The problem with historical plays is, in a word, suspense. If we know what's going to happen, and who it's going to happen to, what's to keep us from getting bored with the onstage action and impatient for the inevitable outcome? The best playwrights — Shakespeare is the obvious example — solve the problem in two ways: by drawing characters in fascinating, emotionally provocative detail and by shifting our attention from the "what" to the "how" of the action.
So Henry V is not just the hero of Agincourt; he's also the rebellious son and friend to fat Falstaff who knows that one day he'll surprise his skeptical father and become a credit to the throne. And the question on our minds as we watch his dramas unfold is not, will he defeat the French, but rather, how will he ever prevail over himself to do so? The same technique makes Julius Caesar and Richard II wonderful plays in spite of whatever we may already know of the true stories. It even works in a movie like Titanic: humanize the historical, and we'll find even the most familiar incidents intriguing.
Which brings me to Sacco & Vanzetti: A Vaudeville by Louis Lippa. What this otherwise powerful play never really does is convince us of the flesh-and-blood existence of its two protagonists outside of the story that made them famous. So yes, the acting in this Gorilla Theatre production is top-notch, and the idea of telling the famous story as if on a vaudeville stage is original and, at times, delightful. But author Lippa is so intent on telling us about the crimes that anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti were charged with, and about the trials and sentences that followed, we never get a sense of who they were as recognizable human beings — husbands and fathers, workers and lovers.
Further, Lippa is so convinced of the two men's innocence that he removes this potentially dramatic ambiguity completely from his retelling. Finally, Lippa makes the mistake of treating all of Sacco and Vanzetti's opponents as utterly villainous caricatures rather than credible examples of erring humanity. So another potentially dramatic dimension is lost from the play, and the story takes on a nearly cartoonish two-dimensionality.
Now, having made all these objections, I still have to report that there's a lot to like in Sacco & Vanzetti. Thanks to the inspired clowning of Billy Martinez (Sacco) and Sean Sanczel (Vanzetti), as well as the jazzy, unpredictable direction of David A. McElroy, these two acts of theater are often a lot of fun. The pleasure begins early, when handcuffs fall off the two anarchists and we find them in red-and-white striped vests, with straw hats and canes. They sing, talk to pianist/accordionist Andrei Cheine, tell jokes and then relate a bit of autobiography.
A sign at stage left tells us the subject of any given scene ("The Bridgewater Hold-Up," "The Sentencing to Death of Sacco and Vanzetti") and a song like "Over There" helps us understand the approximate date. Sometimes the actors take on the roles of district attorney Frederick Katzmann or Judge Webster Thayer (but both are portrayed as inhuman bigots). When Sacco plays a woman witness, you can be sure he'll make her seem absurdly incapable of telling the truth. The clowning is often presented with ironic effect — as when the two increasingly hopeless men sing "In the Good Old Summertime" — and there's real pathos when Sacco cries out for his wife.
The last bit of comic shtick — the two men fighting like harlequins to be first in the electric chair — even has a Beckettian flavor, redolent of Vladimir and Estragon's enthusiasm at the thought of suicide. Actors Martinez and Sanczel have wonderful comic timing, and as they banter on Tim O'Halloran's simple but evocative set — a mostly bare stage, backed by a high, chain-link fence on which straw hats and canes are hung — they seem to belong to a lineage that includes the Marx Brothers, Abbott and Costello, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. But gee, if only S and V would step out of history for a moment, and if only author Lippa saw some gray areas in their famous case. As it is, we're only about 20 minutes into the production when it becomes clear that the protagonists will remain tied to their pageant, and that all moral questions have been decided for us in advance. From that point on, all of Sanczel and Martinez's fine clowning begins to lose a certain edge, a certain capacity to stimulate our thinking.
Of course, there's still pleasure in watching two capable vaudevillians. But even their best routines can't keep us from feeling like we know just what's coming: a trial, a conviction, the executions. The good guys versus the bad guys. Honest innocence against corrupt experience.
Surely there's more real drama in the case, and more human interest — on both sides of the jail bars.
Sacco and Vanzetti, we hardly knew ya.
Hip-Hop Shakespeare. For the first time in its history, American Stage has chosen an already existing musical adaptation for its annual Shakespeare in the Park presentation.
The Bomb-itty of Errors is a hip-hop adaptation of The Comedy of Errors, Shakespeare's story of two sets of identical twins, separated as infants, who rediscover each other via a series of happy accidents and much pandemonium. The play began as the work of four graduate students at New York University, and then went on to play to rave reviews Off-Broadway and at Chicago's Royal George Theatre. It received the grand prize for theater at the 2001 HBO U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. MTV is currently negotiating for the movie rights. "Really what attracted me to it was just the cleverness of the way that it's done," says American Stage managing director Lee Manwaring Lowry, who together with interim artistic director Neil DeGroot chose the play for this year's offering. "It is Shakespeare, but it is hip-hop, I mean, it's energetic, it's fresh. … I'm so thrilled we're getting a chance to do it." The Bomb-itty uses a DJ instead of a Greek chorus and modernizes Shakespeare's text with rhythmic verse, pulsing beats and lots of pop culture references. The original version employed only four actors and the DJ, but Manwaring Lowry say that three or four thespians will be added for the April 12-May 12 production at Demens Landing in St. Petersburg.
In other American Stage news, Lowry says that DeGroot, who was originally hired through Jan. 31, will remain as interim artistic director until May 31.
Contact Mark E. Leib at mark.leib@weeklyplanet.com or call 813-248-8888, ext. 305.
This article appears in Jan 31 – Feb 6, 2002.