Dancing at the Revolution
Michael Bettencourt's historical drama examines the gritty trials and tribulations of radical activist Emma Goldman, who was tossed into prison, and then deported, for protesting America's entry into World War I. The Theater Cooperative is staging the New England premiere of the script.
by Bill Marx
At one point in his homage to the turn-of-the-century radical Emma Goldman, playwright Michael Bettencourt's heroine doubts her status as "the most dangerous woman in America." This moment of vulnerability is one of the few good moments amid the non-stop liberal cheerleading in Dancing at the Revolution. The script attempts to make Goldman threatening after the fall of Communism, to give her old time anti-capitalist polemics fresh resonance in our post-Marxist century. But Bettencourt fails the challenge: he simplifies, rather than complicates, political history; flattens dramatic conflict into didactic homilies, and transforms Goldman into a self-help guru whose icky goal is "to let the angel out into the light." One might just as well call this wanna-be inspirational show "Touched by a Radical."
The retreat into therapeutics is a shame, because the current war against terrorism hands Dancing at the Revolution a timely hook. The play focuses on Goldman's anti-war activity in 1917, for which she and partner Alexander Berkman were charged by the government with treason, tossed into jail for two years, and then deported to the Soviet Union. In history, Goldman stands as a model of conviction: a tireless voice of skepticism that questions the wisdom of rampant patriotism at a time when people were punished for speaking out. Yet the rightness of her point of view is pushed into inanity here. None of Goldman's skepticism is reserved for herself; Bettencourt excises all of Goldman's talk about the coming Soviet paradise. The American government is caricatured in a kangaroo trial that, ironically, undercuts the play's image of heroism. Goldman and Berkman's arguments slice like a knife through the buttery rhetoric of cartoon conservative bozos.
The second half of the play finds Goldman in a sadistic Missouri prison, playing saintly nurse maid to a compendium of "women behind bars" clichés, including the prostitute who must be punished for her sins, the tough-talking black woman who offed her husband, and the good girl who dies after spending an extended period in the hellish "hole." Goldman's analysis of capitalism is underlined with Marxist magic marker: the state is exploiting the workers, selling their labor to private company for a piece of the action. Her tough-talking brand of humanism wins over her fellow inmates, who, as presented in the play, are not bad people, just misunderstood products of an unfair social system. (Funny how you never find genuine criminals behind bars in American dramas, only hapless victims of patriarchal economic circumstance.) The only competition for the hearts and minds of the downtrodden is a good-hearted Christian prisoner, whose talk of Christ Goldman dispatches with dialectical ease.
The play takes the form of an extended flashback. At age 60, Goldman is working on her autobiography with a young secretary, Hannah, who, at first, is skeptical of the older woman's beliefs. You hate others with the same fury they hate you with, the woman charges. This is the play's sole flicker of criticism, which is wiped away once Hannah's heart melts hearing the tale of Goldman's tortuous life in prison. Perhaps Hannah would be less of a pushover if she had even a rudimentary grasp of history. Goldman says she "endured" life under Lenin. Notice that she doesn't condemn it, even though by the late 1920s Lenin was out and Stalin's barbarity was picking up steam. At this point in time, it is intellectual and moral cowardice to overlook the crimes of Communism. Stalin's gulags make the play's scenes in the Missouri prison look like a nursery school for sadists. If Goldman is to be deemed a model woman for our time, then we have to examine her and her ideology, warts and all. Bettencourt just sticks a tin halo on her head.
The meandering Theatre Cooperative staging is sustained by a stalwart performance from Lesley Chapman, whose Emma Goldman comes off as a feisty wound-up toy, a contraption that cranks out reformist energy and wisecrack one-liners. Chapman doesn't go beneath the bravado, but blame Bettencourt's slack writing rather than the game actress. If it weren't for Chapman's pert bluster, the production would fall apart. Fred Robbins also lends necessary presence as Emma's compatriot, Alexander Berkman, though he has a tendency to let his booming voice do his performing for him. The rest of the cast is made up of young performers whose inexperience and well-scrubbed looks work against them in what is supposed to be a tale of gritty injustice. The prison scenes should be terrifying, but here they come off as "Muffy Goes to Jail," the cell filled with women who, evidently, have done nothing more sinful than use the wrong hair color.
Dancing at the Revolution runs through December 22, 2001 at the Theatre Cooperative, 277 Broadway, Somerville, MA. For ticket information, call 617-625-1300.
Bill Marx reviews theater and books for WBUR, Boston's NPR news station.
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