“Power
to the People”
As I’ve previously noted, Days of
Rage, Steven Levenson’s (Dear Evan
Hansen) play about a cell of antiwar radicals in 1969, is the third leg in the
accidental trilogy of thematically related plays about late 60s political
activism I viewed this week. The first, Kennedy: Bobby’s
Last Crusade, is a documentary-style biodrama about Robert F. Kennedy’s
1968 presidential campaign; the second, Gloria:
A Life, about feminist icon Gloria Steinem, is also a biographical
docudrama; while Days of Rage, briskly staged
by Trip Cullman, is a conventional play about fictional characters within the
very real circumstances of contemporary activity. 
Set in October 1969, the year of Woodstock and the My Lai
massacre, it introduces three college-age militants, a man, Spence (Mike Faist).
and two women, Jenny (Lauren Patten) and Quinn (Odessa Young), living together
in a ramshackle house in an upstate New York college town. Gritty, grungy, and graffiti-covered,
with fading old wallpaper, Louisa Thompson’s realistically detailed dollhouse set—beautifully
lit by Tyler Micoleau—shows two upstairs bedrooms, and a downstairs living room, decorated with a Vietcong flag. Exterior scenes are played in
front of the big set, which rolls forward for more intimate views.
The inhabitants are struggling to pay their expenses while also trying to raise money for what they believe will be a massive protest opposing war, racism, and imperialism, “In solidarity with the Chicago 8” (a.k.a. the Chicago 7). Midway through, their cell is increased in the person of the wealthy, gun-toting Peggy (Tavi Gevinson), who brings to mind Patty Hearst. Another perspective is provided by Hal (J. Alphonse J. Nicholson), the well-dressed (by Paloma Young)—apart from his cuffs being a bit too short—black man who works at Sears and whose brother is serving in Vietnam.
Days of Rage takes
its name from the Chicago
protests that followed soon after the play proper concludes (there’s an arguably unnecessary
epilogue). Levenson mixes history with fiction, and not everything you
might expect is reported. SDS,
PLP,
and the Black
Panthers are mentioned, for example, but not the Weathermen. The
playwright’s intention is mainly to dramatize the behavior, thoughts, and interactions
of young people caught up in the ferocity of their political goals. 
Their leftwing ideology has driven them to believe only a
revolution to overthrow the government can solve the nation’s problems. This was
when so many Americans, usually from the lower part of the socio-economic
scale, were being shipped off to fight what vast swaths of their contemporaries
believed an unjust war. 
So, to the occasional rock music constituting Darron L West’s
period-setting sound score, we have these pot-smoking kids citing Lenin and
Engels as they try to live “collectively” by abandoning patriarchal structures,
dismissing monogamous sexual relationships, and acting only when everyone
consents, as per discussions and votes. Anyone who breaks the party line must
be subjected to corrective instruction. 
A considerable amount of comedy, of course, emerges from the difficulty these
middle-class young people face in giving up their individualism (and jealousies) in the
interests of the commune. But comedy can quickly turn serious, given the potential danger of work in which every newcomer, no matter how
seemingly benign, represents a threat. Paranoia is practically a state of being.
I was a young professor at the time but, aside from when my
younger brother was arrested at an SDS sit-in, was too preoccupied with my family
and career to indulge in activism. Watching the kids in Days of Rage behave as naively as they do, regardless of the
sincerity of their beliefs, made me feel that Levenson, too young to have been
around in 1969, had conjured up an ersatz, even tongue-in-cheek, vision of clueless,
counter-cultural revolutionaries.
My plus-one, though, someone I’ve known since our college
days, had a considerably different take. He’s a playwright-director (and former
critic) with left-wing positions he continues to express, and was himself an
activist who lived communally, much like the characters in the play. His many contributions
included raising money for the Panthers and participation in mass
demonstrations. (He was connected to groups like the Living Theatre.)
After the play, when I hinted at my hesitations regarding
the veracity of what we’d seen, he couldn’t refrain from an emotional
outpouring of how precisely accurate (regardless of this or that fact)
everything in it is.
This morning, on the phone, he was even more animated,
talking about how each character was distinct and like someone he’d known; how
the dialogue perfectly mirrored the things people said; how the issues
discussed were like what he and his friends talked about; how the characters’ sexual
and other personal behavior reminded him of what he’d experienced, and so on.
In the face of this onslaught from such a knowledgeable witness I was forced to
submit.
I enjoyed Days of Rage and thought it generally well performed but still had several reservations. Those, however, have now been consigned to the
dustbin of my fading memory and I sign off by recommending the play via the
fervent acclimation of my friend, still radical after all these years.
OTHER VIEWPOINTS:
Second Stage/Tony Kiser Theatre
305 W. 43rd St., NYC
Through November 25
