Decades Later, Wind Is Still Evolving

Studied in liberal middle schools across the nation and shown on Turner Classic Movies at least once a day, or at least so it seems, Inherit the Wind does not seem like prime material for a Broadway revival. Why pay around $100 for a seat when you can see the same thing on TV for free? That didn't stop director Doug Hughes and legendary actors Brian Dennehy and Christopher Plummer from mounting the recently opened Broadway revival. And the production is-surprisingly-not as boring as it sounds.

First produced on Broadway in 1955, the play is loosely based on the 1925 Scopes "Monkey" trial, in which a teacher was charged with teaching Darwin's theory of evolution in a Tennessee public school. The courtroom stuff adheres pretty closely to the real-life drama, though playwrights Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee gave their characters fictional names. The duo also added a romantic subplot-this is Broadway, after all. But the predominant tension of the play is still the back-and-forth between the dueling attorneys, Matthew Harrison Brady (Dennehy) and Henry Drummond (Plummer). The former, William Jennings Bryan's doppelganger, is a beloved and mouthy preacher who has thrice come in second in the presidential elections and has been called on by the town to prosecute the teacher, Bertram Cates (Benjamin Walker). The latter, Clarence Darrow's double, is a known agnostic (gasp!) and nimble attorney called down from Chicago by the liberal media to lead the defense.

The most striking thing about revisiting this familiar story is how eerily prescient the play's subject is. Written in the '50s about a trial from the '20s, the script is not yet a quaint relic of the unenlightened past. Update the costumes and throw in a few lines about intelligent design and one would have a hard time believing that the show is over 50 years old. But the show is also perhaps a bit reductive: on one side of the fight lie the loopy, uninformed Evangelicals-on the other, the uppity liberal media.

The dramatic structure plays into this dichotomy. The Christians are represented by the Rev. Jeremiah Brown (Byron Jennings), who prays for the eternal damnation of the teacher who dared to question the system. Conveniently, the teacher's girlfriend is the preacher's daughter, Rachel (Maggie Lacey). On the other side-the one dominated by the liberals up north and their pervasive media coverage of the trial-is reporter E.K. Hornbeck (or H.L. Mencken, if you're following along in your textbook). Expertly played by Denis O'Hare (the quarry guy in Garden State), Hornbeck would pray for the eternal damnation of all the Bible-thumpers, if he believed in Hell or prayer. Instead, he spends his time painting a picture of a courtroom full of bumbling, Southern buffoons.

As the ending shows us, Christians aren't all bad and neither are liberals-there are idiots on both sides! Ultimately, however, the liberals are right (as I said before, this is Broadway, after all). Just make sure to emulate the careful and wise Drummond instead of the accusatory Hornbeck, and you're in the clear.

The predictable characters and familiar moralizing is actually pretty entertaining in the hands of Hughes and the two leads. A Tony winner for Doubt, Hughes knows how to keep things zippy-every bit of comedy gets a well-deserved laugh from the audience. He has also added an interesting angle about the way that the trial, and the entire discourse around evolution, depend on an audience. The show begins with a four-piece bluegrass band singing standards in the courtroom, like an opening act for a Vaudeville skit. And set designer Santo Loquasto has built a beautiful, looming riser with around 40 seats directly on the stage. Like at Spring Awakening, audience members can sit in these seats for a fraction of the cost of a full-price ticket (they cost $36.25) and serve as visual representations of Hughes's public-as-jury metaphor. This is particularly relevant in the end when Brady's victory in the courtroom is actually a loss in the court of public opinion.

The real entertainment of the evening comes from watching two behemoths spar onstage. Dennehy's careful performance heightens Brady's portrayal of an almost great man who ultimately is not quite likeable but entirely pitiable. Plummer, of Sound of Music fame and Broadway's recent production of King Lear, is truly one of the great actors alive today. It is impossible to look away when he is onstage. His demeanor is as telling as his words. You may not agree with me, but for less than $40, you can judge for yourself.