Fucking the Government

Perverted truth and kinky sex in Shem Bitterman�s new play about Iraq

Comments (0) By Steven Leigh Morris Wednesday, Oct 25 2006

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Bitterman based MAN.GOVon the brutal experiences of British arms inspector David Kelly, found dead after being outed as the source for the report that Tony Blair “sexed up” to make the case for war; and American William Scott Ritter, who, after criticizing U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, was swiftly accused of being an agent for Iraq while the FBI investigated his wife for being a KGB spy.

It bears some resemblance to Bertolt Brecht’s Galileo — which is about the Renaissance scientist trying to prove to church authorities that the Earth spins around the sun, not the other way around, and the way he’s punished for questioning an orthodoxy based on a misconception that he can prove empirically. Going into the theater, almost everyone is already convinced of Galileo’s argument, so the play isn’t really a mystery about what’s true but a theatrical sermon about what’s right — a pamphlet advocating the necessity and the costs of (as Janeane Garofalo keeps intoning on Air America) telling truth to power. It doesn’t invite us to question much about what’s real and unreal — on that everyone agrees — but rather to wag our finger at the folly, hubris and cruelty of the authorities. Galileo was first produced right here in L.A., in 1948, following the last war that we actually won, which is among the reasons we believed our government implicitly. For this reason, it served up a strikingly brave challenge to our presumptions.

Curry (left) and Cicchini: Sources, methods (Photo by Jeannine Stehlin)

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Since then, the perceived rectitude of our foreign policy, and the credibility of government statements, has crashed and burned in the jungles of Vietnam and Latin America, in the swamps of Louisiana, and in the deserts of Kuwait and Iraq. Americans’ confidence in our government’s willingness to tell the truth now runs between 30 and 40 percent. When we walk into MAN.GOV,we have a clear sense of what’s real and unreal, who’s right and wrong, and Bitterman raises little challenge to those presumptions. The play is, however, redeemed by its characters and the force of their intelligence: Dave’s identity crisis as he plunges from arrogance to exile; Laura’s scathing perversity, rendered by Napier with a stoic, brooding wit. Jordan Lund plays Dave’s take-the-money-and-run colleague, Mitch, with haughty pragmatism; Cicchini’s journalist comes off as ruefully self-satisfied, hiding Dave’s identity without really hiding it, in an interpretation that underscores the self-serving damage he’s about to inflict on the tormented arms inspector. There’s also a pleasing performance by Stephanie Erb as Dave’s current wife, a kind of Virgil guiding him, without much success, around the land mines set by both his daughter and the feds.

Maybe it’s strange to ask a play to be less sure of itself. Edward Albee once said that he writes plays to figure out why he’s writing them, which explains the sense of wonder that rides alongside his works, as if in a sidecar. MAN.GOVis ostensibly about truth, but its efforts to pry truth open are constricted by its certainty, and the way it aligns with ours. There’s little wonder in that, but there is a good, little play.?

MAN.GOV | By SHEM BITTERMAN | Presented by CIRCUS THEATRICALS at the HAYWORTH, 2511 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. | Through November 18 | (323) 960-1054 or www.circustheatricals.com