May 18–25, 2000

theater

Boot Camp

	Tattoo you: David Strathairn and Jason Field

by David Anthony Fox

Cherry Docs

Wilma Theater, Broad and Spruce Sts., Philadelphia, through June 4, 215-546-7824

In David Gow’s Cherry Docs, a new Canadian play having its U.S. premiere at the Wilma, a skinhead accused of a hate crime finds himself represented by a Jewish lawyer. It’s the kind of setup overly familiar from television — "ripped from today’s headlines" is how NBC’s Law & Order describes such fare, followed by a string of adjectives that usually include "searing" and "thought-provoking."

There’s not much more to the plot than the single-phrase description, and the play has only the two characters. The skinhead is Mike Downey, a tattooed weirdo with a shoe fetish ("Cherry Docs" are his boots-of-choice). Danny Dunkelman is the attorney, a married man with a comfortable life — decent practice, happy marriage — who seems to have taken the case out of curiosity. The crime involves the brutal kicking of an Indian man, who died after lingering for some time. Since Mike freely admits that he did it, there’s no suspense.

Still, a good playwright can make something of a too-pat premise. But Docs falls into several traps. It utilizes a bifurcated structure, alternating interior monologues by the two characters with scenes between them. This is now a common style in agitprop theater, but here it’s doubly unwelcome. First, it slows the action, digressing at precisely the moments we need momentum. The device is also lazy playwriting, and rather like having someone read stage directions — we’re told about reactions, rather than experiencing them. The aftermath of the confrontations would be more effective if threaded into the dramatic action, though of course that’s harder to do. Then there’s another problem: heavy-handed and unnecessary biblical allegories.

We might still have something effective if at least the Danny/Michael encounters had some substance, but these too seem derived from TV clichés. So we wait for the obligatory moments to arrive — and one by one, they do. Danny’s include an eventual outburst of rage (here it seems to come almost randomly), a tense racial situation that tests his own liberalism, and the breakup of his marriage. For Mike, it’s the inevitable moment when he realizes the gravity of his crime, which as handled here is unsuitably sentimental (he breaks down while reading a saintly and credulity-straining deathbed statement by his victim) and hyperbolic.

As with Tin Pan Alley Rag earlier this season, Jiri Zizka’s production offers visual polish and fluidity, but it fails to convince us that the play has any stature. He has also allowed his actors to find one emotional level and remain there. For David Strathairn (Danny), at least it’s a very high level. He’s an excellent actor with an arresting and committed presence, and Zizka is lucky to have him: Strathairn makes the writing seem better than it is (though he would of course be even stronger in a more nuanced role). Jason Field is simply stymied (to be fair, there’s even less to do with Michael), and doesn’t begin to suggest the necessary danger and rage — he just looks like a sullen kid in need of a spanking.

In a confusing bid for resonance, Gow shows us just seven days from the six months of the trial. Do Danny and Mike meet only seven times? Are these seven particularly significant days in their relationship? Whatever the intent, the symbolism is unmistakable — also ill-advised — since it makes us think of a rather higher order of creation. Gow may want his seven days to give us a universe, but in fact they fall short even of a play.