Exhibit A: Cast | Exhibit B: Crew | Exhibit C: Photos | Exhibit D: Tickets | Exhibit E: Synopsis | Exhibit F: Theatre Home
Hitch's review in the San Diego Theatre Scene, 30 June, 2007
Normally, The Coronado Playhouse, known as The Theatre by the Bay, is a warm friendly place to have dinner and see a nice production. Not this time. There were pickets outside declaring a faith in the most literal interpretation of the Bible. I crossed the picket line to get my ticket.
The play is a liberal interpretation of the 1925 Scopes (Monkey) trial. In the play Matthew Harrison Brady (Richard Herring), Henry Drummond (Martin M. White), Bertram Cates (Carlos Guzman), and E. K. Hornbeck (Pete Shaner) correspond to the historical figures of William Jennings Bryan, Clarence Darrow, John Scopes, and H.L. Mencken, respectively. Imagine Bryan, Darrow, and Mencken in the same room. It’s mind boggling.
Shaner’s performance of Hornbeck is a delightfully cynical Mencken commenting on the town of Hillsboro, Tennessee (actually Dayton, Tennessee) as well as the residents and the two attorneys. The real trial ended up pitting Bryan, a three–time presidential candidate and stanch Presbyterianism, and Darrow, an atheist. The actual trial was, in fact, a test case on a recently enacted state law.
Herring and White (wheelchair–bound) proved up to the job of portraying two of the nation’s top orators. Herring was dynamic, displaying the dogmatic style of Bryan (er, Brady). White actually enhanced his interpretation of Darrow (ah, Drummond) by making his wheelchair an essential part of his character.
Guzman’s Cates is a pawn in this game of one-upmanship. His portrayal of a man caught in the headlights of an oncoming train works well. Although short on scripted lines, he certainly was long on his reactions. Opposite him, playing his heartthrob, Rachel Brown, the minister’s daughter, is Julie Eastland. She portrays the conflicted Brown, torn between the teachings of her father and the church and her love for Cates, with style and grace. Both made the most of their small parts.
Community theatre, especially at Coronado, often becomes a family affair. In this production the Terrys (dad Brian, son Connor, and daughter Diane) have their moments on the stage. Backstage is also a family affair for the Andersons (Director and Assistant Director) and the Woodburys. Teens Ashley Marie and John Gies are also in the production.
Rosemary King’s set design has much of the village of Hillsboro on a riser behind the courtroom set, which works fine for the many mini-scenes in the village. Dale Goodman’s lighting design is straight-forward, complimenting the set.
Inherit The Wind was written as a warning of McCarthyism as well as a fictionalization of the Scopes’ trial. Sadly, it is again topical in one area of our country. It had a successful run on Broadway in 1955 and was an Oscar winning film in 1960. It is currently in rerun on Broadway. Coronado Playhouse’s production is solid with excellent leads. For a touch of history, both theatrical and actual, the show is highly recommended.
Pomerado Press Review
Classic still relevant in Coronado
By Eileen Sondak July 11, 2007
In case you don’t remember the play or movie, “Inherit the Wind” is based on the 1925 so-called “Monkey Trial” of schoolteacher John Scopes. Scopes was arrested for teaching evolution in a small Tennessee town in the heart of the Bible Belt.
Authors Robert E. Lee and Jerome Lawrence wrote the play in the 1950s, using actual transcripts in their research, although they made no attempt to recreate the actual history of the event.
Obviously, they took dramatic license to enhance the theatrical elements. The result of their joint effort is a brilliant piece that has stood the test of time.
Now the show is back in production at the Coronado Playhouse (where it was performed to great acclaim many years ago). And it seems ironic that the same conflict between teaching Darwin’s theories and the religious fundamentalists’ literal interpretation of Intelligent Design still exists around the country — years after the well-publicized trial.
The playwrights changed the names of the protagonists for the play. Clarence Darrow was the savvy attorney for the defense in the real-life trial. Here, the attorney’s name is Henry Drummond, played in Coronado by Martin White. White is outstanding in the role, capturing all the nuances of the character with his subtle facial expressions and body language.
His nemesis — the great William Jennings Bryan (known in the play as Matthew Harrison Brady) — is played by Richard Wesley Herring, another strong asset to the production. Herring brings the pompous fundamentalist to life with arrogance and bluster, but without ever turning him into a caricature of the famous man.
The banter between the two legendary figures is positively riveting, especially when the defense attorney makes a monkey out of the prosecutor on the witness stand — while the giggling spectators try to muffle their laughter.
Another important character in this courtroom drama is the cynical newspaper man. Hornbeck (played by Pete Shaner) gets some of the best lines in the show, and he tosses them off with style.
Leo Walker plays the bombastic Southern preacher, Reverend Brown. His shaved head and muscular build seem a little at odds with the character, but when Walker delivers his fire-and-brimstone sermon to the congregation at the prayer meeting, he makes a believer out of everyone in the house.
Carlos Guzman as the Scopes character and Julie Eastland as the preacher’s timid daughter both turn in good performances, and the sign-holding cast members who greet theater-goers as they enter are delightful. They wave their banners (emblazoned with slogans like, “I’m Not an Ape,” and “Save our Schools from Sin”) and set just the right mood for the play.
The Coronado Playhouse is a community theater, and it’s definitely a low-budget operation. However, it has a nice home of its own near the bay, with cabaret seating (small tables arranged throughout the auditorium), and the large stage offers plenty of performing space and good sightlines.
This production has a sparse but effective set (thanks to the handiwork of designer and scenic artist Rosemary King). Mary Anderson’s costumes are on the mark, except for a few minor details.
“Inherit the Wind” is a great play that still has a lot of relevance in the 21st century, and the Coronado Playhouse’s cast and crew (under Keith Anderson’s direction) work hard at getting it right. You can see the show through July 29, and most of the time you can park conveniently nearby on Strand Way.
Gay Lesbian Time Review
by Jean Lowerson
published 19 July 07
The Scopes “Monkey Trial” of 1925 pitted religion against science in the classroom. Teacher John Scopes, using the textbook provided and teaching the chapter on evolution, was found guilty of violating a Tennessee law making it illegal “to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”
Playwrights Robert E. Lee and Jerome Lawrence, writing 30 years later, saw parallels between the Scopes trial and political developments in the United States in the ’50s. In those Cold War years, the Russians were branded devils and Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s attempt to “root out godless Communists” in the U.S. would ruin careers and subvert the arts scene for decades to come.
Inherit the Wind, a fictionalized re-creation of that trial, plays through July 29 at Coronado Playhouse, directed by Keith A. Anderson.
Picketers outside the Coronado Playhouse with signs proclaiming “Read your Bible” and “I am Not a Monkey” bring the action to the audience even before the curtain goes up on Hillsboro, “a small town in the American Bible Belt,” where the trial of the century is about to begin.
Teacher Bertram Cates (Carlos Guzman) is no wild-eyed revolutionary; he’s just a guy trying to do his job. Girlfriend Rachel Brown (Julie Eastland), daughter of local fire-and-brimstone-preaching Rev. Jeremiah Brown (Leo Walker), is caught between these two immovable forces. She asks Cates to just apologize in order to end the fuss. But Cates can’t admit to having done anything wrong.
The cards are stacked against Cates from the beginning: Public opinion is against him, and he can’t deny that he taught the forbidden material. Worse, the prosecutor (based on William Jennings Bryan) is the silver-tongued Matthew Harrison Brady (Richard Herring). Cates expects a public defender, and is shocked when famous defense attorney Henry Drummond (Martin M. White) appears, courtesy of the Baltimore Herald. Drummond is based on Clarence Darrow.
Drummond beats his opponent on logic, but this trial isn’t about logic. Man has the capacity to think for himself, but like the old saw that says you can’t make a horse drink, you can’t make a man think, either.
Anderson has assembled a fine cast of principals. Herring’s Brady is smooth and self-assured; White’s Drummond, thwarted at every turn by the judge, is terrific as he methodically demolishes Brady’s insistence on a literalism by putting him on the stand as an “expert on the Bible.”
Guzman and Eastland are believable as the teachers caught in the maelstrom. Leo Walker is as convincingly closed-minded as Hillsboro’s religious leader as Pete Shaner is annoying as the H. L. Mencken-inspired Baltimore Herald journalist E. K. Hornbeck.
The Coronado Eagle and Journal
by Jared Cohen
published 18 July, 2007
The newest production at the Coronado playhouse takes its name from a renowned Bible quotation. "He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind, and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart."
Unfortunately for the simple citizens of Hillsboro, Tenn., windy times are coming. A small town that is written as a fictionalization of Dayton, Tenn., Hillsboro is on the "buckle of the Bible belt," as one character opines.
Actors Martin M. White and Richard Herring, playing Henry Drummond and Matthew Brady, respectively, are on opposing sides of the evolution/creation debate. "Inherit the Wind" is historical fic-tion, using the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial as inspiration for the story, in which Dayton school teacher John Scopes was tried for teaching evolution. Scopes was the inspiration for Bertram Gates, the schoolteacher played by actor Carlos Guzman.
Gates is in jail at the beginning of the film, and in typical small-town fashion, Baillif Meeker calls Gates by his first name and tells him he doesn't have to stay in the jail cell all day. Gates isn't hated personally by the town; he has a lovely fiancee, Rachel Brown (Julie Eastland) and friends, but when he introduces evolutionary concepts into the classroom he loses friends quickly. He never backs down, but he does feel powerless, even as Rachel begs him to retract his statements and apologize to Hillsboro. "Why can't you just be on the right side?" She asks. "You mean the side your father is on," Gates replies. Reverend Jeremiah Brown (Leo Walker) is Rachel's father, and he makes very clear which side he is on with a red-faced, firey, southern sermon that had the audience leaning back in their seats. "Amen!" The Hillsboro residents answer.
It looks grim for Gates when Christian hero Brady comes to town, the fictionalization of "three- time presidential candidate" William Jennings Bryan. Brady is welcomed right off his train by a fervent crowd of faithful supporters, toting signs that say "read the Bible" and "keep our school pure." The activity at the train stop is enthralling, with about 15 actors on stage at once, holding signs, taking pictures and chatting.
To add to the circus, all of the courtroom commotion in real-life Dayton attracted reporter H. L. Mencken, who was fictionalized in the play as E. K. Hornbeck. "Merry Christmas and a happy Fourth of July," spouts Hornbeck, when pressed to give a bit of his own opinion on the trial. Hornbeck walks through the production like a wandering chorus, dragging around his considerable ego and composing headlines, all the while avoiding any identifiable position on anything. "I am not a reporter," he protests when asked. ''I am a critic." Pete Shaner was a perfect caricature of the reviled newspaper man, but Hornbeck eventually shows his stripe. Either out of the goodness of his heart, or to free up a story for tomorrow, Hornbeck puts up the bail money for the embattled Gates out of his own pocket.
Herring and White are very convincing as old friends turned bitter rivals, and their performance is 10 feet tall during the final battle between Drurnmond and Brady.