A vain politician runs for the presidency, short on specifics but long on bluster, inveighing against a religious minority and promising to make America prosperous again.
Sound familiar?
It did to the leaders of Berkeley Repertory Theater, who, casting about for a show to coincide with the fall presidential campaign, hit upon an idea: They would write a new adaptation of Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 novel imagining the election of an American demagogue: It Can’t Happen Here.
Photo: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
The play, which began previews last week, is among scores of efforts by theaters across the US to provoke discussion and reflection about this year’s unusual election, and the unease that it has exposed. Some, like Berkeley Rep, explicitly aim to prompt discussion about Donald Trump, whose candidacy has alarmed many in the left-leaning theater world; others have opted to stage works in which characters grapple with issues debated during the campaign, like immigration or economic inequality.
“Art shouldn’t fall into any kind of simplistic, didactic haranguing, and topicality is a dangerous thing, because you always get outstripped by reality,” said Tony Taccone, the longtime artistic director of Berkeley Rep, and a co-author, with Bennett Cohen, of the new adaptation. However, he said, “With the election looming, it felt incumbent on us to respond if we could.”
TRUMP ON STAGE
On a recent afternoon, the cast and crew of It Can’t Happen Here gathered at Berkeley Rep’s administrative campus in a high-ceilinged warehouse once occupied by the North Face, to run through the play one last time before moving into a downtown Berkeley theater.
The designers had embraced the stars-and-stripes feel of a campaign: The set featured flags and drums and images of national parks, and the sound design included a Sousa march. Fourteen actors played nearly 50 roles, and practiced egging on the audience to cheer and jeer with the onstage pageantry.
The theater printed red-white-and-blue lapel stickers bearing the play’s name for patrons, meant to echo the ubiquitous “I Voted” stickers; leaders considered, but decided against, holding a series of related discussion programs, thinking that the culture is already saturated with election talk. The play is scheduled to close Nov. 6, two days before the election.
Around the country, theaters are acknowledging the election in various ways. On Broadway, Kinky Boots has created a video and Web site to promote voter registration, while Hamilton cast members are planning to register voters outside their theater on Tuesday and Saturday; Off Broadway, Avenue Q has added Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump puppets to its company. Some theaters are staging Mike Daisey’s comedic monologue The Trump Card, while many others have brought back plays about political figures, from Frank Rizzo in Philadelphia to Lyndon Baines Johnson in Cleveland and Costa Mesa, California. In Washington, five prominent theaters are holding a series of free Monday night readings of politically themed plays, including Ivanka: A Medea for Right Now, a fictional work about Trump’s daughter by the playwright Joshua Harmon.
OH YES IT CAN
Berkeley Rep hit upon It Can’t Happen Here about eight months ago, when an unexpected hole opened in its fall season. Lisa Peterson, who had signed on to direct a show for Berkeley Rep, Googled the phrase “it can’t happen here” and stumbled across the Sinclair Lewis novel, which she was not familiar with; Taccone had read the book in high school and thought it would work.
The novel is about a Vermont newspaper editor, Doremus Jessup, who opposes a demagogic presidential candidate, Berzelius Windrip; it is a satirical and melodramatic cautionary tale, in which Windrip wins the election, imposes martial law and seizes control of newspapers; his regime arrests and even kills his critics.
Lewis, who had already won the Nobel Prize for literature, wrote the novel against an ominous backdrop: Hitler and Mussolini were in power in Germany and Italy, and Huey Long, a senator and former governor who wielded unusual power in Louisiana, was preparing to run for the American presidency.
There are some striking similarities between the campaign pitches by the fictional Windrip and the real Trump — both men were even nominated for the presidency in Cleveland. But there are significant differences: Windrip, among other things, is a Democrat (in the novel, the Republican nominee winds up fleeing to Canada to plot a rebellion) and prone to warnings against Jews; Trump, of course, is a Republican who has focused his concern on Muslims.
In their new adaptation, Taccone and Cohen have sharpened the echoes. They wrote the campaign remarks by Windrip after watching stump speeches by Trump; they have one of their characters comment on the role of the news media (“The more offensive his remarks, the more papers get sold”); and, in a dig at Hillary Clinton’s reference to some Trump supporters as belonging to a “basket of deplorables,” a character explaining Windrip’s popularity says, “It’s not because they’re all stupid and prejudiced and deplorable.”
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