Review: Inherit the Wind

Clarence Darrow (wikipedia)

Yesterday is Today

A rousing, if slightly flat, rendition of a courthouse Holy War reminds us that the teaching of evolution is still in question

by Sarah Deshaies
@sarahdeshaies

“After Tuesday’s election, four new members will join the Kansas State Board of Education, but one thing likely won’t change — students will continue to learn about evolution,” reads an opening paragraph in a news article. “That means Intelligent Design isn’t likely to return to Kansas science standards anytime soon.”

The dateline on this article in The Topeka-Capital Journal is Nov. 7, 2012 - a questionable near 80 years after the sensational Scopes Monkey Trial, a case in Tennessee where a teacher was prosecuted for teaching evolution. Inherit the Wind is the 1955 theatrical retelling of the Scopes trial, but set in the town of Hillsboro - “the buckle on the Bible Belt.” 

In Montreal, where the hot education debates mostly revolve around at which age the government should mandate language in classrooms, and funding one of the cheapest post-secondary education on the continent, it’s hard to imagine that beyond our borders, questions of science pedagogy are still brewing. 

Oddly enough, while intelligent design in Kansas is apparently on the out, legislators in Tennessee easily passed the “Monkey Bill” earlier this year. It allows teachers to discuss the “alternative” theories of science like evolution and cloning, but only if students question them.

Some old debates, like religion vs. science, die hard. 

Review: Waiting For Godot

Rachel Resnik and Martin Law (photo credit: Eric Chad)

Bang The Old Toy Around
by Caitlin Murphy

You gotta give props to any young theatre company kicking off a season of classics with Beckett’s most angst-ridden modern masterpiece, Waiting for Godot.  And, of course, you have to expect said company – in this case, McGill Player's Theatre –  to want to bang that old toy around and see what else it can do.

In Godot, two unfortunates, Vladimir (Rachel Resnik) and Estragon (Martin Law), desperately try to pass the time as they wait for the elusive Godot.  Momentary diversions from their dull fate – word play, story-telling and the arrival of others –  at least help them maintain “the impression that they exist”.  Not for weak-willed plot-lovers, of course, the play circles, repeats and explicitly addresses its own tedium.  (No coincidence that Vivian Mercer once called it “a play in which nothing happens, twice.”) 

In one of Director Isaac Robinson’s playful revisions, Beckett’s minimalist set of “A country road.  A tree,” becomes the brick-walled back alley of a bar.  Godot’s bar, in fact, as the sign on the delivery door tells us.  And though it affords some really fun choices, such a distinct setting also kills the ‘middle of nowhere’ factor that feels so central to our anti-heroes’ predicament.  That said, it was actually the decision to do away with the tree – gestures towards it felt not so much minimalist as confusing and ill-defined – that I found disappointing.  

Review: The Oresteia: Rewritten

by Sarah Deshaies

There’s something cut and dried about Greek theatre: tragedy befalls a group of people people, usually a family, the gods get involved, and loads and loads of people die fraught, over-the-top deaths. Much like reality tv, it’s a loud, messy trainwreck - with gods playing the roles of conniving producers, manipulating the mere mortals.

The Oresteia: Rewritten breathes modern life into the ancient myth of Aeschylus’s The Oresteia, the Greek side of the story in the Trojan War. The Oracle predicts that Orestes will kill his mother one day, a price to pay for his father’s victory in the Trojan War.


McGill student Max Zidel crafts a piece that cuts straight to the heart of the humans caught in a deadly game of sacrifice and oracle predictions. When Electra (Annie MacKay) speaks of the grief that comes from having your mom murder your dad because he sacrificed your big sister to win a war and defend your country’s honour, it’s in terms anybody wrestling with loss can understand.