Too Much Monkey Business?
Inherit the Wind at the Erie Playhouse
A Theater Review
Relevant as it was when it was first debuted in 1955, “Inherit the Wind” offers up a battle between Man’s enlightened principles versus mob mores veiled in darkness.
Written by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, “Inherit,” currently at Erie Playhouse, relates the struggles of an individual whose teaching of modern scientific thought clashes with a tiny town’s conservative beliefs.
Loosely based on the factual Scopes “Monkey” Trial of 1925, in which a teacher was arrested for introducing evolution to his students against state law, an ex-politician and a nationally-known defense lawyer eventually clash in the courtroom, bringing the case to a worldwide audience.
Transposing the event to dramaturgy, “Inherit” offers up Bert Cates (Dylan Vergotz) as the imprisoned instructor and the one person in the community who stands by him, love interest, Rachel Brown (Lyrica Rain), daughter of the aloof, fire-and-brimstone bible thumper, Reverend Jeremiah Brown (James Howells).
Though an awkward relationship triangle, the real fireworks comes from the legal headbutting between former three-time ex-presidential candidate, Matthew Harrison Brady (Mike DeCorte) and Henry Drummond (Victor Kuehn), a masterly defense attorney.
Throw in snarky commentary from a Baltimore newspaperman, E.K. Hornbeck (Zach Flock) and the play delivers an incongruous Macbethian witch’s brew of characters with different drives and desires.
Directed by Carolin Lynn, the show portrays the message of the individual versus the many, the freethinker versus the mob mentality that still holds true today. (Ibsen’s “Enemy of the People” set in America?)
With certain ultra-conservative areas of this country banning books in libraries today, I wouldn’t be surprised to see creationism subverting evolution in some public classrooms in the near future.
While a few audio issues plagued the first act with crackling microphones or non-working mikes, happily, it was all cleared up by the second portion of the show.
Courtroom-room drama isn’t really this gal’s bag, but small moments of levity throughout play kept it moving for me.
Rain’s lovelorn character, Rachel, offers a tenderness to the male-dominated cast as she pines for Vergotz’s Bert, a simple teacher whose fate rests on the duel between legal eagles.
DeCorte’s performance as the physically ailing but mentally astute failed politician, Matthew Harrison Brady, gives the audience a brilliant character and orator that one ultimately empathizes with.
Kuehn’s rendering as the sharp-witted agnostic lawyer for the defense, Henry Drummond, fights an uphill battle against ignorance, giving the audience an intelligent, complex man to root for.
Finally, Flock’s character as city-slicker, journalist-cynic, Hornbeck, who sneers at everything under the sun, provides the audience with a worthwhile acidic take on the court case and the close-minded community he reported on.
See you in the balcony!
***Thea Tah
Inherit the Wind continues at the Erie Playhouse through April 21. For more information visit erieplayhouse.org
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