Audio By Carbonatix
In the theater it is possible to weigh arguments–to present two sides of a debate and let the audience come to its own conclusions. In the movies, and almost always on TV, what you usually get is propaganda. Occasionally, a great film will come along that is open-ended enough to allow the viewer to think through a series of ideas. But these are rare.
The theater is less manipulative. Your eye can travel anywhere on the stage. Performances vary from night to night. The actor is just as large as life, but no larger. It is difficult to control the viewer, no matter how engaging the story.
Split Second, by Dennis McIntyre, is a very serious play that requires a thoughtful response. McIntyre takes up the terrible problem of racial hatred in the late twentieth century with intelligence and tenacity. He opens a debate that is not easily resolved–and that he himself does not resolve satisfactorily. But he leaves room for the audience to carefully consider his arguments.
As the play opens in New York in the early 1980s, a young black cop arrests a younger white perpetrator trying to steal a car. The perp, Willis, is as ignorant as a rock and as vicious as a wolverine. After the cop cuffs him, young Willis sees that officer Val Johnson is black, and begins a series of unbearable racial taunts. Finally, Val turns on the perp and plugs him–right through the heart. He then takes the cuffs off, plants Willis’s knife in the dead man’s hand, replaces his ID and calls for help. Questioned by his superior officer, Val claims self-defense. The captain doesn’t buy his story but has no proof against him.
The rest of the play finds Val confessing the true story first to his wife, then to his father and finally to his best friend. The great moral dilemma in which the young man finds himself is whether to confess the truth to the captain during the departmental hearing. (If he confesses the truth, the authorities will surely send him to prison, where his survival is questionable.)
Val knows he was wrong, and that is why he suffers so much. The incident is referred to as an accident and a mistake all the way through the play. Val’s father, a retired cop, is horrified that his son lost it, and wants him to tell the truth. His wife argues that what matters is survival–Val’s and hers–and that Val must not change his story. His best friend argues that the perpetrator had it coming, and Val himself argues that he should not be subject to the rules of white society–the rules he swore as a cop to uphold and the society he swore to protect. He finds himself face to face with his own deep-seated anger toward a troubled society and its history of racial oppression and hatred.
The malevolence with which Willis spews forth his racist slurs is answered by a bullet in the heart. We understand Val’s response to the creep. It is human and immediate–just as Louise’s response to the jeering rapist in Thelma and Louise is understandable. Words are powerful–they are capable of invoking mighty forces of emotion. But even a lowlife like Willis has a mind that may be changed. Even a racist society may evolve into something better, given the day-labor of dedicated effort toward that end. To rationalize murder as a moral response to adversity in terms of cultural relativism is to perpetuate ancient animosities like those in such furious array in Bosnia now. Should we then invite every woman who has ever been raped to murder the first man who taunts her on the street? Anger is understandable. But murder is not. If there is to be any evolution toward a just society, how can the universal prohibition against murder be made morally relative? Any murder of any enemy becomes justified. And everyone becomes an enemy of someone else.
Though I strongly object to McIntyre’s relativism, I applaud the intelligence and seriousness of his discussion. Donnie l. betts’s direction keeps emotion smoldering beneath the surface until it erupts convincingly at just the right moments. Keithwayne Brock Johnson is the most promising young actor I have seen in Denver. Every time he is on stage, he draws the eye like a magnet. As the tough cop friend who confides his own past to Val, Johnson taps a well of strong emotions, complex psychological motivations and reserves of humor. Phi Bernier as the perpetrator is a marvel of malice. Mark Morgan makes Val’s superior officer Parker a rock-steady influence. Hugo Jon Sayles as Val’s perfectionist father gives as complex and intense a performance as one could wish for. Gwen Harris and Damion Evan Hoover create believable marital intimacy, and in the end, both move us with their pain.
Split Second, through February 20, Denver Civic Theatre, 721 Santa Fe Drive, 595-3800.