Overview: ‘Inherit the Wind’ at Pasadena Playhouse brings faith vs. science debate to our period

“Inherit the Wind,” the 1955 courtroom drama by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee concerning the battle to show evolution within the public colleges, solely appears to develop in relevance as politicians exploit faith as a wedge situation to shore up their populist attraction.

The play’s model is dated, however the points are evergreen in anti-vax America. A fictionalized account of the 1925 Scopes “monkey” trial that occurred in Tennessee, “Inherit the Wind” tells the story of a public highschool instructor who’s arrested for introducing his college students to Charles Darwin’s concept of evolution.

John Douglas Thompson in “Inherit the Wind.”

(Jeff Lorch)

The concept humankind descended from the apes has the city’s pious energy brokers up in arms. Something that contradicts the E book of Genesis is anathema to them. It makes no distinction whether or not their beliefs fly within the face of scientific proof and even widespread sense.

The setting is Hillsboro, a backwater that E.Ok. Hornbeck (Chris Perfetti from ABC’s “Abbott Elementary”), a sarcastic journalist within the mode of H.L. Mencken, describes as “the buckle on the Bible Belt.” It may very well be any small city in America by which ignorance is fanned by politicians hellbent on management.

Alfred Molina, left, and Abubakr Ali in “Inherit the Wind.”

(Jeff Lorch)

“Inherit the Wind,” which opened on Sunday at Pasadena Playhouse, retains a respectful distance from the historic file. Director Michael Michetti capitalizes on this creative license to provide the play a contemporary makeover. The dialogue and characterizations nonetheless reveal their age, however the theatrical presentation has been filtered by way of a twenty first century aesthetic.

The forged is multicultural — a transparent signal that we’re not in segregated 1925 Dayton, Tenn. The costumes of Sara Ryung Clement are insouciantly up to date. District Legal professional Tom Davenport (Thomas Hobson) wears a distinctly of-the-moment T-shirt. Perfetti’s Hornbeck dons gleaming monitor pants.

The rawness of Brad Enlow’s scenic design prominently comprises a “Learn Your Bible” banner on a set that doesn’t in any respect attempt to conceal the bones of the theater’s structure. Michetti’s stripped-down staging searches for the supply of the play’s timeliness within the psychological subtext that emotionally fuels the general public debate.

Rene Rivera, left, Brian Cali, Alfred Molina, Thomas Hobson, John Douglas Thompson, David Aaron Baker and Abubakr Ali in “Inherit the Wind.”

(Jeff Lorch)

The method is harking back to latest “Our City” productions that wish to discard the sentimental shell of Thornton Wilder’s chestnut to faucet into the play’s darkish essence. “Inherit the Wind,” popularized by Stanley Kramer’s 1960 movie starring Gene Kelly, Spencer Tracy and Fredric March, doesn’t have a similar existential core. However stark human realities may be glimpsed from the play’s corners.

The elemental dialectic between faith and science is captured in all its theatrical depth within the courtroom confrontations between John Douglas Thompson’s Matthew Harrison Brady, the grandstanding holy curler who can’t resist the political alternative of prosecuting a heathen, and Alfred Molina’s Henry Drummond, the city-slicker protection counsel who’s waging a battle not merely to free Bertram Cates (Abubakr Ali), the enlightened instructor, from jail however to cease the forces of ignorance from undermining America’s future.

John Douglas Thompson, left, and Alfred Molina in “Inherit the Wind.”

(Jeff Lorch)

Thompson, one of the completed classical actors working right this moment, treats Brady as if he had been a Shakespearean character. With a golden voice able to reworking prosaic speech into burning soliloquy, he finds tragic amplitude in flights of rhetoric that attain emotional heights extra by way of the breath and sound of spiritual fervor than by way of textual that means.

Molina, the embodiment of theatrical excellence, is completely forged because the rational counterpoise to Brady’s zealotry. As Drummond, he grounds the play in an intelligence that acknowledges the irrational a part of human nature. His ironic remarks are biting, however he by no means sacrifices fellow-feeling for superiority. He fights on behalf of mental freedom — which incorporates each the liberty to imagine and to not imagine.

The stakes are so excessive that it’s arduous to not want that the dramatic writing had been higher. Hornbeck, a choral determine within the play, talks like previous Hollywood’s thought of a cynical reporter. Perfetti provides him an effete contemporaneity, however the character wants new strains greater than a brand new look.

Rachel Hilson in “Inherit the Wind.”

(Jeff Lorch)

Rachel Hilson brings sharp poignancy to the function of Rachel Brown, whose romance with Cates is difficult by her being the daughter of the Rev. Jeremiah Brown (David Aaron Baker), the person main the cost towards the science instructor who believes in science. On the stand, below probing questioning by Brady, she struggles to finish a sentence, so overwhelmed is she with divided loyalties.

Hilson’s efficiency is of a distinct register than many of the remainder of the forged — haltingly reasonable in an in any other case declamatory play. However Ali additionally finds peculiar private fact in his portrayal of Cates as a instructor who isn’t a lot on a heroic mission as merely following the dictates of his conscience.

The second act of Michetti’s manufacturing, when the courtroom battle is in full gear, is extra gripping than the extra expositional first half. The trial, presided over by a choose (Rene Rivera) who has a thumb on the dimensions for the prosecution, suspensefully tracks the myriad obstacles in the best way of justice.

Alfred Molina and forged in “Inherit the Wind.”

(Jeff Lorch)

“Inherit the Wind” takes the lengthy view on historic issues, recognizing that authorized setbacks may be a part of the uneven path of progress. The play is likely to be a cultural landmark, however I’m not satisfied by this partaking manufacturing (any greater than I used to be by the 2007 Broadway revival) that it’s a dramatic traditional.

The urgency of the subject material, nonetheless, is rarely out of season. Textbook censorship and guide bans are limiting the horizons of America’s youth. Below the guise of morality, benighted political pursuits are being superior. Democracy can solely founder when the nation grows dumber. Maybe the return of Henry Drummond to the stage will encourage others to take up his reason for nonpartisan freedom.