Described by its creators as a “parable” about thoughts management, Inherit the Wind, by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, provides what’s these days referred to as a “instructed by a real story” remedy to the well-known Scopes “Monkey Trial.” The trial was a check case, fomented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which came about in Tennessee in 1925. It challenged the state’s Butler Act, which outlawed the instructing of evolution. John Scopes, an area trainer, was named the defendant within the case. It was a nationwide media sensation, with star legal professionals Clarence Darrow for the protection and William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution.
When the play was first produced within the Fifties, it used the fundamentalist-inspired prohibition on instructing evolution as a metaphor for the Pink Scare. Right now, it has apparent resonance with state- and federal-level repression of discussions of race, queerness, and political dissent.
In keeping with this system, the play’s authentic manufacturing featured 50 actors. In at present’s extra austere budgetary local weather, Enviornment’s manufacturing — completed in affiliation with Seattle’s The Feast firm — makes do with 10, requiring members of the ensemble to play a number of roles. Below the route of Ryan Guzzo Purcell, the expert ensemble members seamlessly make frequent, typically fast transitions between characters. With only a change of hat, costume piece, or vocal inflection, an actor portrays a personality of a special gender, age, or social place within the fictional city of Hillsboro.
The advantage of the small solid method to the play, mixed with Tonya Orellana’s largely non-representational picket movable-platform and folding-chair set design, is that it focuses consideration on the battle of concepts on the coronary heart of the play’s message, nudging the viewers away from any misapprehension that the play is only a historical past lesson. Equally, consistent with the manufacturing’s emphasis on the universality of the play’s themes, An-Lin Dauber’s extremely diverse costume design doesn’t hew to 1925 interval gown kinds.
The principal defect of those virtues is that the small solid dimension and the manufacturing’s type take away the motion of the play from the context of a particular time and place. Usually, analyzing one thing common — right here, the need of freedom of thought — is finest conveyed by means of one thing very particular.
On this manufacturing, nevertheless, the density of an actual neighborhood is missing. A sizzling canine stand represents the circus environment that enveloped Hillsboro (and its real-life counterpart, Dayton, Tennessee). A single actor stands in for a jury. Staged superbly on the finish of the primary act with giant white banners suggestive of a tent assembly, a Christian rally meant to point out the entire city’s help of God and the Bible is, given the solid dimension, sparsely attended. By having ensemble members circle the periphery of the stage as motion among the many principals unfolds, Purcell makes a valiant try to point out neighborhood involvement within the proceedings, nevertheless it falls quick.
It’s potential to assemble a full, convincing, particular world in a manufacturing with a modest-sized solid who play a number of roles, with out elaborate representational units. Below Milkwood (which started as a Dylan Thomas radio play), The Laramie Mission, or, on a considerably bigger scale, Come From Away achieve doing so. The sense of neighborhood evoked by good productions of those exhibits didn’t land right here.
Among the many principals, Matthew Harrison Brady (performed by Dakin Matthews) — the play’s stand-in for Bryan — seems weary and defeated from his first entrance, maybe by no means having recovered from his three dropping Presidential candidacies. There isn’t any signal of the charisma and oratorical energy — even when now previous its peak — with which Bryan transfixed giant parts of the nation throughout a stellar (and infrequently strongly progressive) political profession. He merely bloviates. He does have a second of kindness when he intervenes to guard Rachel from her father’s punitive spiritual extra.
His antagonist, Henry Drummond (performed by Billy Eugene Jones) — the play’s equal of Clarence Darrow — in his suave, carefully becoming maroon go well with, circles Brady like a shark throughout his direct examination within the trial scene, trying not solely to vindicate his ardour without cost thought however to destroy a weakened foe and every little thing he stands for. It’s an uneven match from the start. There may be each idealism and cruelty in Drummond’s advocacy. In a manufacturing that doesn’t intention for historic accuracy, Drummond seems significantly youthful than Brady, maybe suggesting newer concepts changing older ones. (In actuality, Darrow was just a few years older than Bryan.)
These characters are embodiments of concepts — Biblical inerrancy vs. free thought. Within the ingenue position of Rachel Brown, which may typically get misplaced within the tumult, Rebecca Madeira creates a totally rounded, affecting character who merely desires to reside a peaceable life on her personal phrases. Rachel is in love with Bert Cates, the defendant (a schoolteacher, the play’s stand-in for Scopes), and the daughter of hellfire-and-brimstone preacher Jeremiah Brown. On this efficiency, Rachel, prone to changing into collateral harm within the play’s struggle of concepts, strikes nearer to being the emotional middle of the play than I’ve seen in earlier productions.
E.Ok. Hornbeck (Alyssa Keegan), who represents Baltimore-based reporter and critic H.L. Mencken, typically perches within the shadows, partway up an aisle of the theater, observing the neighborhood from a distance. Within the script’s dialogue, Hornbeck’s witty cynicism typically feels like that of a precocious undergraduate greater than that of a seasoned journalist. At play’s finish, Drummond rebukes Hornbeck’s contempt for Brady and for the folks of Hillsboro: boobs, Hornbeck calls them, presaging current references to “deplorables.” The rebuke is ironic in that Drummond — who appears to need it each methods — has simply completed demolishing Brady, and the beliefs he holds expensive, on the stand.
Todd Scofield makes a powerful impression in two essential supporting roles, because the tyrannical Rev. Brown and the trial decide who seems to favor that the case go away as rapidly as potential. Noah Plomgren’s athletic physicality as Bert Cates feels considerably at odds with the character’s wavering feelings and unsure dedication to the case. Jordan Good friend has some memorable musical moments as a part of the ensemble. Washington space theater stalwart Holly Twyford is featured because the maternal Mrs. Brady and Mr. Meeker, the pleasant native jailer.
The Scopes trial turned a humiliating public defeat for the fundamentalist Protestant motion that attempted to undo “modernist” tendencies in Christianity. It took many years for that motion to reassert itself, in the end morphing into at present’s Christian Nationalism, which has had a lot better success than its predecessor of a century in the past.
Inherit the Wind was first produced in 1955, 30 years after the Scopes trial, inside the residing reminiscence of many viewers members of the time. From at present, that occasion was 101 years in the past, and the play itself 71 years in the past. The revival was meant as a reminder of themes and points that also bedevil us. As a program observe states, within the present local weather of repression, “Increasingly more of us will discover ourselves — at school board conferences, eating rooms, neighborhood teams, and voting cubicles — collaborating in dramas just like the one on this stage. On this theater, by means of Lawrence and Lee’s American parable, we are able to domesticate the braveness and integrity to satisfy this second in historical past.”
Enviornment’s manufacturing succeeds in conveying this wanted message.
Working Time: Roughly two hours and ten minutes, together with one intermission.
Inherit the Wind performs by means of April 5, 2026, within the Fichandler Stage at Enviornment Stage on the Mead Heart for American Theater, 1101 sixth St SW, Washington, DC. Tickets can be found on-line ($73–$128) or by visiting TodayTix. Tickets might also be bought by means of the Gross sales Workplace by telephone at 202-488-3300, Tuesday by means of Sunday, 12-6 p.m., or in individual at 1101 Sixth Road SW, DC, Tuesday by means of Sunday, 2 hours prior to every efficiency. Teams of 10+ might buy tickets by telephone at 202-488-4380.
Enviornment Stage’s many financial savings packages embrace “pay your age” tickets for these aged 35 and beneath; army, first responder, and educator reductions; scholar reductions; and “Southwest Nights” for these residing and dealing within the District’s Southwest neighborhood. To study extra, go to arenastage.org/savings-programs.
The Inherit the Wind program is on-line right here.
