This courtroom drama is a perfect introduction to serious theater for your teenagers, what with the battle over evolution continuing today. And the price is right: FREE. No parking, no tolls, bring a picnic and blanket and you’re set for an exciting evening of theater:
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INHERIT THE WIND, by Hugh Wallace of Bernardsville,offers a fictionalized account of the famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial.
INHERIT THE WIND explores the conviction of John Scopes for teaching Charles Darwin’s “Theory of Evolution” to his high school science classes in Tennessee. In that trial, former Vice President William Jennings Bryan prosecuted John Scopes for breaking the law, which forbade the teaching of evolution in Tennessee schools. The famous Clarence Darrow defended the science teacher while reporter, H. L. Mencken, covered the trial.
The authors, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, used the 1925 trial to explore the Communist witchhunt of the McCarthy hearings of the 1950s, similar to the device used by Arthur Miller in “The Crucible.”
Presenting INHERIT THE WIND as an allegory, the authors created fictional names for the famous players: Bertram Cates (William Wallace of Millington) represented Scopes: Matthew Brady (Fred Dennehy of Cranbury) stood in for the prosecutor Bryan; Henry Drummond (Bob Vaias of Basking Ridge) became the defender Darrow, while E. K. Hornbeck (Lew Decker of Millington) represented the reporter Mencken. Additional characters are played by Vivian Adler, Jeremy Adler, Hank Barre, Ginny Pados Beutnagel, Matt Blackwell, Mark Blackwell, Lisa Black, Patrick Blood, Peter Blood, Allan Gershenson, Michael Giangreco, Robert Goodwin, Brian Herle, Christine Lawton, Nick Macri, Kathy Mierisch, Germaine McGrath, Matt Marino, Becky Pollard, and Ed Schroeder.
The Lawrence and Lee play opened on Broadway on April 21, 1965, and ran for 806 performances. Starring Paul Muni, Ed Begley, and Tony Randall, and won four Tony Awards. The 1996 revival starred Charles During, George C. Scott and received two Tony nominations, while Brian Dennehy and Christopher Plummer appeared in the 2007 version, which received four nominations. Stanley Kramer directed the 1960 film adaptation, but the screenplay was not written by the original playwrights. This version starred Spencer Tracy, Frederic March, and Gene Kelly and garnered four Oscar nominations. A 1999 television movie, based on the original Lawrence and Lee version, starred Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott and won a Golden Globe.
The partnership of Trilogy Repertory and Bernards Township has produced over twenty-five years of family entertainment and achieved several awards for both groups for excellence in theater programming. Most prominent are the awards from ACT (Achievement in Community Theater) and the prestigious “Excellence in Cultural Arts Programming.” INHERIT THE WIND is made possible, in part, by support from New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
