In an unnamed American metropolis, the Public Works Director has been discovered to have a cache of pedophile images on his work computer, but even under house arrest awaiting trial, he threatens to reveal the identities of his fellow perpetrators, active and unwitting alike. The task of ensuring that the city mayor isn't among those listed falls to a team of Spin Doctors—experts in the art of casuistry, obfuscation, and selective reporting whose goal is skewing facts to whatever vantage they are paid to occupy. If this diatribe on Macchiavellian tactics in the media sounds like one dish too many after the glut of civic intrigue force-fed to audiences over the last four years, home-bound playgoers may take comfort in the assurance that by 2021, and possibly long thereafter thereafter, this brief lecture-demonstration will find its value as a time-capsule pinpointing a precise moment in our history and shining a light, not merely on the ethics of video journalism, but on the moral temper of the public at large. When a good person is discovered to have committed a bad deed, ask the characters whose duty is to vilify a once-admired colleague, does the evil that they do live after them while the good is interred with their bones? What recourse should their former comrades—now racked with guilt over their own ignorance and eager to deny their previous acquaintance for fear of reprisal—adopt? Jaded theatergoers who have long had their fill of power-games in the key of David Mamet and Aaron Sorkin may choose to view this parable as a tutorial on Zoom—or "virtual presentation" as we are told it is now designated—technological advances. After decades of live-stage scenic design aimed at replicating film and television communication, real-world circumstances now permit playwright Spenser Davis and videographer Matthew Freer to create a script scored precisely for virtual transmission, replete with participants snacking onscreen, shushing off-camera children and confessing to artificial ambient decor. Oh, and don't forget the jargon—"Call me a bitch, call me a shrew, call me a KAREN! I don't care" snaps a government flak-catcher. You can play the naive observer and focus on the talking heads, of course, or bask in the premature nostalgia of events already receding into memory. Sharp-eyed spectators, however, would do well to watch what's happening in the chat window and/or the laptop screens of the other conference participants—one of whom is scolded by his horrified superiors for taking notes on PAPER and searching for addresses on a—gasp!—rolodex.
