102.
ARGUENDO
Something
there is that loves a courtroom drama. Good ones can hold an audience’s
interest for years, even when the outcome is known. And millions tune in
regularly to televised court cases when they cover sensationalistic crimes, as
with those of O.J. Simpson and Casey Anthony, to cite two of the many. But, for the sake of argument (which is what "arguendo" means),
are general audiences as willing to watch a courtroom drama that has no
criminals, but is instead a debate about the intricacies of a particular
law? Will they be enthralled by a case about freedom of speech brought before the Supreme Court,
where there is no criminal involved, but just the
petitioner and the respondent presenting their positions and answering the
questions of the justices? Will they stay focused when many of the
questions and most of the answers are couched in dense, rapidly spoken
legalese, with frequent citation of precedents? Will it avoid being boring? Perhaps, if the case is
juicy enough and the issues of great concern; then again, it might not.
From left: Vin Knight, Maggie Hoffman, Mike Iveson, Susie Sokol, Ben Williams. Photo: Joan Marcus
In ARGUENDO, the new 80-minute, intermissionless play being
presented by the highly respected experimental theatre company called Elevator Repair
Service (ERS), all the dialogue is taken from actual transcripts of a January 1991 Supreme Court hearing, down to the verbal stumbles and
"um, um" hesitancies made by each speaker. Some additional verbatim material from
interviews made by people involved in the case is also included, as are some
final comments from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was not yet a Supreme
Court Justice, but who is brought on at the end to offer some mildly humorous
reflections on decorative aspects of the justices’ robes; this helps confirm the ho-hum satirical nature of what comes before.
:Mike Iveson, Ben Willians. Photo: Joan Marcus.
The case itself is Barnes v. Glen
Theatre. The petitioner, who doesn’t actually appear, is
Michael Barnes, prosecuting attorney of St. Joseph County, Indiana. The
respondent, who also is absent, is Glen Theatre Inc., et al., and the case is
heard by the Rehnquist Court (1990-1991), consisting of Justices Rehnquist, O’Connor,
Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, White, Marshall, Blackmun, and Stevens. The case,
which had been heard and appealed on several occasions before making it to the Supreme
Court, concerned the attempt of the Glen Theatre and Kitty Kat Lounge of South
Bend, Indiana, to stop enforcement of a statute that made it illegal for dancers
to perform nude, without benefit of pasties and a G-string, on the grounds that
the law was a violation of freedom of speech. The arguments that proceed examine the need to preserve freedom of artistic expression versus the need to protect the moral values of the citizenry and the protection of women from rape and other forms of abuse. There is plenty of judicial meat here to chomp on for those so inclined, but to truly relish it you must first cut away some of the lawyerly fat and gristle.
I suspect that, without some mitigating theatrical elements, listening
to the legal arguments being batted about by the advocates representing each side
would be a deadly dull experience, although surely catnip for lawyers and others similarly dedicated
to the intricacies of the justice system. ERS, under the direction of John Collins, has found a tolerably
entertaining approach to staging this material; in it, both
sides are equally represented while simultaneously underlining the all-too human fallibilities of the nine men and women
comprising this court of last resort. In one wordless scene, for example, we’re
told that we’re watching how the justices come to their decisions; what we
see is the robed dignitaries earnestly playing Rock,
Scissors, Paper. At the play's end, a recorded number from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe, part of which pokes fun at the
British legal system, brings things to a conclusion.
Today, when you can see beautiful
naked showgirls standing in Times Square alongside Elmo and Spiderman, their
only concession to modesty being the painted designs on their bodies, the
preoccupation of the law in the not too distant pre-Internet era with the need for nude dancers to wear pasties and g-strings in private
clubs for adults seems remarkably quaint. Yet, despite the hairsplitting
discussion in which some of the most commonsense queries are posited even by
conservatives like Justice Scalia, and in which the petitioner's remarks, for all their legalistic acumen, show how silly they are, at least in retrospect, it’s astonishing to learn that the court split 5-4 in favor of allowing the law to stand because it was deemed not to violate the first amendment.
Following a streetside TV interview
with a stripper from Michigan named Rebecca Jackson (Maggie Hoffman), who flew all the way to Washington to hear the case, the play moves inside the court’s chambers, where a handful of actors
in judicial robes and seated on rolling leather chairs play all the justices. They listen, first, to the
arguments of the petitioner, in favor of retaining the law, presented by Mr.
Ennis (Mike Iveson), and then to those of the respondent, presented by Mr. Uhl
(first played by Ben Williams, but mainly by Vin Knight). None of the actors playing
the justices play only one of them, and the same justices are played by multiple actors, so you don’t identify with any actor as a
specific person, and have to wait for them to be identified by name. Despite the faithfulness
with which the transcript is treated, the actors keep subverting the
seriousness of the occasion via comically heightened line readings, the way the justices sit or slump in their chairs, or the use of extensively choreographed
sequences in which they roll into new configurations, or even
slide on their chairs down the ramps at either side of the upstage platform on which
they’re first seen. (The functional set is by David Zinn.) Late in the play, whatever seriousness might still accrue to the occasion is blown sky high in a Walpurgisnicht of satiric dancing (surely a comment on all the play's disputation trying to define dance), including Mr. Knight's stripping down to the altogether (except for his shoes and socks), as the entire legal system seems to be symbolically crumbling before our eyes. Despite his striking classic nude poses, this was not a thing of beauty to behold.
Most notable of the show’s visual elements
are Ben Rubin’s projections, the majority of which consist of white on black (as
on microfilm) court records reflecting those cited in the arguments. They zoom
in and out, whirl about, move from side to side (often timed to a justice’s
swiping hand movements), and in other ways remain constantly active, never
staying in place long enough for you to read them in close detail but giving
you a clear enough idea of what they’re saying before they move on. The final image of the show has them drifting off into space as in the famous STAR WARS crawl.
This is the kind of production
that will split viewers into opposing sides: the bored and the not bored. I would have to side with the
bored, at least much of the time, not because I don’t believe ERS has pulled off an inventive
theatrical stunt (it has), but because I found the actual substance of the arguments,
while often fascinating and even sporadically--if unintentionally--funny, simply too
dramatically inert. A hearing before the Supreme Court is essentially a
combination of speeches and questions and answers, with a professional reliance
on technical language and special manners of address. It is not the more
everyday language you hear in a jury trial, for example, where all the legal
content must be made comprehensible to a jury of laymen. And the drama never rises to
the kind of crescendo we associate with witnesses being drilled by lawyers for
the defense and prosecution. This is a largely intellectual exercise that stands or falls on how well it conveys its points via artistic means. Score one for the BORING side.
Although there are passages in ARGUENDO that are crystal
clear and intriguing, a great deal requires close attention; however, the rapid
pace and directorial monkeyshines eventually create a barrier that draws
attention away from the ideas. This also happens with the dizzying,
nonstop barrage of projected words being manipulated on the screen; they become more of a distraction than an enhancement.
Based on what I've said here, I declare, for the sake of argument, i.e., arguendo, I was bored. Now it's your turn.
Based on what I've said here, I declare, for the sake of argument, i.e., arguendo, I was bored. Now it's your turn.