Prison is the principal setting for the story of Jack Henry Abbott. It's as solid a place as the theatrical backdrop of a concrete wall, jaggedly cut away to reveal a vertical steel door. It closes, with thunderous clang, on Abbott, thrown in to confront us.
Prison is also where Abbott's mind lives. He recalls an abusive childhood in a changing series of foster homes where unspeakable things also happened to his sister. Delinquent as a teen, he went from juvenile detention to life in a series of cells, state jails to Federal prison. He educated himself by extensive reading and wrote to Norman Mailer about his literary subject, Gary Gilmore's (and Abbott's own) life behind bars. Mailer sponsored Abbott to get probation after helping him have his mainly biographical letters published.
Titled "In the Belly of the Beast," his book won critical raves and captured the attention of sociologists, psychologists, rehabilitation and administration-of-justice professionals. Readers in general joined in the acclaim and demanded attention to prison reform. Very appropos, since Abbott murdered a cafe waiter just after being probationed and just before the New York Times came out with its praise of Abbott's book.
For much of Abbott's story we are at his trial for his account of the murder and the life and circumstances that led up to it. He presents his "side" of the "macabre" knifing as a mistake. His defense is that he never learned to live in society, just as he "failed to adjust" to foster homes or a number of prisons and the situations within them. David Sitler, powerful as Abbott, is most fascinating as he describes or acts out degradations and tortures during incarceration: Beatings, bug infestations, sleep deprivation, strippings-down, lack of toilets, food, drink, warmth, clothing, shoes, cot, bedding. The greatest lack was human contact.
Even the two actors, who skillfully fill such multiple roles as prosecution and defense, prison guards, victim, even Abbott himself as a younger man, do not interact with Stiller's Abbott as distinct persons.
We get powerful messages for and against prosecution. Was Abbott a killer by philosophy, habit, desire, intent? Was he the product of an outrageous "rearing" and circumstances, too much confinement, too solitary an existence, emotional disturbance?
Despite the drama's dialectical approach, the play is weighted heavily in favor of Abbott, with his points of view predominating. Moreover, these are edited, for many facts (e.g., his extreme Marxist views, his rejection of rehabilitative classes, his extensive reading that included literary and sociological models and excuses for his egotism) are omitted. The Attica riots, which occurred a decade before his book was published, could have influenced his horror stories, just as it prepared readers and audiences to hear the worst about prisons and needs for reform.
On the other hand, not all prisons in all states were inhumane in the 1950s to 70s, especially the latter decade, and onward. Nor were --or indeed are -- all prisoners "made" criminals by upbringing, genetic background, or environment.
In the realm of prison literature, there is no doubt of the power of Abbott's book. In that of theater, Abbott's case is truly an occasion for dialectic, but in the docudrama at FST we get a powerful rhetorical bias. It receives hard-hitting enhancement from Debra Whitfield's unflinching directorial choices as well as the harsh lighting (or lack of it) designed by Colleen Jennings.
