America has never been more afraid of its own shadow.
That’s what keeps local playwright Judy GeBauer’s haunting new Red Scare drama, “Every Secret Thing,” from feeling like the quaint time-capsule piece it by all rights ought to be.
McCarthyism had 1950s Americans seeing red where there was blue. But as ruinous as the campaign to ferret out communists became, there’s something oddly comforting in knowing our grandparents were jumping at figments. There was no boogeyman.
Today, we have the real knowledge of 3,000 World Trade Center dead to propel our fear. But it doesn’t stop at terrorism. We’re afraid of everything from identity theft to West Nile to sunlight to TB. Many are paralyzed by it.
More than 50 years after McCarthy, “Every Secret Thing” ought to feel as incongruous and innocuous as a “Twilight Zone” episode. Seriously: The FBI muscles an eighth-grade civics teacher into spying on his fellow teachers? Ridiculous. Except it’s not. Instead, the play ripples through the years like a direct timeline to today.
“Every Secret Thing,” while flawed, not only gets a solid inaugural staging, it may be the most compelling offering to date by the young Modern Muse Theatre Company.
GeBauer, who bases the play on her own childhood experiences, opens with a fluid montage inside three classrooms: a Polish literature teacher reading Bronte, a war hero teaching tenets of American justice, a music teacher espousing the universality of Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky. It’s an ordinary day – until a foreign-born math teacher is unjustly arrested, and others are asked to sign loyalty oaths.
The play runs the great risk of treading where the grass has long been trampled. From “Trumbo” to “Insignificance” to a dozen others, we’ve been all over this chapter in history. And from a wider prism – “1984” to “Copenhagen” to “Bug” – the idea of government orchestrating a climate of fear isn’t new.
But two aspects keep this old subject feeling disquietingly new. First: While most think McCarthyism targeted the Hollywood elite, “Every Secret Thing” shows just how insidiously it infiltrated suburban middle America. And second: As was the case then, and as is the case now, when adults speak, our children listen.
GeBauer’s sublime invention is Maxine Hoyt, a 14-year-old overachieving saboteur one teacher aptly describes as “an evil little (bleep).” And invention is overstating: GeBauer herself was drafted by authorities to write down license-plate numbers in her youth, without being told the possible consequences.
There were two types of gossip in 1954: The tattle sheets that told on celebrities like Kirk Douglas and Marilyn Monroe – and the ordinary citizens who told on their neighbors.
Maxine was listening.
When we meet the girl, deliciously played by Jessica Posner, she recites with bloodlust Wilfred Owen’s gruesome poem about a World War I gas attack – the irony being Owen was satirizing Horace’s “It is sweet and becoming to die for one’s country” ode to war. She also recounts an attempt on Truman’s life with malicious glee.
This pert little pill might easily be dismissed as only a clever nod to the iconic “Bad Seed” herself, little, rotten Rhoda Penmark (from the chilling film of the day). But she’s more than a gag: She’s the personified spawn of neighborhood paranoia. As a smart but emotionally contorted wretch who has been taught to find monsters under her bed, she’s the embodiment of her time.
Maxine isn’t quite “done” as a character. GeBauer could further distinguish her play by fleshing her out to her frightening fullest.
GeBauer creates several other knowable characters put in impossible situations. Haunted protagonist Richard (Gregory J. Adams at his best) struggles with both demons and his FBI-induced quandary. Jim Hunt is spot-on as a spineless principal, and Josh Hartwell is superb as the Polish-born teacher refusing to sign the loyalty oath. Best is the great Gabriella Cavellero, who infuses this piece with a torrent of heart as the music teacher whose goodness is turned against her.
The piece has its problems. The initial swirl of theatricality gives way to normalcy; there are klunky spots; the FBI character is just a fleshless type; scene changes are abrupt; the tempo slows – exacerbated by dirge music. And our civics teacher has a confused understanding of libel.
Nevertheless, “Every Secret Thing” is in much better shape than most new plays at this stage of development. It’s a disquieting and refreshingly civil look at a disease still infecting our country long after we’ve thought it lulled into remission.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
| “Every Secret Thing”
DRAMA|Modern Muse Theatre Company|Written by Judy GeBauer|Directed by Steve Lavezza|Starring Gregory J. Adams, Gabriella Cavallero and Josh Hartwell|THROUGH JUNE 30|At the Bug Theatre, 3654 Navajo St.|8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays|1 hour, 55 minutes|$20|303-780-7836 or modernmusetheatre.com
