It's no surprise that Geva Theater's elaborate revival of Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee's rousing courtroom drama, Inherit the Wind, plays like gangbusters, bringing its opening- night crowd to their feet. And, despite being slightly more than half a century old and based on a notorious historic trial that took place more than 80 years ago, the play is, sadly, all too timely.
The playwrights wanted to use actual events to create a richly suggestive drama, so although Inherit the Wind reflects the infamous Scopes Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, July 1925, and makes no effort to hide the fact that Matthew Harrison Brady (the famed orator representing the prosecution) is based on William Jennings Bryan, and Henry Drummond (the agnostic defense lawyer) represents Clarence Darrow, it is not an accurate account of the trial against Scopes for teaching evolution; nor is it an exact picture of any of the real, historical people involved. Rather, it is a play about "telling the truth," about the right to "think for oneself," about the attempt of a community to stop a man from teaching science if they think it conflicts with the local church's teachings, and about a national leader who has "lost his way, looking for God" as his own personal guide. Even if the same Bible Belt locales were not, even now, still trying to combat the teaching of evolution, the play would seem depressingly contemporary.
Erhard Rom's settings and Pamela Scofield's costumes for the street scenes and courtroom scenes suggest the mid-Twenties period while making us recognize these unsophisticated rural people as timeless and familiar. The play is not trying to treat them scornfully; indeed, we see they are capable of crowd reactions that display both knee-jerk simplicity in religious fervor and humane sympathy in appreciation of individual courage.
Even in his final, out-of-control rants, John Pribyl's Brady is clearly both the wreck of a once-great leader and a decent human being. He is actually thrilling when restraining the fervent minister from attacking his own dissenting daughter, urging the minister to forgive by quoting the Biblical line that gives the play its title, "He that troubleth his own house...shall inherit the wind."
Admittedly, I was distracted when I saw Paul Muni who created Drummond originally, because he had returned to the play after losing an eye, and his face was so expressive I couldn't figure out which was the glass eye. But J. G. Hertzler underplays the quirky, folksy qualities that made Clarence Darrow famously effective in the courtroom (and that Muni had a field day with), playing Drummond as an earnest, sometimes angry, champion of individual freedom of thought. His Drummond is so obviously decent that when the smirky journalist, E. K. Hornbeck, ends the play amazed at Drummond's respect for Brady, we are not surprised.
Hornbeck is a thinly-written role, basically a plot-device to show that nay-sayers can be smart alecks like him or heroes like Drummond. The lightweight journalist is obviously based on heavyweight H. L. Mencken, who was never smirky but certainly wasn't kind or fair-minded either. James Michael Reilly makes Hornbeck as smart and human as I've seen the character, so that we can finally almost like him, unlike the phony, loathsome character that Tony Randall originally made of Hornbeck onstage.
Ironically, one really odd bit of casting fits the theme of this play almost too well. The organ grinder's monkey in the street scenes is played by "Junior the Bushbaby." A bush baby is an African prosimian primate, hence a "pre-monkey," and an unmistakable example of evolution.
A large cast of 24, with additional ringers in the audience for some audible responses, plays this complex drama with remarkable conviction and effectiveness. Skip Greer's direction gives the swirling action his usual incisive clarity.
