Los Angeles Times

STAGE REVIEW:

Odyssey Theatre’s "McCarthy" Tells Tale of Moral Terror

Critic’s Choice

Jeff Goldsmith’s view of Joseph McCarthy’s rise and fall as a gripping prizefight of political and emotional wills. An impeccable Frank Condon production with Victor Brandt’s McCarthy as a man horribly compensating for his weaknesses.

Highlights:

The beauty of Frank Condon’s production of Jeff Goldsmith’s "McCarthy" is that telling this amazing American chapter looks like no problem at all.

Condon, fortunately has taken all his cues from Goldsmith’s play (his first to be produced), which puts the senator from Wisconsin in a very palpable historical context.

With the addition of "McCarthy" it is hard to think of another theatre in Los Angeles that has so long and consistently taken audiences to the brink of moral terror and profundity in politics.

With a fluid inter-cutting of actual testimony and invented, behind-the-scenes dialogue, Goldsmith follows his best dramatic instincts and makes Roy Cohn the major secondary character. His other good choice was to bore in on McCarthy’s personal relationships: on Cohn and his assistant G. David Schine, and on the infamous, convoluted (though clarified here) "Army-McCarthy hearings."

"McCarthy", as much as anything, is a study in weak men horribly compensating for what they see as shortcomings. Joe’s a big boxing fan, and in one of the play’s best scenes, he cajoles the newly hired Cohn into a little match that turns ugly. The dance of macho shadowboxing that is the play’s repeated motif is perhaps its most original insight: It links Jean’s taunting of Joe when she wonders if he isn’t more "interested" in Cohn than in her, with McCarthy’s merciless badgering of witnesses.

The full text of this review is available on request.