RADIO REVIEW : Strong Cast Heats Up ‘Monkey Trial’
Most of us respond to the Scopes Monkey Trial in terms of the popular play and movie “Inherit the Wind.” But that was a dramatization of court transcripts, not a meticulous playback of the sundry strategies, witnesses and warring attorneys.
Now, with the radio drama “The Great Tennessee Monkey Trial,” you can experience another and more literal dramatization, totally compiled from the transcripts of that historic battle in Dayton, Tenn., in the summer of 1925 over the right to teach the theory of evolution in public schools. It can be heard at 10 tonight on KCRW-FM (89.9).
Starring Edward Asner as the Bible thumper William Jennings Bryan and Charles Durning as attorney Clarence Darrow, the production celebrates the bicentennial of the Bill of Rights with a swarm of heretofore unknown characters in a recording that catches the heat and clamor of that legal boiler room known as Tennessee versus John Thomas Scopes.
Tyne Daly narrates, deftly setting the atmosphere and telescoping events, and actors such as John Randolph as the fundamentalist-favoring judge, Harold Gould as Darrow’s articulate co-counsel Dudley Malone, Joe Spano as H. L. Mencken, Ray Stricklyn in multiple roles and Jeff Corbett as biology teacher Scopes (among a fine 15-member cast) create a pitched battle that still reverberates today.
The final famous testimony, in which Darrow blisters Bryan on his dogged, literal acceptance of Jonah and the Whale, Joshua, the Flood, Adam’s rib and the rest, is such dramatic stuff in the hands of Durning and Asner that you momentarily forget all about Spencer Tracy and Fredric March (who were indelible in the movie “Inherit the Wind”).
A collaboration of L.A. Theater Works, BBC Radio and KCRW-FM, the two-hour program was recorded live-in-performance on a sound stage at Warner Bros., directed by John Theocharis of BBC Radio and compiled from trial transcripts by Peter Goodchild.
As one of the seminal First Amendment trials in American history, it’s radio drama of a special order.
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