Chicago Sun-Times
October 15, 2006
By Hedy Weiss, Theater Critic

In the final analysis, "Inherit the Wind" -- now in a handsomely modernist revival at Northlight Theatre -- is a play about the battle waged over two books. On one side is the Bible (author or authors unknown); on the other is The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin's groundbreaking work on the theory of evolution, first published in 1859.

Even more crucially, this 1955 drama by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee -- a fictionalized version of the fabled 1925 Scopes case (popularly known as "The Monkey Trial") -- is about the battle between those who believe there is a place for only one of those books and those who understand the two texts can coexist and serve vitally different functions, with one as a poetic, mythic and spiritual guide to the universe, and the other as a crucial scientific explanation of life as we know it.

The debate, as those keeping track of recent curriculum battles in school systems in Pennsylvania and Kansas well know, remains heated to this day, with the notion of "intelligent design" now put forth as a milder "alternative" to Genesis. Pare it all down to essentials, and it's "fundamentalism vs. secularism."

Cue from 'Our Town'
For the Northlight revival, the always-inventive director Jessica Thebus seems to have taken her cue from "Our Town." The set (by Brian Sidney Bembridge, who seems to have designed half of all the productions now on stage in Chicago, bringing his vivid architectural imagination to play in all of them) features cookie-cutter-like model houses and giant ladders emblematic of the ascent of man, while Tatjana Radisic has created a lovely assortment of buttermilk-colored costumes that suggest a sepia photograph.

The play is in two distinct parts. The first act captures the town gearing up for the big trial that has begun to attract national attention. We meet Burt Cates (Levi Holloway), the science teacher who discovers how dangerous it can be to teach Darwin's theories in the Bible Belt state of Tennessee; the local reverend (Francis Guinan), who fires up the faithful; Rachel (Erica Elam), the minister's sweet, conflicted daughter, who just happens to be Cates' girlfriend; Hornbeck (an acid-tongued Joe Dempsey), the cynical columnist from the Baltimore Herald; a Chicago announcer (Amy Warren), celebrating the first national radio broadcast of a trial, and even a monkey (here "evolved" into the form of a very funny actor, Matt Krause).

'Who won?'
But the real focus of attention are the two formidable, wildly passionate lawyers who have come to town to argue the case. For the prosecution there is Brady (Tony Mockus), a thinly veiled version of William Jennings Bryan, the three-time Democratic presidential candidate and rather tragic progressive who saw Darwin's idea of "survival of the fittest" as a dangerous social model (an argument not put forth in the play). For the defense is Drummond (Scott Jaeck), a thinly veiled take on the brilliant Clarence Darrow.

Mockus and Jaeck are both superb. And when they go at each other in the play's most thrilling scenes -- with Brady's almost literal rapture, and Drummond's searing rationalism -- they generate a fierce and terrible storm."Who won?" asks the hapless teacher when the trial is over. That question mark still stands.

‘INHERIT THE WIND’
RECOMMENDED
When: Through Nov. 12
Where: Northlight Theatre, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie
Tickets: $34-$56
Call: (847) 673-6300