★★★½
Through Sunday, Sep. 29
Umstead Park UCC, Raleigh
We still can’t consider the 1925 “Monkey Trial” of schoolteacher John Thomas Scopes a historical one-off, nor can we consider its dramatized account, the Tony-winning 1955 play Inherit the Wind, a period piece. Not with continuing conservative and corporate resistance to climate change and ongoing religious opposition to chemical contraception and stem cell research.
These and other scientific advances dating back to Galileo were all initially opposed by those in power, who responded with attempts to forbid or legislate against them. Small wonder that playwrights Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee refused to pin down the era of their drama, saying instead, “It might have been yesterday. It could be tomorrow.”
Artistic director Jerry Sipp’s robust season-opening production for Justice Theater Project emphasizes the sense of community in this thrice-told tale. A cast of twenty-seven enfolds us in the town square as three historical protagonists make their entrances: Brady, the stand-in for prosecuting populist politician William Jennings Bryan (an appropriately pompous Paul Wilson); Drummond, the Clarence Darrow character for the defense (a sharp Byron Jennings); and Hornbeck, for cultural critic H.L. Mencken (Nan L. Stephenson), who provides the gleefully sardonic play-by-play throughout the trial.
Inherit the Wind reminds us that the Scopes trial—and many others, before and since—was litigated simultaneously in the local churches. As Rev. Brown, actor Brook North deftly transforms a public prayer meeting into something far more sinister as he calls down hellfire and a curse, with his congregation’s approval—not only on schoolteacher Bertram Cates (a sterling Michael Parker), but also on his own daughter, Rachel (a fine Jess Barbour), when she interrupts the public condemnation with a plaintive plea for mercy.
The moment when she does remains the eeriest point in this production, as a mob that’s been aroused to fury slowly, silently, turns and looks at her. Anything could happen in that moment. And, as Lawrence and Lee remind us, anything still can, whenever fear and superstition supersede reason and compassion.
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