Big Idea Theater’s production of Itamar Moses’ “Outrage” is huge fun: well acted, well directed and beautifully staged. The cast includes a lot of familiar faces; there are 15 actors total, playing 24 parts (including chorus) : Jouni Kirjola, Ryan Snyder, Jes Gonzales, Ruby Sketchley, Eason Donner, Amanda Johnston, Brent Randolph, Michael O’Sullivan, Justin Chapman, Jonathan Hansen, Alexander Hogy, Melanie Marshall, Brent Dirksen, Nathan Stewart, Maya-Nika Bewley. A whole bunch of talent on that stage. Which by the way is cleverly set up; the stage itself is almost a character in the play.
It is also the case that the play is dangerously subversive. In many, many countries this play would have resulted in jail sentences at best, and a list of “disappearances” at worst. Ask poor old Brecht, fleeing Nazi Germany, or Galileo and Menocchio fleeing the inquisition. Or Socrates, tried for heresy. All of these characters appear in the play, blithely speaking their minds and then wondering how something so obvious to them could be so dangerous to someone else.
In other words “Outrage” encourages us to question the status quo. And of course questioning authority is the original political sin. “Outrage” actually uses the story of Eve eating the apple as the metaphor for questioning authority. Or is it allegory?
To get a sense of how this actually plays out in our seemingly mundane world, I have before me a book by Robert H. Bork, “Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline.” The book is well written, and well meant. Some of it I agree with, in principle. But Bork is a very, very angry man, and I suspect the book is the product of a grudge he holds because of his failed Supreme Court nomination. For the record, yes I have just committed the informal fallacy of an ad hominem argument (our apologies to Socrates.)
The most telling statement in Bork’s missive comes in the first page of the introduction, wherein he describes the day he went to teach his class at Yale and found the campus in chaos — “violence, destruction of property, mindless hatred of the law …” and then he writes “my faculty colleagues and I had no understanding of what it was about, where it came from, or how long the misery would last …” Presumably he wrote that with a straight face — how on earth could one spend all of one’s waking hours among the students and then profess to not know anything about what was on their mind seems odd, doesn’t it?
Well no, it doesn’t, when you consider that Bork’s problem was that he went on with his life accepting the status quo without question, and he assumed the students did too. Anyway Bork has a bit of his own outrage to contend with. I suppose we can forgive Bork’s obviousness, and his hamfisted defense of himself if we try hard enough. But we shouldn’t trust him just because he claims the mantle of authority.
So while the play is huge fun to watch, full of irreverence, irony, satire and sardonic wit, there isn’t anything actually funny about “Outrage.” The characters in the play who question authority have their careers ruined, or lose their lives. They are outflanked, out maneuvered, outgunned. Yes it’s in vogue to celebrate Socrates and Galileo as heroes, but the people in charge today don’t give up any easier then they did 2500 years ago or 500 years ago. In the end, all big decisions are political — the outcome depends on who benefits, and it’s not at all about who should benefit.
Which is not to say the audience (myself included) didn’t enjoy the play. I think everybody did. But of course we did so in the risk-free bubble of a country that is not (currently) experiencing a resurgence of totalitarianism. Right?
So go over to BIG and have some fun. But not too much fun, because you know somebody might be watching you.
