Tipping a sacred cow -- Theatre review: Inherit the Wind

“It might have been yesterday. It could be tomorrow.” So wrote playwrights Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee in the authors’ notes for their play Inherit the Wind—now playing at Waco Civic Theatre—when it was written in 1955. When they wrote those words, though, they weren’t exactly referring to the creationism/evolution debate—a milestone of which, the “Scopes monkey trial,” the play ostensibly depicts in a fictionalized account. They were obliquely referring to the aggressive anti-Communist investigations that rocked Washington and the entertainment industry during the 1950s. At the time, audiences recognized that Inherit the Wind, like The Crucible, was an allegory for the Red Scare.

But today, with the debate about what schoolchildren should be taught about the origins of humanity raging as fervently as ever, the play takes on a much more literal meaning in the minds of most playgoers. Should Darwin’s evolutionary theory be taught as scientific fact? Does the theory of creationism have any place in public schools? These questions are as relevant today as they were in 1955 or in 1925, when the Scopes trial took place. Inherit the Wind takes a rather one-sided approach to the issue, wherein lies the problem with this play: it is about as subtle as a punch on the nose.

The first half of Inherit the Wind sets up the debate: in the fictional town of Hillsboro, a biology teacher, Bertram Cates, awaits his trial for teaching evolution in the classroom, which is against the law. He is widely condemned by the townspeople, especially Rev. Jeremiah Brown, whose daughter Rachel is Cates’ girlfriend. Rachel is torn by her love of the two men. A cynical newsman, E. K. Hornbeck, comes to cover the trial, while two very prominent lawyers, prosecutor Matthew Harrison Brady and defense attorney Henry Drummond, descend on Hillsboro to argue the case. The trial takes on national significance, and the town becomes a carnival.

The townspeople of Hillsboro are portrayed as monolithic—an indistinguishable mass of brutish hicks. Unthinkingly, they damn Cates to hell because Brown tells them to. They are ignorant, mean-spirited and illiterate. (A couple of townspeople confess that they’ve never read The Origin of Species or the bible—because they can’t read. Yuk yuk!) Brady is a grandstanding buffoon, while his opponent, Drummond, is only interested in the cause of justice and the preservation of the “freedom to think.” Inherit the Wind is almost as bigoted as a minstrel show, with southern Christians as the butt of the joke. Its simplistic telling of a very complicated story does a disservice to both sides in the serious debate over what should be taught in schools about the origins of the earth and its inhabitants.

Waco Civic Theatre does an admirable job of capturing both the setting of the play and the big top atmosphere the town takes on during the trial. Designer/director George O’Connor makes the most of the theatre’s limited resources with an evocative set made primarily of white-painted wooden facades. The music is well-chosen, consisting mainly of pounding piano renditions of old Protestant hymns like “Standing on the Promises” and “The Lily of the Valley.”

The pace is brisk and sure-footed, and many of the actors are very good, particularly George Compton and James E. Johnson III as the twin towers of bombast, Brady and Drummond. However, there are some missteps that betray this production as community theater fare: inexperienced actors gesture stiffly like Vanna White presenting a vowel; picnickers eat with plastic spoons, an easily avoidable anachronism; and, strangely enough, an actor with a mostly-bald pate and a snow-white beard sports a forehead covered in thickly drawn-on black “wrinkles.”

Despite these deficiencies, in Inherit the Wind, Waco Civic Theatre has created an entertaining evening of theatre. Just don’t go expecting a nuanced look at an au courant debate. A play in which the only major female character utters the words “I haven’t ever really thought very much,” isn’t exactly progressive.