With our whole group, we attended a performance of
Inherit the Wind, at Old Vic Theatre.
The theatre was located on the other side of the Thames, and is one of the most respected performance spaces in London. Sir Laurence Olivier performed here, along with many other notables.
It was gorgeous and lush, in an old fashion-y way.
The production was grand--the stage was enormous, stretching further and further back into the depths of backstage. It was a huge production, really well done.
The play itself, whose cast included Kevin Spacey, was fabulous, with few exceptions. Inherit the Wind is about the Scopes Trial (or the Monkey Trial, as it was commonly known as), an American court case that tested the Butler Act which made it unlawful, in any state-funded educational establishment in Tennessee "to teach any theory that denies the story of the Devine Creation of man as taught in the Bible and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." This is often interpreted as meaning that the law forbade the teaching of any aspect of evolutions or Darwin's theory. The case, financed as a test case by the ACLU, was a critical turning point in the U.S.'s creation-evolution controversy.
While the caricatures of the rural, southern, religious townspeople may have been a tad overdone-- and the southern accents of the British actors were a little absurd-- the production was wonderful and really captured the core of what many argue is the cause of American exceptionalism in the developed world.
The theatre was located on the other side of the Thames, and is one of the most respected performance spaces in London. Sir Laurence Olivier performed here, along with many other notables.
It was gorgeous and lush, in an old fashion-y way.
The production was grand--the stage was enormous, stretching further and further back into the depths of backstage. It was a huge production, really well done.
The play itself, whose cast included Kevin Spacey, was fabulous, with few exceptions. Inherit the Wind is about the Scopes Trial (or the Monkey Trial, as it was commonly known as), an American court case that tested the Butler Act which made it unlawful, in any state-funded educational establishment in Tennessee "to teach any theory that denies the story of the Devine Creation of man as taught in the Bible and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." This is often interpreted as meaning that the law forbade the teaching of any aspect of evolutions or Darwin's theory. The case, financed as a test case by the ACLU, was a critical turning point in the U.S.'s creation-evolution controversy.
While the caricatures of the rural, southern, religious townspeople may have been a tad overdone-- and the southern accents of the British actors were a little absurd-- the production was wonderful and really captured the core of what many argue is the cause of American exceptionalism in the developed world.
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