Review: MY FAVORITE SOCIOPATH at Contemporary American Theater Festival

Though youngsters may scarcely believe such a thing, there was once an era when news came to many people via large pieces of cheap paper, printed on both sides and folded together with other such pieces of paper, containing actual reporting from people who actually respected journalistic standards. And other people who (amazingly) wanted to join those folks and do the same thing were often trained in journalism schools. My Favorite Sociopath, a play by Aurin Squire receiving a rolling premiere at the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, WV, is set in that strange, long ago era. I’m of course referring to the 1990s.

Sociopath briefly follows three new students at a Washington area J-school in that forgotten time, tipping us off, in the opening address of the three characters to us, that we are about to meet a sociopath. But which of them is it? Or is it all of them? Or is it the evolving media ecosystem into which they’re launching themselves? We shall see.

The students are Miles (Nick Saxton), Gina (Brooke Turner), and Evan (Kennedy Kanagawa). Miles is described as a “competitive and cynical student from Miami with a very fluid moral compass” – and, as it emerges, sexual fluency. Gina is a “sincere student from Natchez, Mississippi [with] sharp Southern wit,” and a “moderate Christian.” She tries to pass herself off as a woman of the people, though in fact she comes from a prominent and wealthy family. And Evan is “a flattering fabulist from California who is very competitive,” and, it might be added, a gay man whose fabulations include claims of having a girlfriend whom no one believes in for an instant, and who insists (again, without credibility) that he’s connected to the Spanish royal family.

Their opening joint address to the audience contains a very helpful breakdown of some of the terminology for the various components of a newspaper article (e.g. “hook” and “lede”). There is no such clarity provided for “sociopath,” albeit some of the characters are creating a checklist for the characteristics of sociopaths (e.g. remorselessness, dishonesty, lack of empathy) that clearly draws on the criteria for antisocial personality disorder in the standard mental disorder handbook, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. But the hunt for the sociopath(s?) has been largely abandoned by the end, and no one sociopath has ever been denominated. It’s okay; we’ve seen enough.

We have in fact seen good reason to suspect all three of harboring that disorder. And it’s great fun to watch them , a sort of Dirty, Rotten Scoundrels-style competition in which each is continually circumventing and one-upping the others. In meeting the assignments, the challenges and ordeals that constitute the J-school curriculum, they form alliances and attachments and then turn around and stab each other in the back, all the while claiming the highest level of concern for each other.

Toward the end, however, what seems to be playwright Squire’s paramount concern, the then-emerging, now-dominant journalistic culture, what we sometimes call tabloid culture, heaves into view. This, more than sociopathy, appears to be what’s really on Squire’s mind. Evan, for instance, spearheads the publication of a story about a school principal that, built on flimsy, dishonest drawing of inferences, makes the principal appear to be a neo-Nazi, driving him to a suicide attempt. Miles blows the whistle on Evan to the editorial board of the school’s newspaper, and Evan is nearly tossed out, saved only by a hypocritical show of contrition. This contretemps triggers a series of exchanges about where journalism is headed.

The resulting exchanges include a lengthy parable about the origins of the story that Joe’s Stone Crab in Miami makes the world’s best Key lime pie (it supposedly arose from a lazy act of negligence by a New York Times reporter that then morphed into Joe’s initiating a hitherto non-existent Key lime pie business, in other words making reporting that had been wrong retroactively accurate). It includes a citation to Matt Drudge breaking the conventions of journalism to put out reporting on Monica Lewinsky’s stained blue dress (recent information at the time of the action of the play). And indirectly referring to the example of Bill Clinton amid the Lewinsky hoopla, Miles asks Gina: “What good is shame in a shameless world?” Miles fully recognizes that journalism is being turned over to “nightmare chefs cooking up a feast of fear.” And yet he will soon ally himself in writing a mostly fictitious story about a club of Black teenaged mothers devoted to milking the welfare system. And by the end, Miles is headed off to a real newspaper experimenting with a so-called interactive newsroom, where (apparently) no actual reporting by accredited news professionals will be required. What good is accreditation in a world of self-appointed journalists like Drudge?

As already noted, the ecosystem that Miles, Gina, and Evan are bringing into existence seems to be the biggest sociopath of all.

Without this serious discussion at the end, the play would be a mere entertainment. With it, My Favorite Sociopath is something more. The characters are not merely competing, ruthlessly but wittily too, for whatever prizes journalism may have to offer, but are visibly debasing their souls to win those prizes, and with their souls, part of what made the American soul. It may be entertaining to watch, but it’s uncomfortable entertainment, more jeremiad than amusement.

My Favorite Sociopath, by Aurin Squire, directed by Céline Rosenthal, presented by Contemporary American Theater Festival through August 2, at Marinoff Theater, 62 W. Campus Drive, Shepherdstown, WV. Tickets $45-$75 at catf.org and at 681-240-CATF (2283). Adult language and situations.

Production photo by Seth Freeman.

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