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A parable of freedom

By John Angell Grant Special to the Daily Planet
Friday November 08, 2002

Some feel America is now trading personal liberty for increased security in the current fight against terrorism. Opinions about the wisdom of this choice vary along the political spectrum. 

Berkeley Repertory Theatre chimed in on the question Wednesday with the opening of “Menocchio,” a new play written and directed by Lillian Groag. 

Intended as a cautionary tale about today’s narrowing political climate, “Menocchio” is a comedy/drama about one man’s discovery of independent thought in 16th century Italy. 

Playwright Groag is a well-known director of New York, regional and international opera and theater who has made forays into the world of scriptwriting in recent years. 

Berkeley Rep showcased her wonderful “Magic Fire” a few seasons back. The play about European immigrants to South America was based on Groag’s own family. 

Her “Ladies of the Camellias,” about dueling turn-of-the-century stage divas Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse, has been widely produced. 

Berkeley Rep’s “Menocchio” proves to be a strong technical production of a script that’s not quite there yet. Its black-and-white, good-and-evil story tends to be obvious and simplistic, and lecture downwards towards its audience. 

Based on an actual historical figure, Menocchio (Charles Dean) is an uneducated man and the operator of a mill. Taught to read by a local priest (Peter Van Norden) during fishing trips, Menocchio then reads a few banned books.  

He becomes fascinated with ideas about science, religion and other heresies. Word of his love of thinking filters through the community and reaches the ears of the church, which puts him on trial before an inquisitor. 

The acting is good in this production. Charles Dean is an amusing, twitching Menocchio, simultaneously both a simple man and a burgeoning thinker, discovering new parts of himself. 

Jeri Lynn Cohen is loving and sarcastic as his witty, agitated wife, concerned that Menocchio will get himself in trouble with the authorities. 

Dan Hiatt is wonderful as Menocchio’s worried friend Bastian. In one of the show’s highlights, Hiatt plays a hilarious succession of five characters brought in as witnesses in the church trial of Menocchio. 

Van Norden has amusing moments as the exasperated local priest, fearful that Menocchio’s unorthodox ideas will land him in the soup. Robert Sicular plays several roles effectively, including a foppish local nobleman and a vicious state prosecutor. 

Ken Ruta creates an interesting, multi-faceted church inquisitor with a low-key manner in the play’s second half. 

Designer Alexander V. Nichols has staged the action on an enormous astrolabe, a device for measuring the stars. The astrolabe rotates, and people rotate on it, as a reminder in this world of feudal religious views that we are part of a solar system governed by laws of science. 

“Menocchio” is a bit like a Mime Troupe show, but not a great Mime Troupe show. Broad agitprop, it is written in humorous, anachronistic, modern-day speech. 

Especially in the first half, the story tends to be black and white politically. Further, the humor of the script seems labored. The work of making it funny falls on the shoulders of the actors. 

Because the play tips its message early, it doesn’t have anywhere to go thematically. The message seems patronizing in its unsubtleness. The audience doesn’t learn so much as watch a tableau of sarcasm and ridicule. 

A cartoony description of evolution, for example, sends a frightened crowd fleeing from a bar. Later, a debate between Menocchio and the priest on their differing views reiterates the obvious. 

In the second act, when the play sets a serious tone at Menocchio’s trial, it is often more successful. Carried away with humorous self-confidence, Dean comes alive in a wonderful interaction with Ruta’s subtle, disturbing inquisitor,  

“Menocchio” is a cautionary story about intellectual freedom. But there’s a self-contradiction in this tale about the importance of thinking. The play asks the big questions, but before allowing the audience to think about them, quickly slips in the answers.