Theater Review: Revisiting the horrors of Andersonville
Union soldiers in the tens of thousands were imprisoned at the Andersonville camp in Georgia. Nearly a third of them died there, victims of exposure to heat and cold, polluted water, starvation rations, rampant disease, torture and murder. The skeletal survivors seen in photographs taken after their liberation could easily be mistaken for survivors of World War II concentration camps.
This is the backdrop of “The Andersonville Trial,” Saul Levitt’s courtroom drama based on the prosecution of Capt. Henry Wirz, the officer in command of the infamous camp, who was judged culpable for the mistreatment and deaths of thousands.
A new, small-scale production of the play at Grove Theatre Centre in Burbank faithfully recreates a trial that is layered with controversy, issues of morality and a fledgling legal concept of “war crimes.”
Director Gary Lee Reed (a direct descendant of Gen. Robert E. Lee, as it happens), designed the courtroom set — clean lines, functional tables and chairs suggesting the period, the U.S. flag — and he uses the intimate, 99-seat GTC space to give theatergoers the sense that they are members of the public attending the trial in August 1865.
This intent is underscored by having “witnesses” seated in the audience until called to testify, although it isn’t fully realized, due primarily to a seemingly deliberate performance dynamic that doesn’t entirely mesh.
Robbie Winston makes an impact as two former Andersonville prisoners: a professed eyewitness to a murder committed by Wirz; and, movingly, a fragile young man, injured grievously in both body and mind. Gary Clemmer adds interest, too, in dual roles as a survivor whose testimony regarding Wirz’s direct murder of a prisoner is called into question, and as a plantation owner speaking to Wirz’s unwillingness to requisition food from surrounding areas and his refusal of wagonloads of food brought to the camp gates for the prisoners by concerned citizens.
More confirmation of the camp’s atrocious conditions comes from a medical officer (Edmund Wyson), and an officer whose recommendation that Andersonville be closed was ignored (Jack Kennedy).
In his central role as the Federal government’s Judge Advocate, Mark Belnick is Lt. Colonel Chipman, doggedly attempting to break new ground by prosecuting Wirz from both an established legal standpoint and a moral one. For the most part, Belnick ably handles the huge chunks of explanatory legalese, background and verbal wrestling that fall to his character, but his tendency to address the audience directly weakens his connection with the other actors on stage.
It may be a directorial choice intended to further involve the audience as the trial attendees. Or, it may simply be that this role is too-familiar territory for Belnick, a professional actor and real-life trial attorney. (And not just any trial attorney. Among Belnick’s high-profile legal work is a stint as Deputy Chief Counsel to the U.S. Senate Iran-Contra Investigation.) But as capable as Belnick is, his character remains primarily in the one-note, this-is-history zone, undermining his authenticity in Chipman’s moments of frustration and self-doubt.
(Belnick, surprisingly, isn’t the only actual legal eagle on stage. Greg Allan Martin, who oversees the tribunal as Gen. Lew Wallace, and whose air of authority and weary desire to see the trial end rings true, is another stage and TV veteran leading a double life — as a practicing Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney. )
As Wirz’s defense counsel, Joe Colligan is believably determined to do his best with a thankless job, exposing contradictions and shaking witness testimony. Was one professed eyewitness too shady and glib? Is another too damaged to recall accurately? Others were guilty of inhumane acts during the conflict. Is Wirz being singled out as a necessary public scapegoat during a risky and unsettled time, just four months after President Lincoln’s assassination?
Ian Patrick Williams’ Wirz, meanwhile, is a finely tuned mix of arrogance and frustration; seemingly unable to understand why he is facing death for carrying out the orders of his superiors. (Levitt’s play premiered on Broadway in December 1955, scant years after the Nuremberg trials.)
Designer Matthew Richter’s mood-reflecting lighting and projections of shocking survivor photographs, and period music in David B. Marling’s sound design add atmospheric dimension. Costume designer Wendell C. Carmichael has dressed the actors with close attention to detail.
The production is presented by Wasatch Theatrical Ventures, a nonprofit company specializing in works by American playwrights, which set up shop at GTC with previous productions of “Inherit the Wind” by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, Ken Ludwig’s “Moon Over Buffalo,” and Neil Simon’s “The Prisoner of Second Avenue.” (Other Wasatch productions in the L.A. area have been Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons”; Wendy Kesselman’s adaptation of “The Diary of Anne Frank,” by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett; and the West Coast premiere of Theresa Rebeck’s “Our House.”)
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What: “The Andersonville Trial”
Where: Grove Theatre Center, 1111-B Olive Ave., George Izay Park, Burbank.
When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 3 p.m. Sunday. Ends April 10.
More info: (323) 960-7738, www.gtc.org.
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LYNNE HEFFLEY writes about theater and culture for Marquee.
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