Podcasts

Woman Around Town’s Editor Charlene Giannetti and writers for the website talk with the women and men making news in New York, Washington, D.C., and other cities around the world. Thanks to Ian Herman for his wonderful piano introduction.

Joseph McCarthy

Mike Daisey Plays The Trump Card

08/05/2016

Donald J. Trump – This is your life!  – as told by monologist Mike Daisey. While the nearly two-hour solo performance produces many laugh-out-loud moments, Daisey ends on a sobering note: Trump may not be elected president, but what he has accomplished has set the stage for future candidates who will follow his playlist.

Daisy attempts to soften the blows by, at times, not only empathizing with Trump, but also comparing himself to the real estate mogul turned political candidate. Donald’s father, Fred, was an “alleged” racist (“alleged” emphasized by Daisey), as was Daisey’s grandfather, described as a crusty character from Maine. Daisey’s mother and father served as buffers, both parents condemning the older man’s attitude, while Trump was not sheltered from his father, instead inheriting his business and, we are led to believe, his prejudices.

Daisey’s father frequently cruised yard sales and mailed his children packages wrapped in brown paper and secured with lots of tape. While Daisey says he often burned the packages before opening them, on one occasion his father’s note proves intriguing. Inside, Daisey finds a Trump version of the popular board game, Monopoly. Daisy decides to throw a theme party, inviting friends over to play the vintage game. He serves Trump steaks (actually regular steaks that he slaps a Trump label on). Rather than Monopoly’s two die, the Trump game has one dice, a capital “T” substituting for the numeral six. Throw that letter, and the player gets to essentially rob the game’s bank.

daisey_portrait_1While most Americans now know a great deal about Trump, Daisey puts his own spin on The Donald’s history. Trump was only 27 when he took over the family business, shifting the company’s focus from Queens to Manhattan, but continuing his father’s business practices which, Daisey says, meant holding out payments to contractors and then paying less than was owed. Those who objected were threatened with being blackballed by the construction industry, he says.

Besides his father, Trump’s greatest influence, according to Daisey, was the lawyer, Roy Cohn. (On the night I attended, a young member of the audience leaned over to her mother, whispering, “Who’s Roy Cohn?” Anticipating that millennials might not recognize the name, Daisey is prepared.) Cohn was chief counsel to Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch hunt. A closeted homosexual who died of complications of AIDS, Cohn, Daisey reminds us, has been portrayed in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America and on The Simpsons as the blue-haired lawyer representing Mr. Burns, the evil owner of the Springfield Nuclear Plant. After resigning from McCarthy’s committee, Cohn went into private practice and for 13 years one of his clients was Donald Trump. He represented Trump against charges brought by the Justice Department for violations of the Fair Housing Act. Daisy notes that Trump settled and there was never any indication that he was found guilty.

daisey_trump_portrait_3This is a low tech production – just Daisey sitting at a table with a glass of water and a small towel that he uses to blot sweat from his face. (While the photos included here show shots of Trump, none were used during the press performance.) He has notes in front of him, but often improvises. With Trump producing new headlines each day, Daisey has plenty of opportunity to update his script. The fact that the Republican presidential nominee ejected a crying baby from a rally made it into the performance I attended.

While Daisey stressed that he does the necessary research for his monologues, he ran into trouble with his The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs after a portion was broadcast on “This American Life,” a public radio show. “I have difficult news,” Ira Glass, the host and executive producer stated on the radio show’s blog. “We’ve learned that Mike Daisey’s story about Apple in China – which we broadcast in January – contained significant fabrications. We’re retracting the story because we can’t vouch for its truth.”

The incident raises an interesting question: are Daisey’s monologues journalism or entertainment? The Trump Card was certainly entertaining. And, in what is turning out to be a wacky presidential campaign, much needed relief.

The Trump Card
Written and performed by Mike Daisey
Directed by Isaac Butler
Woolly Mammoth Theatre
641 D Street NW
Through August 7, 2016

Murrow – TV News’ Gold Standard

05/12/2016

When this off-Broadway play was announced back in March, I rushed to get my name on the list of patrons. Like most people who write for a living, having a chance to peer into the head of one of the most renowned journalists in America held a certain sway.

Playing at The Wild Project through May 22, an intimate theatre deep in Alphabet City, at 195 East Third Street, the script by Joseph Vitale stars Joseph Menino, who has the look (and chain-smoking cigarette demeanor) of the eminent broadcaster, down to his slicked-back and pomaded coif, deep baritone, and trademark braces.

The set is simple—chair, table, and the 1940’s microphone, a far cry from the tiny buds we see pinned to broadcasters today. Menino did a good job of recapping Murrow’s rise to fame, which began on a farm in Polecat Creek, North Carolina, then a move, at age six, with his family to homestead in Washington State, where he excelled in debate under the tutelage of Ida Lou Anderson, his polio-ridden teacher.  Her guidance followed him well into his career—it was she who instructed him on the proper diction of his, “This is London” preamble to his broadcasts during the blitz while on foreign assignment for CBS.

Murrow2The actor-as-narrator also explained the genesis of “Good Night and Good Luck”, the phrase he used to sign off.  During war-time London’s incessant bombing by Berlin, citizens couldn’t be sure if their friends would be alive the next day following a raid. (Murrow and his wife, Janet Brewster, lost a dear friend in one particularly horrific one.)

Murrow’s World War II broadcasts were so effective in drumming up support for Britain that Prime Minister Winston Churchill asked him to join the BBC. (He demurred, although he carried on a public affair with the Prime Minister’s daughter-in-law, Pamela Churchill, a fact not mentioned in the play, but including it would have done a great deal to liven it up and move it beyond a staged biopic.)

His war-time reporting culminated with being embedded in Patton’s Third Army and Murrow’s broadcasting of the horrors witnessed at the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. Menino delivered it with the ringing tone of abject disgust, including the reference to “bodies stacked up like cordwood,” which still repels us (and rightfully so) 71 years hence.

Murrow3Murrow returned to the United States after the War, and continued to work for Bill Paley and CBS in the pioneering days of television, culminating with his “See It Now” series. One segment, which showcased Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy’s red scare, is often credited with leading to the senator’s ultimate censure and downward spiral to his death from alcoholism.

Murrow’s hard-hitting reporting was a double-edged sword, clueing his viewers on sordid details, but frequently offending the network brass (and its advertisers) in the process, and then permanently destroying his close friendship with Paley. His resignation from CBS led to leadership of the United States Information Agency under President John F. Kennedy.

Although the play would benefit from more insight into Murrow’s personality, for those who admire the man and his work, Murrow is a good start. Given today’s backdrop of political correctness, Murrow reminds us of a time when broadcasters spoke their mind—and were willing to accept the consequences.

Photo credit: Gerry Goodstein