Playwright: Bill Cain. At: Victory Gardens Theatre at the Biograph, 2433 N. Lincoln Ave. Tickets: 773-871-3000; www.victorygardens.org; $20-$50. Runs through: Oct. 14
A once-popular author, his career currently undergoing a lull, is suddenly offered a lucrative commission by a powerful patron to ghostwrite a docudrama. Research points to factual inaccuracies in the story providing the basis for the proposed play, but since our scribbler is the playwright who will someday be known as William Shakespeare and his sponsor is King James I, refusal to go along with the program carries with it the risk of not only arrest, but imprisonment and even execution.
Equivocationthe philosophical device called "diplomacy" in high places and "white lies" in lowwas invented for just such occasions as these. The impasse this time arises from the alleged "Gunpowder Plot," in which a band of conspirators protesting anti-Catholic persecution attempted to assassinate its leaders by setting off a bomb in London's Houses of Parliament. Coming to the aid of the theater company forced to assist in a government whitewash are Jesuit priest Henry Garnet's precepts for "telling the truth in difficult times." The solution? A play (declared by its creator to be naught but "politics and pornography") recounting the story of a Scottish king, not unlike the one currently on the English throne, who runs afoul of some double-dealing witches and comes to woe as a resultperhaps you've heard of it?
Bill Cain tends to overload his theses with a plethora of topical froufrouin this case, abuse of civil rights, draconian criminal process, therapy for bereft parents and other issues all but non-existent in 1603. What speaks most clearly to audiences in 2012 is not yet another jeremiad on corrupt powers, however, but the cleverness of humble citizens whose resourceful stratagems enable them to fulfill their contract while keeping their consciences clear and heads intact.
Under the direction of Sean Graney (taking a wisely unaffected approach to Cain's densely wrought brain exercise), an agile six-person ensemble sprints deftly through their physical and verbal paces, switching locales, personae and levels of consciousness with split-second alacrity. As for playgoers confused by the juxtaposition of humor with scenes of gruesome menace, we have Fr. Garnet's observation regarding the mutually beneficial contrast of laughter with tragedy. Indeed, theater buffs may recall a classic scene of bloody murder, followed closely by a hungover doorman's monologue on the topic ofwhat else?equivocation.