Jason Babinsky, Michael McKean, and Adam Kantor play three HUAC committee members trying to root out communism in Hollywood in gripping docudrama (photo by Marc J. Franklin)
ARE YOU NOW OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN
New York City Center Stage I
131 West 55th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 2, $199
areyounowplay.com
www.nycitycenter.org
An unexpectedly timely subject. An all-star cast. Few other major plays opening at the same time. A superb, well-reviewed production.
So what went wrong?
Anna D. Shapiro’s sparkling revival of Eric Bentley’s 1972 Are You Now or Have You Ever Been began previews at New York City Center Stage I on June 2 and was scheduled to run until September 11, but it recently announced it was closing early, on August 2. And that’s too bad, because it’s a gripping show that deserves a large audience. Maybe it never had a chance, billing itself as “An American Docudrama,” which sounds like something one would see on the History Channel. It could be that it attracted only older folks who are more familiar with the figures involved in serious events that shook the country in the late 1940s and 1950s. Maybe some people were turned off because the dialogue is taken verbatim from actual transcripts.
The play, the original full title of which is Are You Now or Have You Ever Been: The Investigations of Show-Business by the Un-American Activities Committee 1947–1958, takes place between 1947 and 1956, as the House Committee on Un-American Activities interviews Hollywood writers, actors, directors, and producers, grilling them on their ties to communism and the Soviet Union during the second Red Scare and the rise of McCarthyism. The chairman (Michael McKean) and two aides (Jason Babinsky and Adam Kantor) famously ask each of them, “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?” and insist that they name names. Some were only too happy to turn in colleagues, either because they were trying to save their careers or were loyal to the cause — Sam G. Wood (Frederick Weller), Elia Kazan (Weller), and, in his follow-up appearance, Martin Berkeley (Brooks Ashmanskas, though I saw understudy Bill Timoney) — while others stood tall in the face of the questioning, defending their rights as American citizens to not succumb to the threats, some ridiculing the proceedings themselves.
When the chairman asks Abe Burrows (Norbert Leo Butz), “Would you call yourself a Communist?,” the playwright, director, and lyricist responds, “Not in my own heart, sir. But I’m here to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and there’s an element of truth in the statement that I was a Communist. There’s also an element of untruth.” The answer cost him the Pulitzer Prize for Guys and Dolls.
Lionel Stander (Bob Odenkirk) has some sharp words for HUAC in Are You Now or Have You Ever Been (photo by Marc J. Franklin)
“My conscience will not permit me to use the name of another person,” Arthur Miller (Weller) tells the committee in no uncertain terms, while Jerome Robbins (Steven Boyer), when asked why he risked being a Hollywood outcast by naming names, explains, “I did it according to my conscience.”
Lionel Stander (Bob Odenkirk) rejects the existence of the committee, arguing, “I have knowledge of subversive action! I know of a group of fanatics who are trying to undermine the Constitution of the United States by depriving artists of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without due process of law! I can cite instances! I can tell names. I am one of the first victims, if you are interested. A group of ex-Bundists, America Firsters, and anti-Semites, people who hate everybody, Negroes, minority groups, and most likely themselves —”
The sergeant-at-arms has to be called to remove Ring Lardner Jr. (Boyer) from the proceedings after he mocks the committee’s purpose. Smoking a cigarette, Lillian Hellman (Molly Ringwald) reads a brilliant statement on why she will talk to HUAC but not name names.
Paul Robeson (Harry Lennix) declares, “In 1946 I testified under oath I was not a member of the Communist Party. Since then I have refused to give testimony to that fact. There is no mystery in this. I have made it a matter of principle to refuse to comply with any demand that infringes upon the constitutional rights of all Americans.”
The most moving part of the show is the interrogation of Larry Parks (T. R. Knight), who was famous for having played Al Jolson in two films but whose career essentially ended after his testimony first in 1951, then in 1953. Emmy nominee Knight portrays Parks with a heartbreaking sincerity, squirming in his chair as he desperately tries to not name names, his voice and body trembling in fear. He believes that his flirtation with communism when he was younger was brief and irrelevant, skirting questions as the chairman attempts to break him.
“On naming names, it is my opinion that the few people I could name, these names would not be of service to the committee: I am sure you know who they are. These people are like myself, and I have done nothing wrong,” Parks insists. “I also feel that to be asked to name names like this is not American justice. We as Americans have all been brought up to believe it’s a bad thing to force a man to do this.”
Parks could be any one of us, in the 1950s or today.
In the past month, President Donald Trump has brought back the Red Scare, accusing many of those whose views deviate from his, especially but not limited to Democratic Socialists, of being communists.
“There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success. These are not mere political disagreements like differences over taxes or regulations. Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty,” Trump said in a July 3 speech at Mount Rushmore. “It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or even 9/11. Uh, we’re not gonna let this happen to us. Believe me, we’re not letting it happen. Because communism is the enemy of free people everywhere, everywhere in the world. Never works. It’s the enemy of the Constitution.”
One of Trump’s mentors was Roy Cohn, the lawyer who sat beside Joseph McCarthy as the Wisconsin senator went after communists and homosexuals in a series of public hearings on Capitol Hill.
“Where’s my Roy Cohn?” Trump asked during his first term when he was dissatisfied with several of his administration officials.
Lillian Hellman (Molly Ringwald) shares her thoughts on HUAC in Are You Now or Have You Ever Been (photo by Marc J. Franklin)
Skillfully directed by Anna D. Shapiro (Eureka Day, This Is Our Youth) as if it’s a political thriller with the very future of America at stake, Are You Now or Have You Ever Been makes the audience feel like they are in the chair, facing invasive and accusatory questions about their loyalty to a nation that is supposedly built on freedom. As each figure takes the stand, images of newspaper headlines are projected on a scrim, emphasizing the seriousness and immediacy of the situation. The three interlocutors sit stage left at an angle, while the subjects, once finished with their testimony, sit behind the scrim, as if reduced to shadows. The set is by Andrew Boyce, with sharp costumes by Johanna Pan, noirish lighting by Donald Holder, threatening sound by Milbo Music, and important projections by Brittany Bland.
The cast is outstanding, with Babinsky, Boyer, Kantor, Weller, and McKean in the regular ensemble and Butz, Knight, Lennix, Odenkirk, and Ringwald rotating in for the previous lineups of Billy Eugene Jones, David Krumholtz, Andrew McCarthy, Sally Murphy, and Jay O. Sanders and Jones, Scott Adsit, Sally Murphy, Ben Rappaport, and Thomas Sadoski. Unfortunately, Santino Fontana, Steven Pasquale, and others won’t get the chance to testify.
Winner of an Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement, Bentley (The Red, White, and Black; Good Woman of Setzuan), a British-born longtime New Yorker who was a theater critic for The New Republic, taught at Harvard, extensively translated works by Bertolt Brecht, and died in 2020 at the age of 103, captured the zeitgeist of the time in Are You Now or Have You Ever Been, a question that could now end with more than just “a member of the Communist Party.” The powerful play puts you in the chair, wondering what you would do if asked, under oath by an out-of-control administration, about your political beliefs.
So, again, what went wrong?
Brecht famously wrote, “The one tribute we can pay the audience is to treat it as thoroughly intelligent.”
Perhaps, in this case, it all hits too close to home, and it’s all too real for a swift summer entertainment.
And that’s a genuine shame.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer; you can follow him on Substack here.]