Judgment at Nuremberg
The occasion was the appearance of George Ryan. An unexpected corollary to his recent commutations of death sentences is that he’s been attending a lot of theater lately. Well, a lot by governor of Illinois standards. OK, two plays that I know of in the past six months, but that’s two more than I remember seeing any other governor, or recently deposed governor, at. (The other was The Exonerated, about people who become enmeshed in the judicial system and manage to fight their way out.)
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I see TV reporters at Chicago opening nights only slightly more often than I see governors. The reporter was there, of course, to film the former governor. And Ryan was there because the iconic Judgment at Nuremberg is perceived as wearing its moral heart on its sleeve: the Nazis are bad and they need to be punished. It seems he wants to be associated with a similarly unambiguous message: our judicial system is unfair and arbitrary, especially when it comes to the punishment of capital crimes–a message ideally suited to TV journalism. The irony is that the play–like the governor’s legacy, which includes both his courageous stand on the death penalty and the license-for-bribes scandal–depicts a situation much too complex, too full of backroom politics and moral compromise, to be reduced to an easy interpretation.
Tempting as it might have been, Mann doesn’t merely point an accusing finger at the Germans. He also refers to the various moral compromises America made in fighting the cold war. At one point a Pentagon official complains that the Nuremberg trials should be called off because we need the Germans as allies in our undeclared war on Soviet Russia. At another it’s clear that certain right-wing politicians have more sympathy for Nazi doctrine than for FDR’s liberal agenda.
Contey’s choice levels the field for an ensemble that includes both very strong performers (Brian McCaskill as Rolfe, Linda Reiter, Rebecca Jordan) and actors who are merely pretty good. In a louder, larger production, the soft-spoken, bland Doug McDade, playing Judge Haywood, would be in danger of disappearing entirely. Making the play quieter and more even in tone also has the paradoxical effect of bringing the strongest elements of Mann’s script to the fore–his ear for dialogue, his eye for the small gesture–while underplaying the weakest: its melodramatic side.
