Sharp political satire gives 'Blinders' its bite
In millennial America, it seems ''facts" have become just another mode of political discourse -- so the boondoggle at the heart of Patrick Gabridge's ''Blinders," a new play at Boston Playwrights' Theatre, incites neither shock nor awe, but only wry recognition -- and many a bitter belly laugh. While this satire may be sharp, it's also thin, and more an extended sketch than a real play. Still, attention must be paid to the author's nerve, along with the witty finesse with which he dodges real political danger.
''Blinders" is an unrepentant cri de coeur dripping with blue-state scorn for the current preference for evangelism over empiricism. The play opens with a ''shocking discovery": two men whom experts claim are completely identical, despite sharing no relatives. The only problem is these guys are ''twins" the same way Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger were. They don't look alike; in fact they're not even the same height (they just finish each other's sentences as if sharing a single mind). Nevertheless, a Christian-right marketing juggernaut -- aided by a complicit media -- pushes this miraculous ''double-header" to stardom, and then a presidential bid.
The only person who can stop America's self-deception, it seems, is reporter Karen Sayer (Karen Woodward Massey) -- although she hardly has a chance before being committed to an asylum for ''impaired perception." It's in the nuthouse that Karen hooks up with an assassination conspiracy that crosses ''Get Smart" with ''The Manchurian Candidate." Gabridge is far too smart to play with this darkest of blue-state fantasies for long, however, and quickly finds an escape hatch from his own plot -- one that leads, in fact, to a more intriguing take on the perils of co-optation.
While Gabridge's aim is true, his cuts don't go very deep. His ambiguously same duo isn't a resonant enough device to evoke the fear and panic undergirding the Christian right, and as the evil twins, Joshua Feldman and Joseph Zamparelli Jr. never find their overlapping groove.
Meanwhile lead actress Massey is just too deeply reasonable to ever take us over the edge. These three are surrounded, however, by a crack comic cast, with standout turns from Alisha Jansky, Steve Auger, and Maureen Keiller. If the Christian right takes it on the halo from ''Blinders," it's due to these comic devils lurking in the details.
