THE TRIAL OF THE CATONSVILLE NINE
Poet Priest Daniel Berrigan's Historical Drama
Directed by Jon Kellam
FOUR PERFORMANCES ONLY!!! AUGUST 27, 28, 29 AND 30
"GO!... an impassioned argument for following the dictates of one's conscience." - LA Weekly
"A PHENOMENAL ENSEMBLE of actors... This may be a courtroom drama, but it's about America itself." - Back Stage
1 comment:
A very well acted but turgid piece of Agit-Prop. By the time of their trial, the Berrigans and their friends were true believers in direct-action activism against the Vietnam War. They sought out arrest and trial to propagate their anti-war message, based on the moral conviction of their Catholic faith. Sadly, good direct action makes for an evening of very bad theater.
Christ's Passion is most human in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus prays the cup of martyrdom might pass from him: he doesn't seek the Cross. That's drama, and not the catechistic conviction of The Catonsville Nine. Here the "good guys" have no character arc, because their minds were long since made up before the drama begins. As a result, the most interesting character in the Catonsville Nine is the Judge. She starts the play as a cartoon figure, (almost like Judge Hoffman in the Chicago 7 trial), and ends by showing moments of genuine interest and sympathy for the cause of the defendants.
Bertold Brecht knew how to craft effective drama out of simple political stories. He used all the distancing devices of modern theatre, but spun them around a core of human drama which held his audience's attention while he propagated his political points. The Trial of the Catonsville Nine gets a "Guilty" verdict for being poor drama, by standards both Brechtian and Biblical. A double shame, really, because the acting is uniformly good, and the direction far more lively than the script ever becomes.
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