FringeReview UK 2024
Kunstler
Jeffrey Sweet, Will Severin, Kristine Niven, Patricia Di Benedetto Snyder, Jacqui Garbett
Genre: American Theater, Biographical Drama, Drama, Fringe Theatre, New Writing, Political, Short Plays, Theatre
Venue: White Bear Kennington
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Or in this case: who scrutinises the scrutineers? Well that’s not a line the great civil rights lawyer Bill Kunstler asks himself here, but it’s what he asks of the law, and in a neat twist, it’s what’s asked of him too. Jeffrey Sweet’s Off-Broadway smash Kunstler plays at the White Bear Kennington directed by Meagan Fay till May18th.
An outstanding production persuading us such a self-narrating show can enthral as well as inform. A hidden gem.
Director Meagan Fay, Composer/Sound Designer/Co-Producer Will Severin, Co-Producers Kristine Niven, Patricia Di Benedetto Snyder, Jacqui Garbett, Costume Designer. Elivia Bovenzi, Production Stage Manager Mary Jane Hansen, ASM Anny DeGange.
Till May18th
Review
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Or in this case: who scrutinises the scrutineers? Well that’s not a line the great civil rights lawyer Bill Kunstler asks himself here, but it’s what he asks of the law, and in a neat twist, it’s what’s asked of him too. Jeffrey Sweet’s Off-Broadway smash Kunstler plays at the White Bear Kennington directed by Meagan Fay till May18th.
It’s 1995. Scattered litter crowned by a rag-doll hung with ‘Traitor’. To howls of protests by right-wingers (Will Severin’s evocative sound and musical snatches sharply cued) 76-year-old Bill Kunstler (Jeff McCarthy) arrives at a campus to give the 90-minute talk we’re about to hear, hosted by Kerry (Nykila Norman).
As ever he’s ebullient, witty, and self-deprecating in a braggadocio way. “A good lawyer is someone who knows the law. A great lawyer is someone who knows the judge… What do you call a lawyer with an IQ of 70? A Senator.”
So why, especially when Kunstler (as he finds out) actually helped free her Civil Rights-campaigning father, did Kerry vote against Kunstler’s coming here? She has beef with some of Kunstler’s assumptions? And there’s much play with his natty jacket – costume designer Elivia Bovenzi invokes much with just a few items.
McCarthy’s physical presence and delivery is strikingly close to Kunstler, one reason Sweet thought of him. Clutching his brief, which he occasionally reads from Kunstler barrels on, makes some sue fo the two white chairs available and sometimes asks Kerry to eith read an adversary in for him to knock down, or indeed summarise points of law herself. It serves to justify the role of Kerry and build to the pay-off.
We’re treated to Kunstler’s life by lightning, indeed the most glancing of flashes to his two wives and four daughters. Returning from war service Kunstler sets up practice with his attorney elder brother in Westchester.
Soon he’s inexorably drawn to champion civil rights, defends Paul Redd in a 1960 rent-discrimination case by the expedient of having white juniors prove a place is available for rent where a Black man’s been told it’s full. So from1961 Kunstler starts a career being parachuted everywhere particularly the south.
There’s a string of cases, an autobiography the defence of the Berrigan brothers in 1968 at a time of assassinations: Martin Luther King Jr and Bobby Kennedy. Throughout, Kunstler’s relying on Federal or national law to override the prejudices of State law, particularly in the South.
Most striking is Kunstler’s 1971 attempt as nominated lawyer – by protesting prison inmates in Attica State Prison – to secure better rights. Using a chair as platform, McCarthy invokes the tensions and stand-offs, the compromises and sudden turns of mood. He manages this, but the governor decides to go in and 33 are killed, including prison guard hostages: none were killed by inmates.
That same year Wounded Knee II (I was the ‘battle’ or massacre of 1890) on behalf of native Americans.
The common thread is how Kunstler discovers inexorably that Federal judges side with forces of reaction, that as in the above case, it’s only the judge himself who, representing the government finds against it, and literally washes his hands of his own brief.
Faced with this disillusion, that a pivotal win changes nothing but ushers in a period of reaction, the real Kunstler battles on. Here we elide those years and sense the underlying arc of disenchantment.
Kunstler makes a pitch for us the students to be above all wise, rather than just smart. He also has a propensity to hug everyone, including opposing attorneys. This indeed is alarming. McCarthy tries it on us.
It’s an extraordinary performance, full of stride and charm, wickedly self-deprecating smartness that isn’t always wise. Yet McCarthy’s Kunstler is a convoluted ironist who enjoys subverting himself.
Yet McCarthy’s Kunstler fills the room, His presence as actor and inhabiting the role is outstanding. More, McCarthy persuades us of Kunstler’s speed of thought, his connectives rush in as he veers to a new topic with a quarter-beat, and self-interrupts.
Norman’s an excellent foil as Kerry, watchful, guarded, taken off-guard too but truthful. Why did Kunstler defends a Black man who went on a killing rampage leaving six dead? Just what are his assumptions?
Norman narrates the pay-off, and it should be lights down. It isn’t. An outstanding production persuading us such a self-narrating show can enthral as well as inform. A hidden gem.
