Interchangability

[scarfman]

I see in the New Yorker from the end of February that Inherit the Wind is being revived on Broadway with Brian Dennehy and Christopher Plummer. It didn't say who's in which role but either could do both. If I were them I'd switch off nightly.

Comments

[whl.livejournal.com]

Somehow, Dennehy seems more suited to the sort of tricks used by Clarence Darrow, to me, and given that William Jennings Bryan died shortly after the trial, Plummer seems a better choice, just based on age; he looks fit enough in the recent photos I can find on IMDB, but in my mind, he'll always have a thin and cadaverous look about him.

Also, I think Jennings would have a more formal demeanor, and that in my mind fits with Plummer.

[(Anonymous)]

Bryan was one of the greatest popular orators of the end of the XIX century, a real live wire. His Presidential campaign of 1896 was a rabble-rousing ruckus by the standards of the time (both sides in that election published books afterwards, & I've read 'em).

By the time of the Scopes Trial, though, not only was he very old, but his post-Reconstruction populism had lost a great deal of its relevance to the public, & his style had gone the way of his politics. The old bombastic style of Southern Senator preserved that flavour longer than anyone, but they're all gone now. Of course, public speaking used to be something of a competitive sport in the USA -- in '96 at least one city staged an event in which gramophone recordings of Bryan & McKinley were brought into a theater & played against each other, to a packed audience.

"Formal demeanor" isn't the point. He didn't scream & foam at the mouth like Hitler, but the latter was a very poor orator. Bryan let his audience get worked up.

--publius--

[valsadie.livejournal.com]

That's a cool idea; I'd pay to see it twice, to see both in both roles! It's probably Plummer as Bryan and Dennehy as Darrow. But I can see Plummer being marvelously droll as Darrow, and Dennehy the essence of contemporary Southern conservatism as Bryan.

[(Anonymous)]

Southerner? Bryan was from Nebraska (or Illinois, depending how you count). My grandfather was called a Yankee in Florida, for being from Arkansas, but to call a Nebraskan a Southerner you'd have to be Canadian.

In politics, he was an agrarian populist, and considered a radical (although by the '20s his radicalism was not so much mainstream as irrelevant — "How're ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm / Now that they've seen Paris?"). Evangelical-fundamentalist Christianity was radical, too, for a while ; today's sects mostly date to the 1850s and after, so even at the period of the Scopes trial they were half as old as they are today.

--publius--

[valsadie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I knew Bryan wasn't Southern. I was trying to describe his counterpart in contemporary American political culture, specifically the "red states" and the "Southern strategy" (as defined at Wikipedia). Change evolution to "Intelligent Design" and this battle is still going on...?

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not trying to be pedantic. If you want to understand Bryan's character, you have to see that he's not the stodgy guardian of the old order that people tend to imagine : he's a revolutionary who's outlived his revolution.

--publius--