Jason Alexander and Patti LuPone are outrageously funny in virtual production of Judgment Day
JUDGMENT DAY
Barrington Stage Company
July 26 – August 1, $8.99 through July 26, $11.99 after
jd.stellartickets.com
barringtonstageco.org
Jason Alexander is at his hysterical best as a selfish, greedy lawyer who survives a near-death experience in Pittsfield-based Barrington Stage Company’s hilarious online reading of Rob Ulin’s Judgment Day. The Zoom play premiered last August but is back for a well-deserved encore presentation July 26 through August 1 via the Stellar platform.
Alexander, a Tony and Emmy winner who stole the show as Mervyn Kant in a virtual production of Wendy Wasserstein’s The Sisters Rosensweig in May, stars as Sammy Campo, a ruthless lawyer with no moral compass, willing to do anything to get what he wants. In the opening scene, after he closes another shady deal, we learn all we need to know about him during this delicious exchange with his secretary, Della (Loretta Devine), who reads from a letter he just received.
Della: You’ve been called before the Bar Association again. They’re citing “abuse of process, suborning perjury, and obstruction of justice.”
Sammy: The deal is fully funded. This one’s gonna put me over the top!
Della: “Grand larceny, money laundering, forgery, witnesses tampering, witness intimidation.”
Sammy: Yeah, I was expecting that; they’ve got nothing. Did you hear me? The deal is done.
Della: “Consorting with known felons, drug and alcohol abuse, solicitation of prostitution, public nakedness, public urination, foul and unsavory language in the presence of children and the elderly.”
Sammy: Shush with that! Don’t wreck this moment. Do you know why this deal means so much to me?
Della: Because of the money.
Sammy: Wrong! It is not because of the money. It’s because the money will now belong to me. Money that used to be other people’s will now become mine. I came into this world a little speck of nothing. Unloved, unlaid. The world tried to beat me into a passive little milquetoast who would settle for a crumb, but do you know what I said to that offer?
Della: You said no.
Sammy: I said no! I demanded more, From the time I was a little kid, I defied the law of the playground, I defied the law of the pecking order.
Della: You defied the law.
But just as Sammy is bragging about how he played the game his way and won, he suffers a heart attack and is rushed to the hospital, where, as the doctors crack open his chest trying to save him, an angel arrives in the form of his dreaded Catholic school teacher. Sister Margaret (Tony and Grammy winner Patti LuPone) appears to have been waiting a long time for the day she can send Sammy to hell.
“I have come to deliver justice,” she announces. “Wow. So this means God is real,” Sammy suddenly understands. “Shit.” But when he realizes that the angel has snatched him too soon from the jaws of death — the doctors are still working on him — he negotiates his return to the living. “I may be a scumbag. But this isn’t about me. This is about the Law,” he explains. “Your legal sophistry will not work on me,” she says. “It might work on some archangel up the ladder who’s a hardass for the Immutable Laws of God,” Sammy answers. “Some seraphim might think an angel who bends the rules needs a job with less responsibility, like moving clouds around or wiping some cherub’s ass. Looks to me like you blew it, Sister.”
Proudly displaying his lack of a conscience, Sammy is soon making a deal with Father Michael (Tony winner Santino Fontana) to take a case in which elderly widow Edna Fillmore (Carol Mansell) has been denied her late husband’s insurance because she missed one payment. The Monsignor (Grammy winner Michael McKean) tells Father Michael not to work with Sammy, but Father Michael considers bending the rules in order to help Edna. “God cares what’s in your heart,” Father Michael says gently to Sammy, who responds, “Wrong. Angel Sister Margaret said, ‘We do not care how you feel or why you made your choices. Human beings are judged solely by their deeds.’ So I wanna figure out the rock-bottom least amount of good I need to do to get into Heaven.”
Meanwhile, Sammy goes back to the wife he walked out on ten years ago, Tracy (Justina Machado), only to find a surprise: her troubled nine-year-old son, Casper (Julian Emile Lerner). Sammy might have a new lease on life, but that hasn’t changed him one bit. “Acting kind and generous is harder for folks like us who don’t mean it,” he teaches the boy. “There’s no trick to being compassionate if you’re born with compassion. It’s a much greater accomplishment to help your fellow man if you don’t give a shit about him.” Soon he’s negotiating with Casper’s principal (Bianca LaVerne Jones) and Edna’s insurance agent, Jackson (Michael Mastro), incorporating the help of the sexy Chandra (Elizabeth Stanley) when necessary. It appears that there’s no situation he doesn’t believe he can’t haggle his way out of, no matter how high the authority of the person — or angel — he is bargaining with, and he always believes he is in the right. “Without laws, we’d just be animals,” he tells Casper. “The big guy would always defeat the little guy. But in a world of laws, there’s a role for the wily guy. The big guy will always get to make the laws. But a wily lawyer can find ways around the laws so the little guy has a chance.”
Judgment Day is a nonstop eighty-two-minute treat as Ulin, a former Harvard Lampoon editor who has been a co-executive producer on such television series as Malcolm in the Middle, Rosanne, and Ramy, takes on such lofty issues as faith and belief and the rules of society, pitting religion and the law against each other with a wicked sense of humor. Sammy is a fantastic character, a smart-mouthed “scumbag” who actually has an intelligent outlook on the world, finding the cracks and exploiting them to his advantage without a second thought. When Father Michael tells him, “I am a priest. I don’t do blackmail,” Sammy quickly retorts, “Doing blackmail is your whole job! Every Sunday you guys stand in your pulpit and tell a billion Catholics, do what we say or burn forever.”
He doesn’t hide who he is or what he is after, and Alexander is brilliant in the role, smirking away with glee. Director Matthew Penn (Mother of the Maid, Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You) wisely lets Alexander and LuPone chew up the scenery — well, actually, there is no scenery, just plain Zoom backgrounds, save for simple line drawings by Melanie Cummings that announce the locations. Alexander and LuPone’s over-the-top energy is offset by the calm demeanor of Fontana, Devine, and McKean, with Machado playing it straight right down the middle. Be sure to stick around through the credits for some fun clips from the Zoom rehearsals.