A New ‘Wind’ Blows Through Troubled Israel

There are tides in the affairs of humankind that sweep across land, sea, time and political boundaries. The fervent wish to be unfettered in thought and action is one such tide, coursing down the centuries and producing revolutions, counterrevolutions, semi-free elections in Poland and the ongoing and tragic slaughter in China.

Not all the stirrings are so massive, although it may be that the modest spring becomes the mighty torrent. The famous Scopes “monkey trial” in Tennessee in 1925 pitted the stern orthodoxy of creation theory against Darwinian evolution and the scientific exploration of the origin and history of the world.

That controversy goes on as a kind of rear-guard holding action. But the verdict of time, echoing the acquittal of the teacher accused of teaching evolution theory, has been a triumph for free inquiry and unblinkered thought.

“Inherit the Wind,” the play that Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee wrote about the Scopes trial, was first produced 34 years ago and has been running on stage somewhere ever since. It has been translated into 33 languages, the most recent being Mandarin Chinese.

Since April, “Inherit the Wind” has been a smashing success in Haifa, where it is playing at the Haifa Municipal Theater, in Hebrew, with an Arab actor, Youssef Abu Warda, who is fluent in Hebrew, doing the Clarence Darrow-like defense attorney (Spencer Tracy in Stanley Kramer’s 1960 film version).

The title there is “The Monkey Trial.” “Inherit the Wind,” from Proverbs 11:29, ironically does not translate properly.

Warda is currently making a new, actable translation of the play into Arabic.

Co-author Lawrence is lately back from Israel, where he watched the final rehearsals and the opening. “It’s been the most thrilling experience of my life,” Lawrence says. “It sounds so beautiful in Hebrew. Where the text says God , the Hebrew Elohim rolls across the audience.”

The timely appeal of the play is that Israel is having its own internal struggles with extremely conservative religious elements who wish to dominate both worship and education. “They’re trying to take over science the way the fundamentalists did in the South,” says Lawrence. “One official told me, ‘You must have written this play two weeks ago!’ The audiences stamp their feet and clap and shout; it’s astonishing.”

The plan is for the play to be presented in repertory for a year, visiting Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and other centers. It was directed by Amit Gazit, who also runs his own Hanan Theater and is a kibbutz-raised sabra (native-born Israeli).

Lawrence and Lee, writing partners since 1942, have also written “Mame” and “Auntie Mame,” “Look, Ma, I’m Dancin’,” “The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail” (one of the most frequently produced plays in modern times, although it has never been on Broadway) and several other works.

Their newest play, “Whisper in the Mind,” which they wrote in collaboration with Norman Cousins (“Anatomy of an Illness,” etc.) will have a concert reading--not for review--on June 17 in UCLA’s Freud Theatre, with a remarkable cast featuring David Dukes, E. G. Marshall, John Randolph and Mala Powers.

It is the first offering of a new venture, the Audrey Skirball-Kenis Theatre, a nonprofit undertaking funded by Mrs. Kenis and her husband Charles to give previously unproduced work by both new and established playwrights a thoroughly professional first hearing. The plan is to present four to six such readings a year.

“Whisper in the Mind,” Cousins’ first venture in writing for the stage, is said to examine the extraordinary historical figure, Franz Anton Mesmer, an Austrian physician (1734-1815) who was the first to use hypnotism (“animal magnetism” was his phrase) to treat illness. He was shunned by orthodox practitioners and driven from Paris at the time of the French Revolution. “Mesmerizing” is his legacy in the language.

Mrs. Skirball-Kenis’ father, Jack Skirball, was a longtime independent producer in Hollywood whose credits include Alfred Hitchcock’s “Saboteur” and “Shadow of a Doubt.” He was also associate producer on “The Howards of Virginia,” one of whose stars was actress Martha Scott. Scott and her associate, Paul Heller, are producing the play-reading project.

They earlier produced Lawrence and Lee’s “First Monday in October,” a play about the first woman on the Supreme Court (written before the appointment of Sandra Day O’Connor).

The notion of pre-production dramatic readings is not new. They are a way, not least, of catching the eye and ear of prospective producers. But, as used at the Mark Taper Forum and elsewhere, the readings are more importantly a way for the authors, as well as directors and producers, to smooth the sometimes traumatic leap from the printed page to the performers in the flesh.

Unseen or unheard, the new work appears to carry on the Lawrence and Lee tradition of examining the mavericks, from Mame to Thoreau, who have defied orthodoxy in the name of liberation.

Information on the reading: (213) 284-8965.