STAGE REVIEW : DAN WHITE TRIAL GETS ITS ‘JUSTICE’

“Execution of Justice,” Emily Mann’s staged documentary about the Dan White trial, finally opened in Los Angeles on Saturday (at the Colony’s Studio Theatre Playhouse), more than three years after its initial production and two years after White’s apparent suicide.

It’s too bad we didn’t see it sooner. As journalism and as theater, “Execution of Justice” is much better than “The Dan White Incident.” Yet “Incident” opened here in January, 1984, just as White was being paroled amid much talk that he would live in Los Angeles. When you’re doing a play about current events, it helps to be as current as possible.

Or, failing that, a revival of “Execution” in, say, 10 years--after White has faded from memory--might be more interesting. Right now, though, most reasonably literate playgoers are familiar with the facts of the case: White, a former San Francisco Supervisor, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in 1979 for shooting and killing San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor and gay activist Harvey Milk.

And Mann seldom ventured beyond those facts in any imaginative or surprising way. She scrupulously stuck to the trial transcripts, reportage and interviews, serving as editor more than as artist.

True, she expressed a point of view about the inanity of White’s notorious “Twinkie” defense and the injustice of the verdict. But who would disagree? Watching “Justice” at this late date, it’s easy to regard the verdict as an aberration rather than as a symptom of some larger, ongoing social problem.

Todd Nielsen’s staging gets as much from the play as it has to give. Perched on Scott Storey’s wide, sweeping staircase, under the probing lights of Tim Morishita, Nielsen’s actors speak and move with impressive verisimilitude.

Richard Lineback is much taller than White was. But he captures the man’s confusion on his recorded confession, and he otherwise maintains a spectral deadpan that’s more than a little creepy. It’s a crafty way of maneuvering around the fact that Mann doesn’t take us very far into White’s brain.

Josh Gordon, Russ Marin, RoZsa Horvath, Scott Segall and Hugh Maguire create indelible little portraits. Robert Budaska has a few problems with a long, difficult monologue by the district attorney, but Bob Ari has a field day with the character of Sister Boom Boom, a transvestite commentator who makes a point of munching the same junk foods used by White.

The production uses footage from the Oscar-winning documentary “The Times of Harvey Milk” as well as some original slides, a few of which were only tenuously pertinent. Christian P. Wolf coordinated the video, which is at its most eloquent in a candle lit reminiscence of a protest march.

John Fisher’s sound design is bold and effective; his rude interruption of Jeanette MacDonald’s rendition of “San Francisco” is an especially telling moment. But what would sound designers ever do if Samuel Barber hadn’t written “Adagio for Strings”?

Performances are at the Studio Theatre Playhouse, 1944 Riverside Dr., Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m., through Dec. 6. Tickets: $12-$15; (213) 665-3011.