| . | 04/04/2008
Something You Did
By: Victor Gluck
Portia, Jordan Charney, Victor Slezak and Joanna Gleason
(photo credit: James Leynse)
Willy Holtzman’s taut and provocative new drama, Something You Did, is that rare play that dramatizes a topical theme taken from current events by telling a new story that forces us to examine our beliefs. In a post 9/11 world it dares to ask the questions: what is the difference between dissent and terrorism, and are patriotism and dissent mutually exclusive? It may stack the deck in order to prove its message, but it is never preachy nor does it descend to agit-prop to make its points.
Carolyn Cantor’s always exciting and thought-provoking production offers some of the strongest work to date by Joanna Gleason who is usually seen in light comedies and concept musicals. Here she plays Alison Moulton, a notorious sixties radical who is now up for parole after 30 years. Her crime: her involvement in the accidental killing of an African American police officer during a Vietnam War protest. There were extenuating circumstances but her father, a famous liberal lawyer, did not allow her to speak at previous parole hearings and she has held her tongue until now.
What is different this time is that her father has just died, freeing Alison to speak before her latest hearing. She also wishes to enlist the help of the policeman’s daughter whom she has never met, but whom she hopes may be merciful after all these years. Arthur, her lawyer and her father’s partner, wants to seek the help of Gene Biddle, now a neo-conservative columnist, television commentator, and author, but who was once Alison’s political comrade and lover back in the turbulent sixties. Add to the mix Officer Uneeq Edwards, her jailer, an African American who is also wary of white establishment authority based on her own personal experiences.
Using this plot, Holtzman explores questions of dissent in a world where citizens with Middle Eastern names are automatically suspect and where political dissent against unpopular government policies is almost non-existent. He also puts sixties dissent on trial and asks us where did it lead, and where are those activists now. The play is structured in a series of confrontations that put these questions front and center. He asks today’s burning question: is a dissenter after 9/11 less a patriot than one who vocally supports poor or damaging government polices? There are no easy answers: Alison by her own admission is implicated in the death of a policeman, however inadvertent, and Gene, once a far left liberal, has had the right to change his mind based on the outcome of subsequent events.
Gleason makes Alison a hard but sympathetic character that has redeemed herself with 30 years of good work in the prison library and as an advocate for other prisoners, without betraying her ideals. Her delivery is sharp, direct and to the point. After all, her character, the daughter of a lawyer, has had three decades to consider her deeds. She is matched by Adriane Lenox, as the deceased policeman’s daughter. Like her Tony Award-winning performance in Doubt, she is cool, direct and articulate about her own politically charged relationship with her father while finding it difficult to separate Alison’s actions, acting on her beliefs, which led to the death of her father, from Alison’s latter day repentance.
Although Victor Slezak cannot make the glib, self-serving Gene a sympathetic character, he is a credible voice for the neo-conservative point of view. Jordan Charney is amusing as Alison’s attorney who knows how to make the law work in her favor, if only she will let him. As the observer to the main action, Portia’s Office Uneeq is quite endearing as Alison’s not quite trusting guard, who knows repentance when she sees it. Although the play is constricted somewhat by Eugene Lee’s setting, which keeps the prison library towering on stage even when the play moves to Gene’s office and later to the parole board, the forceful acting and writing overcome this restriction.
Best known previously for Sabina, which examined a famous case of Sigmund Freud, playwright Willy Holtzman has taken a major contemporary issue and written a play which allows him and the audience to explore its ramifications. Something You Did, which offers Joanna Gleason some of the most dramatic material she has ever worked with, is a fascinating play both provocative and thoughtful. It is not often in today’s theater that a play of ideas also tells an engrossing story which stirs the mind and the emotions.
Something You Did (through April 26)
Primary Stages, 59E59 Theaters, 59 E. 59th Street, in Manhattan
For tickets, call 212-279-4200 or http://www.ticketcentral.com
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