Review: INHERIT THE WIND at Pasadena Playhouse

Everyone’s wearing contemporary clothes and, pre-curtain, most of them are mingling on The Pasadena Playhouse stage, which has been reconfigured to include a bank of on-stage seating as well as a jury box. That stage is bare, save for a couple of card tables and nondescript chairs. We’ve got the perfunctory exposed peeling back wall, always a good indication that we are to focus not on external scenic frills but on the action we are about to witness. Because when you attempt a “boldly reimagined” version of any play, less often seems to be more. At some point, someone hangs a banner urging people to “Read Your Bible” under which a lot of the action plays out.  

So it consistently goes for director Michael Michetti’s rendering of Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s INHERIT THE WIND, which opens with a group of these company members singing a tuneful chorus of “Give Me That Old Time Religion.” Then young Melinda Loomis (played by Gabriella Pizzigoni) comes upon her friend Howard Blair (Matt Gomez Hidaka) baiting a fishing hook and admonishing her for finding his worm slimy since “we were all worms once.” Howard learned this bit of scientific wisdom (or heresy depending on you ask) from his teacher, Betram Cates, who is sitting in jail for teaching theories espoused by Charles Darwin. The year is 1920; the place: Hillsboro in an unnamed state somewhere in the south, but as we study at the multi-racial cast who are supposed to resemble and dress like us, and consider the America we currently inhabit, we are to reflect upon how much – and how little - has actually changed. Because bigotry and narrow-mindedness don’t necessarily disappear when a jury renders a verdict and a judge’s gavel falls.

Earning the blessing of the Lawrence and Lee estates, this production is successful because (optics aside), not much has been tinkered with. Then as now, INHERIT THE WIND remains a cracking fun piece of theater that plays as any well-written courtroom drama should, particularly one based on historical events that include bigger-than-life individuals like William Jennings Bryan, Clarence Darrow and H.L. Mencken. Trial of the century? That was the Scopes “Monkey” Trial.

Michetti has put thought and heart into his production and peopled it with a strong cast whose characters opt for playing the strength of their convictions over histrionics. A hurricane force this WIND is not, but there’s plenty to enjoy.

So after a scene that finds Rachel Brown (Rachel Hilson) in the jail trying to convince her fellow schoolteacher – and boyfriend - Bert Cates (Abubakr Ali) to apologize and say he made a mistake with all this monkey business. As our introduction into the world of a small town playing a big stage, Hilson and Ali are both solid, making these characters a lot more interesting than Bert and Rachel are often portrayed. They’re establishing the tone for the big guns who are rumbling down the tracks.

Soon we meet Matthew Harrison Brady (John Douglas Thompson), the Bible-loving attorney (and failed presidential candidate) who has come to Hillsboro specifically to bring Cates to justice and save a few souls in the process. And then E.K. Hornbeck (Chris Perfetti), the terminally snarky columnist from the Baltimore Sun who is dressed like he’s about to shoot up a school and sneers through his fascination at the sheer ridiculousness of what he is witnessing. Also Reverend Jeremiah Brown (David Aaron Baker), a preacher so self-righteous that he will denounce his own daughter – that would be Rachel – as a sinner in front of the townspeople after she defends Cates. Brady, of all people,  kindly comes to her defense, embracing messages of love.

Ultimately, a big a shadow appears, a girl flees, screaming “It’s the devil!” and onto the stage steps Alfred Molina. Because of course he does. Who else could it possibly be?

Now, there will be those who know Molina as cinema’s Diego Rivera, Doctor Octopus and about 100 other equally memorable and unmemorable roles, since this particular actor can disappear into an ordinary schmo as easily as he can make a live wire explode off the screen. Or the stage. L.A. audiences have been lucky enough to see  his work live over the years at the Mark Taper Forum (RED, THE CHERRY ORCHARD), The Geffen Playhouse (LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT), and with New American Stage (formerly Circus Theatricals where he played Lophakin in THE CHERRY ORCHARD. Next stop, more Chekhov: a Broadway revival of UNCLE VANYA with a starry ensemble including Steve Carell.

Lopakhin was an especially good role because Molina was playing not only an underdog, but a guy that everyone overlooks. Here, burly and bearded, he’s portraying Cates’s defense attorney Henry Drummond, the earnest, uber-committed but far less fiery yin to blowhard Brady’s Yang. As famous as the character is supposed to be, Drummond is – once again – facing considerable odds.  Certainly, the courtroom scenes are the ones with the most sizzle, as we witness bits of jury selection, key prosecution witnesses and, ultimately, Drummond’s hail marry defense tactics after the judge invalidates all of his scientist witnesses.

Eschewing showiness or fireworks, Molina and Thompson nail these showdown scenes as shrewdly as they handle the quieter interludes together; Drummond and Brady were friends who grew apart as one grows older and wiser and more questioning while the other – a political animal – remains defiantly set in his thinking. Among the other ensemble members, Hilson is especially affecting as the preacher’s daughter torn between the two ideologies.

INHERIT THE WIND concludes with a double whamy verdict, followed by a tragedy and then ambiguity.; Cates himself has to ask whether he has won or lost the case. The production can’t really steer around Lawrence and Lee’s didacticism and slightly heavy-handed messaging, but it’s a satisfying conclusion nonetheless. And watching Molina holding the Bible and The Origin of the Species, weighing them together as the lights fade, is worth plenty.

INHERIT THE WIND plays through December 3 at The Pasadena Playhouse. 

Photo of John Douglas Thompson and Alfred Molina by Jeff Lorch.