It Can’t Happen Here?

Sinclair Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here and Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America tell tales that seem impossible, demagogues being elected President of the United States and the violent consequences, minorities being persecuted, hunted, fanaticism and mass hatreds abounding.   It’s an old formula – stir fear among the populace and then promise to protect them.  Donald Trump showed his cards last night and got his South Carolina audience worked up into almost an evangelistic state.  His message is simple: Muslims in America are dangerous and he’ll protect us, classic demagoguery – “a person who appeals to the emotions and prejudices of people in order to advance his own political ends.”

Trump has stirred a dangerous pot, just what ISIS wants.  If one was a conspiracist, perhaps it could be said that he is merely a Trojan horse for Ted Cruz, who independently stated:  “We will utterly destroy ISIS. We will carpet bomb them into oblivion. I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out.”  If Trump drops out, Cruz will inherit the far right fringe of the Republican Party.  Was that the “plan” all along? Does Cruz know that carpet bombing usually implies leveling an area, civilians and all?  It sounds more like revenge than a strategy, something to make his followers “feel good.”

Unfortunately, the horror in San Bernardino has fed into all of this, “legitimizing” such dangerous rhetoric and escalating it to personal attacks on President Obama (who now has low polling numbers about keeping America “safe,” the exact inverse of what those numbers were after bin Laden was nailed) - and subsequent accusations that any call for stronger gun control laws is merely politicizing the San Bernardino tragedy.

But such calls have gone on for years with fierce Republican and NRA opposition.  I do not naively believe that better gun control laws and enforcement would magically eliminate such tragedies, especially in the short term.  But I do believe that the Second Amendment, which was written in the days of musket rifles and flintlock pistols, needs serious updating.

At that time, we needed an armed militia and also the founding fathers believed that an armed citizenry would be deterrent to the rise of a despotic government.  The world has changed since then, weapons of war unimaginable to our forefathers, and, now, mostly in the hands of the military and law enforcement.  To make some of the same weapons legitimately available to the citizenry no longer serves the purpose of protecting us from a despotic government as the military will always have superior weaponry (is an AK-15 adequate protection against a tank?). The proliferation of automatic weapons just further endangers us all, giving us a false sense of security by just having one in our closet. 

No, this is a country of laws and checks and balances and we have to depend on our tried-and-true institutions as well as the much maligned (by Trump in particular) fourth estate to keep our government transparent and trustworthy. If some fringe element threatens us in our homes and public places, we need better intelligence to prevent it and rapid response law enforcement to protect us.

Fully automatic weapons (ones that operate as a machine gun) need to be banned, and guns should be registered just like a car, an equally dangerous thing.  That means getting a license, passing a rigorous background check and license renewals (a gun owner having to report if it is sold, just like a car).  Guns for self defense, hunting and target practicing are understandable but how can one argue that an automatic weapon is needed?  Certainly not for hunting (where is the sport in that?).  Do we really want our neighbors to be totting an automatic weapon citing Florida’s ambiguous “stand your ground” law as a justification? 

Will that keep guns out of the hands of the “bad guys” as the Republicans like to call them?  No, but it’s a start and of course the devil is in the details of how such gun control is administered.  Senseless to get further into it here – I’m merely expounding an opinion.

Getting back to the demagoguery of Trump’s speech reminded me of a piece I wrote during the last Presidential primaries.  I concluded it with a description of the movie A Face in the Crowd and it seems to be even more apropos to this Republican primary, so I’ll repeat what I said then….

A bit of serendipity led me to watch the 1957 classic A Face in the Crowd on Turner Classic Movies. Directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg, it depicts Larry Rhodes (Andy Griffith), a drifter who is found in a jail by Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal), who she enlists to sing and talk on a local Arkansas radio station, he ultimately rising to the pinnacle of media demagoguery.  He is nicknamed "Lonesome" Rhodes by Marcia, and she goes on the journey with him from obscurity to fame to fall. 

The relevancy of this film, made more than fifty years ago, to today is striking.  Lonesome is drawn into the political arena, and is brought in to help transform the film's Senator Worthington Fuller into a Presidential candidate.  Lonesome instinctively and sardonically understands the manipulative power of language and media. 

When he first meets the Senator, he advises him to abandon his stiff personality and give himself over to Lonesome's control:  "...Your problem is getting the voters to listen to you. Getting them to like you enough to listen to you. We've got to face it, politics have entered a new stage, television. Instead of long-winded debates, the people want slogans. 'Time for a change' 'The mess in Washington' 'More bang for a buck'. Punch-lines and glamour....We've got to find  a  million buyers for the product 'Worthington Fuller'....Respect? Did you ever hear of anyone buying any product beer, hair rinse, tissue, because they respect it? You've got to be loved, man. Loved....Senator, I'm a professional. I look at the image on that screen same as at a performer on my show. And I have to say...you'll never get over to my audience not to the millions of people who welcome me into their living rooms each week. And if I wouldn't buy him, do you realize what that means? If I wouldn't buy him, the people of this country aren't ready to buy him for that big job on Pennsylvania Avenue....I'm an influence, a wielder of opinion...a force. A force."

To Marcia he says :"This whole country's just like my flock of sheep!....Rednecks, crackers, hillbillies, hausfraus, shut-ins, pea-pickers - everybody that's got to jump when somebody else blows the whistle. They don't know it yet, but they're all gonna be 'Fighters for Fuller'. They're mine! I own 'em! They think like I do. Only they're even more stupid than I am, so I gotta think for 'em. Marcia, you just wait and see. I'm gonna be the power behind the president - and you'll be the power behind me."

An actor on Rhodes' show asks him about Senator Fuller: "You really sell that stiff as a man among men?" Lonesome Rhodes replies: "Those morons out there? Shucks, I could take chicken fertilizer and sell it to them as caviar. I could make them eat dog food and think it was steak. Sure, I got 'em like this... You know what the public's like? A cage of Guinea Pigs. Good Night you stupid idiots. Good Night, you miserable slobs. They're a lot of trained seals. I toss them a dead fish and they'll flap their flippers."

The History Boys – A Memorable Lesson Taught at Dramaworks

At first I thought this was a rendition of “Everything You Wanted to Know about the UK Educational System, but Were Afraid to Ask.”  Although knowledge of terms such as Oxbridge, Supply Teacher, A-levels, Sixth-Formers are helpful, the themes in this play transcend time and place.  This is about how boys become men, how teachers affect our lives forever, about the randomness of history and the importance of art.

These weighty themes are examined along with an entertaining pastiche of comedy and popular songs, adding to the play’s representation of English school life as it was in the 1980’s (although heavily reliant on the playwright’s personal experiences in the 1950s).  There is just so much substance in the play I feel like I’m using a toy shovel to mine its depths in this review.

(Back) Nathan Stark, Jelani Alladin, Kyle Branzel,

(Front) Mike Magliocca, Matthew Minor, Colin Asercion,

 Colin McPhillamy, Kristian Bikic, John Evans Reese 

Photo by Samantha Mighdoll

From personal experience I can count the teachers who really mattered in my life on one hand and in particular two, one from high school and the other from college, men who urged me on and to whom I owe my life as it is.  Remarkably, to this day I am still in touch with both of them.   These are the kind of teachers celebrated in Alan Bennett’s erudite The History Boys.

Ironically, my college teacher taught the British Literature class which, little did I know, would come in “handy” for seeing this play.  There are so many references to British poets here, W.H. Auden, Rupert Brooke, Thomas Hardy (albeit primarily a novelist, his poem “Drummer Hodge” is quoted as part of a lesson) , A.E. Housman, Philip Larkin, Wilfred Owen, and Siegfried Sassoon, to name but a few.  Many of those poets wrote about the young men of WW I, the loss of innocence of an entire generation, which is still another theme of The History Boys.

Rob Donohoe Cliff Burgess  Photo by Samantha Mighdoll

The plot is fairly straightforward.  The headmaster of a boys' school in Northern England hires a “supply-teacher” (temporary teacher), Irwin, who is “results oriented” to help more students get high grades in the “A-level” exams and into the sacred “Oxbridge” circle, either Oxford University or Cambridge University.  He joins the two other teachers of the school’s “sixth-formers,” the exuberant, impassioned, and somewhat theatrical Hector, who has sort of an avuncular relationship with his students, and Mrs. Lintott who employs more conventional teaching methods.

Unlike Mrs. Lintott and Hector, Irwin’s focus is twofold:  helping the students get high exam marks and teaching them how to comport themselves in oral exams and interviews – the polish needed to excel in Oxbridge. If you can’t get in the front door of an historical inquiry, use the back door.  The “truth” is sometimes less relevant than how it is told.  At times this puts him in direct conflict with Hector, who at one point says “I count examinations, even for Oxford and Cambridge, as the enemy of education. Which is not to say that I don’t regard education as the enemy of education, too.”

Early in the play Bennett stages a scene entirely in French, taught by Hector, and in spite of the play being put on in front of an English speaking audience, one can glean the essence of what Hector is trying to do using this idiosyncratic method:  teaching the students about the subjective in French grammar using an elaborate conversation about how one behaves (or “should” behave) in a brothel.  He even involves the headmaster at the conclusion of the scene – passing it off at that point as a hospital scene (hilarious!) -- as the headmaster is trying to introduce Irwin.   It turns out that this lesson has a larger meaning in the play: the subjective in history or what might have been.

The headmaster clearly backs Irwin; especially after Hector is caught “fiddling” with one of the boys while they are riding on Hector’s motorcycle.  This is accidentally witnessed, and as the play makes clear, not unlike many events in history. The headmaster says to Mrs. Lintott: “Shall I tell you what is wrong with Hector as a teacher?  It isn’t that he doesn’t produce results.  He does.  But they are unpredictable and unquantifiable and in the current educational climate that is no use.  He may well be doing his job, but there is no method that I know of that enables me to assess the job that he is doing.  There is inspiration, certainly, but how do I quantify that?  And he has no notion of boundaries….So the upshot is I am glad he handled his pupils’ balls because that at least I can categorize.” 

At one point Bennett has some fun at the expense of acting, further emphasizing the chasm between Hector and Irwin. Irwin suggests that a student should downplay his interest in the theatre:  “Then soft pedal it, the acting side of it anyway.  Dons…most dons anyway…think the theatre is a waste of time.  In their view any undergraduate keen on acting forfeits all hope of a good degree.” Hector replies: “So much for Shakespeare.”

Angie Radosh  Mike Magliocca

Photo by Samantha Mighdoll

Mrs. Lintott has her special moment in the play too, a sudden feminist outburst that leaves the boys, Hector and Irwin momentarily silent: “I’ll tell you why there are no women historians on TV, it’s because they don’t get carried away for a start, and they don’t come bouncing up to you with every new historical notion they’ve come up with…the bow-wow school of history.  History’s not such frolic for women as it is for men.  Why should it be?   They never get round the conference table. In 1919, for instance, they just arranged the flowers then gracefully retired.  History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history?  History is women following behind with the bucket.”  Mind you, this play is set in the era of Margret Thatcher.

The “boys” are equally diverse and interesting, some turning out as we might imagine, and others a surprise.  A follow up of them later in life concludes the play, with some touching moments.

Cliff Burgess 

Nathan Stark

Fittingly, the teachers in the play are all PBD alumni, consummate professionals in every way.  If I were casting this play these are the very actors I’d seek for such pivotal roles. Colin McPhillamy plays Hector with flair, making his eccentricities more heartfelt than bizarre.  One feels compassion for his unusual teaching methods and his relationship with “the boys.”  Cliff Burgess is all business as Irwin who inveigles himself into a “co-teaching” role with Hector, or the “yin and yang” as one student describes the experience.  And yet Burgess makes sure the audience has empathy for him as well, especially in his edgy “approach-avoidance” relationship with Dakin, one of the students.  Angie Radosh plays Mrs. Lintott with the wisdom befitting a teacher who has taught at the same school for a long time.  Rob Donohoe is the headmaster, performing a humorous counterpoint, easily frustrated and bewildered by anything Hector does. But he rises to dramatic moments too. Outstanding performances by all.

The students are all new to PBD, played by Jelani Alladin, Colin Asercion, Kristian Bikic, Kyle Branzel, Mike Magliocca, Matthew Minor, John Evans Reese, and Nathan Stark. All the “boys” are terrific actors and although there are eight of them on stage, each one’s personality shines through.  It was a casting coup to find such a talented group on the regional theatre level.  Special callouts to Nathan Stark’s rendering of Dakin, whose brimming testosterone level and talk of the sexual conquest of the headmaster’s secretary lands him in the inner circle of the boys, envied.  Loss of sexual innocence is yet another theme in the play.  Contrast that to the sensitive portrayal by John Evans Reese as Posner, a boy who feels he is an outsider, desperately trying to connect, in spite of his being gay, Jewish, wanting Dakin to return his love.  And kudos to Kyle Branzel who doubles as the musician, playing a number of popular pieces on the piano for sing-alongs, and to accompany Posner who is able to express himself in songs, including a touching rendition of Rodgers & Hart’s classic Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered

Once again, special accolades go to the Director, J. Barry Lewis.  How does one put so many people on stage and in constantly changing scenes, the classroom, the hallway/locker room, the headmaster’s office, the coffee room, without breaking stride and dramatic momentum?  Lewis moves his characters at a pace which keeps the audience fully involved for its nearly three hours running time, including intermission.

Scenic design by Victor Becker and lighting design by Paul Black work together as those four scenes are revisited multiple times so in all there are more than 30 changes, the actors, mostly the students, moving the designs while lighting focuses on a character on a side of the stage so action is not broken.  Once the scenery is in place, full lighting snaps on.  Aside from the tunes of bygone years sung by the boys, and recordings of Edith Piaf, contemporary 80’s music accompanies the scenery changes, thanks to the sound design by Tyler Kieffer. Costume design by Erin Amico cleverly captured that 80s feeling.

Alan Bennett’s The History Boys is a rollicking intellectual feast, celebrating life-long learning and exploring the importance of art and the nature of history: is it merely a random series of events (or as one student espouses, “It’s just one fucking thing after another”) or events that we impose meaning on after the fact, finding patterns where there are really none? The play’s cadence of language, the quips, the acting out of famous movie scenes by the boys, the songs, and its stream of literary and popular cultural references make this a living, breathing experience.  The staging of this play is a very ambitious and successful achievement by PBD – theater to indeed think about. It gets an “A+” from me.