 312-443-3800. Goodman Theatre is grateful for the support of JP Morgan Chase & Co. and Winston & Strawn.

“What Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee wrote nearly 70 years ago was nothing less than a treatise on the American values of free thought and free speech. But rather than a dusty polemic that engaged the brain but left the heart untouched, they wrote about us—people discovering what they had in common, where they diverged, and how they might contend with that divergence,” said Artistic Director Susan V. Booth. “What they also wrote was one of the great passages of courtroom drama, with two great minds in passionate, yet civil, disagreement—and two great thinkers actually listening to one another’s points of view. This simple proposition, that we gather with the express purpose of listening deeply to views unlike our own, feels like an essential lifeline.”

Goodman Resident Director Henry Godinez, whose first professional theater experience was seeing Inherit the Wind at Dallas Theater Center when he was a freshman in high school, has a vision for this production that’s rooted in the nostalgia and comfort of small-town living. 

“What really interested Susan and me about doing Inherit the Wind right now is how it deals with questioning facts, censoring knowledge and the infusion of religion into the justice system. It feels like it was written yesterday,” said Godinez.“I grew up around small towns in Texas, so naturally I feel at home in rural communities. I'm looking to make our production nostalgic and beautiful so that audiences can understand how these people might want to stay rooted in the past, choosing to believe what they believe. If we ever want to come together and combat divisiveness, we have try to understand why people have the values they do. It wasn’t until I started directing when I realized that theater is a way to reconsider the world in which we live—how we treat one another and how we can all strive to better.”

For the first time in the Goodman’s proscenium Albert Theatre, Godinez and Set Designer Collette Pollardestablish a stage entrance via a bridge from the house—underscoring the sense of two worlds—“one which has chosen to remain in the past, and includes the audience,” notes Godinez—and where the city, looming in the background, is as much on trial as the defendant. To create the sonic environment, Godinez tapped Sound Designer Richard Woodbury, whose transitional music for the production draws on the sentimental elements of classic Americana and sources hymns from the play for inspiration.

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