Review published on ChicagoCritic.com

by Brandon Hayes

A Docu-Drama Notable for its Sad Timeliness

God’s Country by Stephen Dietz examines, in a fugue-like documentary style, the murder of Allen Berg, a Denver talk radio host, in 1984. The liberal radio host was gunned down in his driveway by members of The Order, a militant white supremacist group based in Idaho. The murder actually happened and much of the play relies on dialogue that was recorded on the radio or in court transcripts. Dietz skews the narrative into an assemblage of scenes and moments that, while not chronological, lead the audience on a disturbing emotional path. While the play is overlong, there are some searing moments, and the skewed plot rewards patience and close attention.

As performed by the company at Boxer Rebellion, under the able direction of Lila M. Stromer, God’s Country is a layered tapestry of what can go wrong in the hearts and minds of average folk. Particularly provocative is that the twelve actors (a rather unwieldy group in Boxer Rebellion’s small space) play multiple characters so that the actor playing one of the prosecuting attorneys at the trial might be in the next scene as a mother indoctrinating a young Order member. Many moments in the show are declamatory…the actors plant themselves onstage and recite information or narrative. Few of the scenes are traditionally dramatized, which is a shame because it is in these scenes that the committed actors shine brightest.

Most disturbing is the Order ceremony that ends the first act. The male members in the cast (including one small boy (Benton Reynolds)) assemble onstage and act out a lacerating, hateful ceremony. Repulsion as catharsis? The only other moments in the production that equal the power of the ceremony reenactment come in the second act. Laura Ames is understated and quietly convincing as Judith Berg, testifying about the night her ex-husband was gunned-down in his driveway. Steven Gillam (who plays many roles throughout the evening) was deceptively simple in his monologue delivered by a casually racist father who is horrified to discover guns, bombs, hate literature and photos of Hitler in his grown son’s basement. The scene is a testament to the banality of evil, and Gillam delivers fine work.

John McCormick as Alan Berg, the murdered talk radio personality and Alex Gun as Robert Jay Mathews, the founder of the Order (and its martyr in a famous FBI standoff on Whigby Island) are both tempestuous and effective as the political and moral poles between which the ideas onstage gravitate.

The staging is as clean as it can be in a small space populated by a large cast. The lighting by Julie E. Ballard is particularly evocative, blinding at times and spooky at others. Perhaps the most disturbing element of the show was that the rhetoric offered by the white supremacists is so close to that offered by the radical right in today’s political climate. When members of the House of Representatives threaten federal judges or apologize for violence against members of the court, this is a play that needs to be seen widely. Boxer Rebellion does a service to Chicago and to their own mission of presenting engaged theatre here

.Recommended.