Evolution in the limelight

In a crowded room on West 45th Street in Manhattan, a young high-school teacher is hauled before a judge to face criminal charges for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution to his students. During the ensuing trial, the lawyers for the prosecution and the defense wax poetic and trade rhetorical punches before a rapt audience. The judge, jury, and local community, all Bible-thumping fundamentalists, make clear their antievolutionist sympathies. The jury ultimately finds the hapless young man guilty as charged. And the process repeats itself endlessly and relentlessly; six days a week, sometimes twice in one day.

Far from a skeptic's worst nightmare, this scenario is an evolutionist's dream come true. The learned counsel for the defense is the inimitable veteran actor Christopher Hummer, while the lawyer for the prosecution is the venerated Brian Dennehy. The two lions of the stage, each of whom has won two Tony Awards for best leading actor, have joined forces for the most recent Broadway revival of Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee's Inherit the Wind, the 1955 fictionalized retelling of the infamous Scopes "Monkey Trial" of 1925.

Over the last half-century, Inherit the Wind has undergone a number of famous and inspiring revivals. In 1960, Stanley Kramer made the play into a memorable film, starring Spencer Tracy as Henry Drummond, a character based on John Scopes's eloquent attorney, the agnostic Clarence Darrow; and Frederick March as Drummond's adversary, Matthew Harrison Brady, a character inspired by the three-time presidential candidate and outspoken creationist William Jennings Bryan. Poignant stage pairings of those roles in the past have included Paul Muni and Ed Begley (1955) and George C. Scott and Charles Durning (1996). The latest intelligent-design-creationism controversies in Kansas, as well as the recent real-life courtroom drama in Dover, Pennsylvania, make this year's revival particularly timely. What makes this production truly special, however, is the chance to see Plummer and Dennehy struggle in Darwinian stage competition, sparring, employing the full panoply of dramatic flourishes, and pushing each other's acting abilities to new heights in the process.

Christopher Plummer's performance is simply stunning: flawless and awe-inspiring, a sublime blend of gusto and gravitas. If at all possible, one might complain that Plummer performs his role almost too well. Several initial reviews complained that Brian Dennehy's performance lacked the flare and energy necessary to balance Plummer's impressive luminosity. By now, Dennehy has adjusted perfectly in response to these criticisms. At the performance we attended, Dennehy nearly upstaged Plummer with a magnificent performance, notable for its deep emotion and raw power. Also noteworthy is the strong performance of Denis O'Hare as E.K. Hornbeck, a character based on the cynical atheist news reporter H.L. Mencken. A large share of the play's many memorable quips are his. Speaking of Matthew Harrison Brady, Hornbeck snipes, "He's the only man I know who can strut sitting down."

The set design and atmospherics conveyed well the mood and feel of "Heavenly Hillsboro," the fictional small town inspired by Dayton, Tennessee. Before curtain, the audience was warmed up by a white Southern-gospel quartet perched atop the courtroom set. Although authentic and spirited, the singers didn't receive a rousing response until they dedicated a song to the lawyers in the audience (having failed to identify any Baptists). It was "Down by the Riverside," and the New Yorkers belted out the refrain, "I ain't gonna study war no more!" It felt a long way from the Bible Belt, or middle America, for that matter. An unscientific survey of the crowd revealed few tourists; the majority probably comprised local dramaphiles and regular subscribers to the theater.

Of course, Inherit the Wind has always been a long way from Dayton. In the play, the biology teacher, Bertram Cates, is portrayed as a martyr for science. In reality, Scopes was in no danger of being jailed. He was selected by the ACLU as a good test case for challenging the law. In a pivotal scene, Cates's girlfriend is denounced by her histrionically intolerant preacher father during a prayer meeting. This is all fiction. Scopes had no girlfriend, and Clarence Darrow reported being warmly received by the townspeople.

It would be interesting to study the extent to which this celebrated work--originally penned as a metaphor for McCarthyism--has become a kind of folk history of the Scopes trial, in which fiction is unknowingly intermingled with fact. Then again, if Inherit the Wind is the rationalist's mythic, is that such a bad thing? Aren't lovers of science, like all lovers, to be excused for a few exaggerations of their beloved's virtues?

We rightly celebrate the triumph over intelligent-design creationism in Dover. But the attack on the teaching of evolution in America neither begins nor ends in a courtroom drama. It is being staged right now without fanfare on school boards and in science classrooms in towns you've never heard of. Creeping creationism has no easy legal cure. The U.S. Constitution alone cannot stop bad teachers from dropping Darwin from the curricula. Eternal citizen vigilance is required. While it may not make for good theater, this daily struggle for science is no less important.