Spin

Spin
A play by Robert J. Sherwood
Directed by David J. Miller
April 18- May 10, 2008
Thursdays, Fridays 8:00 PM
Saturdays 4:00 and 8:00 PM
Sundays 3:00 PM

At the Plaza Black Box Theatre at Boston Center for the Arts
Boston Center for the Arts
539 Tremont St in Boston’s South End
Tickets: $35
Seniors & Students $30

The first act of Spin feels like shooting Niagara Falls in a barrel. Profane dialogue whooshes by at a dizzying rate, most of it uttered by a gonzo campaign manager who would sell his mother if it would help his candidate win the presidency.

The play opens with Samuel Champlain’s campaign manager gloating over a fifteen-point lead in the polls before the final debate that will occur in two hours. Two minutes later, the adversary’s campaign manager breezes into his office and lights a fuse to a scandal she’s ready to use to derail Champlain’s aspirations.

Boy, do we need a zany play like this. We are numbed by 24/7 politics. He says, she says, she spins, he spins. How much distortion is tacked on to a kernel of truth? Is anything off limits? Does it have anything to do with the candidate’s ability to do a good job?

We get to ponder this as the coyote campaign manager hints that Samuel Champlain’s wife is compromised by something, described as “having to do with three letters, S E X”, that will blow her husband’s candidacy out of the water. The threat: Champlain must accept the VP slot or his wife’s secret is aired and his candidacy is toast. The decision must be made before the debate that occurs two hours later, conveniently the length of the play we’re watching.

While this is teased out, we get to see the kind of wild, numbers driven, information spinning, anything goes politicking that we suspect goes on behind closed doors. Steven Barkhimer plays campaign manager Jerry as a political operative of gleeful crackhead proportions. He speeds along on vats of coffee and has a mind that can reconfigure any fact into a coin of the realm for his boss - a coin that on one side buffs him up and on the other denigrates his opponent. He occasionally overacts but he’s got lines that will make you hoot. (“No promises! Give the impression of promises!” Jerry tells the candidate as he’s practicing for his debate.)

Packaged in this cocktail of a play are a Saturday Night Live spoof and a drama with topical relevance. It’s shaken and stirring. Jerry’s pollster (Melissa Baroni) is a numbers whiz for hire. She can mold a statistic into a roadside bomb or a comforter. The opposing campaign manager (Elisa McDonald) has graduated from the Machiavelli School of Political Warfare. She gives Jerry a sniff of the scandal she’s uncovered and baits him into confronting the candidate’s wife to determine if the ambiguous sex story is true - and how much spin he’ll have to contrive to offset the damage.

The candidate’s wife Alexandra (Christine Power) is as good at spinning her truth as the two campaign managers in the room. These four are playing for all the marbles. Loser is not a word found in any of their lexicons.

Peter Brown inexplicably underplays his role as Henry, the candidate on the cusp of victory. He’s a forty-watt bulb set amongst klieg lights. It would be a serious distraction if the others weren't so busy chomping the daylights out of their roles.

One doesn’t have to be a cynic to see where the production is driving us. In contemporary politics, the notion of truth, decency, character, and moral courage comes home in a flag draped box. We all want to achieve our destinies, our dreams. How much will we sacrifice to realize them?

There are probably some pretty heavy-duty rapscallions who serve us in congress or our communities. Did we elect them because they proved they can do a good job of running the show, or that (short of pedophilia) they are paragons of virtue in their private lives?

It’s two hours of scary fun watching the five characters try to get a grip on shreds of their humanity as the tornado of a political campaign rages around them. It’s even better that the fuse set at the outset of the play is still burning at the end.

Photo courtesy http://www.zeitgeiststage.com/

Comments

[Jan]

Very good. So appropriate for this political season. Thanks, Paul.