Tynan's Anger

In How Theater Failed America, Mike Daisey's wonderful recent solo play, Daisey complained that building a giant new theatrical space means that a theater company was less inclined to take risks with that it put inside of them—at least for a few years. It seems that that grace period for the Class of '62 Center of the Williamstown Theatre Festival, which opened in 2005, has finally passed with the staging of the magnificent, bruising one man play The Atheist. Featuring Williamstown regular in Campbell Scott in a role that is alternately sympathetic and borderline sociopathic, The Atheist is one of the best character studies ever written about a yellow journalist, a character normally dismissed as a vulture or a leech.

The Atheist has all the makings of a breakthrough play for 38-year-old Irish playwright Ronan Noone. Unlike his countrymen Martin McDonagh and Conor MacPherson, Noone's tastes like squarely in Americana. A New England resident for the past two decades, Noone opens the play with a tale of bumfuck Kansas. The Kansas boy in that tale is the play's only actor and main character, Scott's Augustine Early, a contemporary H.L. Mencken fitter for a Tennessee Williams play than Inherit the Wind. From a young age, Augustine realizes his only way of escaping the trappings of small-town life is by lying, conniving and manipulating his way up the social ladder, a talent that suits him particularly well for the field of journalism.

Machiavellian characters are nothing new to drama, and the play would be a failure if it just focused on Early's hardened side. Indeed, with the harshness of the plays opening, which had some matinee attendees leaving the theater after the first ten minutes, it doesn't look like you'll want to stick around for the next hour and a half. Yet, the key revelation of Early's saga is his casual admittance that he does have a heart beneath his gruff exterior. In the middle of the first act, Early gives a speech about caring only for yourself, the kind of speech that would make Ayn Rand proud. The key to this speech, however, is his qualification, "It helps if it comes natural to you," setting the tone for the struggles he'll eventually face in subduing his conscious.

Throughout the play, Early is taping himself, checking his notes through a handful of composition notebooks, and wading through a stack of VHS tapes. Those that have seen Double Idemnity will be able to identify the confessional format at hand. Those who haven't may be infuriated at the use of video that at first seems completely superfluous. It's true that Justin Waldman's use of video to mark scene breaks takes away from the realistic narrative flow, and the play may have been better off in real time without an intermission. But Waldman more than makes up for this single technical indulgence with the hand he lends to Scott's natural stage presence.

Scott, who throughout his career has had somewhat of a hard time expressing larger emotions, initially doesn't seem like the right fit for the role, sounding more bitchy than visceral and not emphasizing the script's punchlines. But we later learn that Early is a very internalized man trapped in a corner of his own making, who refuses to feel sorry for himself. And gruffness is one of Scott's specialties.

Early is a realist; he understands how the media works, and doesn't try to question the ethics of its current state. Instead, Early decides to use the dark side of the media to promote himself as prominently as possible, as a method of overcoming all the obstacles of his upbringing and deeply flawed social relationships. He sees the play's tragic conclusion as means of enhancing his public image as opposed to affecting his private life, whatever that is.

When we think of an ambulance chasing, conniving journalist pushing for a story in a media circus, we tend to place the blame on the individual journalist himself. Far less often do we blame the industry for making him behave that way, and ignore his own individual motivations for doing so. Augustine Early not only personifies these nuances of yellow journalism, but pummels them into your brain, expressing his values with such forcefulness and conviction that he dares you to question his ethics. Like Tony Soprano, he's a monster, but he's also human. The Atheist is the best kind of drama: a tough savage work that makes you reconsider notions that have laid dormant for years. In an age with celebrity gossip and the paparazzi at unprecedented prominence, The Atheist is a vital testament to the humanity and honesty of the leech.

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Through July 6. Starring Campbell Scott (Augustine Early). Written by Ronan Noone. Directed by Justin Waldman. Set design by Cristina Todesco. Lighting design by Ben Stanton. Sound design by Alex Neumann. Costume design by Jessica Curtwright.
Photo by T. Charles Erickson

Labels: 2008-2009, ronan noone, the atheist, williamstown theatre festival