Broadway revival reflects evolution debate

By Christine Kearney

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A revival of a major Broadway play that tackles the U.S. debate over Darwin's theory of evolution is more topical now than when it was first staged more than 50 years ago, the play's director and critics say.

"Inherit The Wind" pits Charles Darwin's theory of evolution against the biblical account of creation. It is the fictional account of the 1925 Scopes Trial, otherwise known as the "monkey trial," where science teacher John Scopes was tried and convicted in Tennessee for teaching evolution.

The play's Tony Award-winning director, Doug Hughes, citing efforts in recent years to weaken the teaching of evolution in public schools in such states as Kansas, Pennsylvania and Georgia, said the work had more relevance today than when it first opened in 1955.

"The idea that 50 or more years later there is more controversy about its teaching than there may have been in '55 ... is amazing," said Hughes.

The play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee was written in response to McCarthyism -- the post-World War Two era of anti-communist fervor and investigations.

"The plot, the gizmo, of this play is actually aligned pretty closely with what is currently going on in the body politic," Hughes said.

The play was adapted into a 1960 movie of the same name, starring Spencer Tracy and Fredric March.

Reviews of the latest revival were generally positive and hailed Christopher Plummer's performance. Most noted the timing of the play's subject matter, including a chilling line uttered by Plummer: "You don't suppose this kind of thing is ever finished, do you?"

New York Times critic Ben Brantley noted that "while the subject of teaching evolution and religion in public schools is even more topical" than when it was first staged, "Mr. Plummer at play is something sacred."

AN AMERICAN DEBATE

The play, which opened on Thursday, shows what is an inherently American debate between biblical and secular thought, Hughes said.

"Fundamental belief seems to be very important to us in America. We are among the most religious countries on earth, he said.

"And yet our democracy is founded on an extremely secular document, the United States Constitution, and therein lies the paradox -- how do you square those two things?"

In the play, Plummer and Brian Dennehy play characters based on the real-life opposing attorneys during the Scopes trial, which pitted famed civil liberties lawyer Clarence Darrow against the politician and devout Presbyterian William Jennings Bryan, a three-time Democratic Party nominee for president.

Hughes said the play did not support either side of the debate, recently reignited through a theory called "intelligent design." It argues the variety of living things on Earth is so complex that an intelligent force, which some say is God, must have been responsible.