Mother Night, at 59E59, adapted and directed by Brian Katz from the novel by Kurt Vonnegut, tells the story of an expatriate American broadcaster and columnist who infamously wrote propaganda for the Nazis, and then after WWII, returned home to NYC, under an assumed name, a reviled figure, with none but a handful of people knowing that he was a double agent, working for the Americans, sending coded messages in every speech he ever made on the air. Never having read the novel, I can’t comment on how well the adaptation may capture its tone and intention, but taking the play on its own terms, what sounds like a fairly riveting premise is instead a tale of only modest intrigues, whose deeper themes seem likewise the stuff of only cool contemplation. This because our hero made his personal accommodations for the Nazis in Germany and some of the fascist-minded crackpots who make appearances to admire him in NY; he knows objectively how loathsome they are, but since he’s had to deal with them in the guise of a colleague and fellow traveler, he has found himself at times “almost sorry for them.” His dreams are not haunted. His German wife doesn’t know of his double existence, and he’s happier to preserve the carnal abandon they feel together (in what he calls their “nation of two”) than to tell her a truth that could accomplish nothing other than to damage a dynamic in which the truth has no place, not even as a balm to his conscience. And that’s because, by and large, the one he has is perfunctory. He has done what’s right because doing what’s right is his remit; not, seemingly, because he has any particular passion for it. Which makes for an odd little morality play, because its moral is ambiguous. Perhaps even ambivalent. It’s all decently, though never rivetingly, directed and acted. But the ceiling may be endemic to the material.
On a related tack, there’s The Winning Side, James Wallert’s play about Werner von Braun (Sullivan Jones), perhaps the iconic example of the is-he-or-isn’t-he-a-Nazi German scientist—who defected to the West, whereupon, in the employ of the United States, he continued the work in rocketry that he had begun to pioneer under Hitler’s regime—which eventually led to the first landing on the moon. Following a non-linear path that bounces between von Braun's progress in America—as carefully stage managed by a military intelligence Major named Taggart (Godfrey L.Simmons, Jr.)—and von Braun's backstory—as reflected through his romantic relationship with French actress (Melissa Friedman)—the play asks audiences to consider not only where or whether von Braun had a moral center, but to consider their own feelings about the many moral ambiguities surrounding the facts. (About a dozen historical and a few more utilitarian roles are assayed by Devin E. Haqq.)
The play, currently at the Theatre Row complex, doesn’t work completely. There’s more than one passage in which the playwright, Mr. Wallert, doesn’t sufficiently dramatize his research, so to speak, and that’s when we get a bit of lag—right around the Act One midpoint—but at its best, The Winning Side put me in mind of the plays of Peter Shaffer (in particular Equus, Amadeus and The Royal Hunt of the Sun) and how they explore moral and sometimes historical ambiguity. And that’s not bad company to be in.
Speaking of company, the players, as an ensemble, typify something that is happening more and more in the mainstream theatre: the casting of people of color in white roles—not just in classic revivals (The Iceman Cometh), or plays that provide a lead role slot for a star replacement (August: Osage County) or plays/productions that otherwise utilize the poetic aspects of the medium to provide a complete ethnic makeover (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) or otherwise give the audience room to adjust, for lack of absolute script definition or addition of liberal-minded reinterpretation (Les Misérables, Waitress, The Play that Goes Wrong, etc.). But rather, in roles that are historically or unequivocally (say, by dint of familial relation) non-ethnic; with no explanation and an expectation that in this day and age, the audience must simply make the leap and include what may be color, at odds with literal reality, as an item they overlook in their suspension of disbelief. The Winning Side’s cast of four is completely African American (in a talkback, director Ron Russell said he’d been hoping for even more ethnic diversity, but these were the best actors for the roles).
Putting color aside, the quartet are a perfectly decent and credible ensemble, and in moments, better than that. The direction isn’t outstanding, but it also isn’t in the way: again, decent and credible; it gets the job done.
Putting color back into the discussion, I think it’s an inevitable development, not only as a reflection of the times and the shifting proportion of POCs to whites in the citizenry of the country…but as a tacit (and perhaps at times not-so-tacit) rebellion against the “new” racism being instigated and enabled by the Trump White House and a Republican-controlled government. I’ve known some people to be bugged by the incongruity; and a director colleague of mine who has enabled the incongruity in major productions has talked of audience members who “find it confusing,” and indeed, confusing is the word commonly put forth as objection.
For me, I’ve only once known it to impede clarity; the confusion was genuinely borne of the narrative claiming one ethnic identity while visible skin tone proclaimed another, thus making me think I was watching a loyal aide and not a Jewish granddaughter; and to be fair, even that could have been adjusted with explicit tweaks to script and direction. As far as I’m concerned, if I’m not confused about intention, I’m never confused about story. You make the adjustment because you have to, and it’s silly not to. But for the first few minutes, there’s no shaking the sensation of watching a historical, cultural shift happening before your eyes.
Returning to 59E59: There’s nothing ambiguous about Goodbody by J.C. Ernst, at least not in the sense that you're unsure of what the author’s about, despite the fact that it opens with a young(ish) woman (Amanda Sykes) holding a gun over both an unseen dead body, and another quite visible body, that of a man very much alive (Raife Baker), bloody and crudely duct-taped to a chair, who presumably witnessed the shooting…or perhaps Goodbody is unambiguous because of that first visual. Right away, you know that you’re in the territory of noir-toned crime-psychological thriller; and that what you’re watching is the kind of thing I call a “paperback play,” because it has absolutely nothing more profoundly on its mind than what happens next. To discuss the plot much further than its opening minute or two is to indulge in spoilers, so I’ll offer you only this much:
It's very capably acted, and with great brio under the highly efficient direction of Melissa Firlit. And the author knows his genre tropes well. He hasn’t done anything revolutionary with them, but he’s put his own spin on them; there are no audience fake-outs, with more cast members than you expect or fewer: four characters are listed in the program and four, those four, appear in the play (the others are assayed by Alex Morf and Dustin Charles). And the promise the opening image makes, that whatever Grand Guignol has just occurred, some additional fun with workshop hardware may be held in abeyance for a while, but it’s coming (did I mention we’re in a toolshed? no? well, that). The dialogue is a little f-word heavy, and that can get tiresome, but it's otherwise solid and often quite snappy (here and there even quotable). As to whether or not Goodbody is for you (dark fun is not everybody’s fun), consider this review the label on the bottle.
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