Revolution Row

Liberals have long loved tales of dystopian futures. As they've watched conservative movements restrict freedoms (or at least, as Margaret Atwood suggested in The Handmaid's Tale, change freedoms from "to" to "from"), left-wing authors have predicted futures that range from Oceania (in George Orwell's 1984) to Atwood's Gilead to the frightening science fiction of Philip K. Dick and Robert Heinlein.

And now, off-Broadway, we have Revolution Row, a new drama by Edward Miller about American life in 2015. In Mr. Miller's future, civil rights have been yet further restricted by an increasingly fundamentalist government, and protesters of governmental policy are quickly imprisoned in an attempt to silence them. One such protester, however, continues to fight homophobia and conservative values from behind bars, using the popular media as his battlefield.

It certainly sounds interesting, and even better, completely plausible. Sadly, the play itself is barely either. Rather than create three-dimensional, flawed and complex characters battling out their beliefs in different ways, Miller has stereotypes spouting clichés and banalities that land like anvils. All of the conservatives are homophobic, violent, and corrupt. All of the liberals are virtuous, loyal, and unfailingly kind. It is frustratingly difficult to muster up sympathy or interest for any of the characters when the central conflict could just as easily be between Dudley Do-Right and Snidely Whiplash. Long, pretentious, and preachy, the play never concisely shows us the evils of the conservatives or the heroism of the liberals, but merely tells us in seemingly endless scenes that only inch the story along. It's dramatically weak, and worse, dull.

The cast of fourteen also shoulder some of the blame for the play's weakness, speaking in monotones that make the dialogue even flatter than the script could already render it. Ann Bartek's set, however, is a study in economy and simplicity: a wire fence, complete with barbed wire at the top, stretches across the apron of the stage, physically separating the audience from the actors and forcing the audience to literally look inside the prison to see the battles within. It is simple and effective.

Would that the rest of the play were.