"DOPE," Defiant Theatre at American Theater Company
BY LUCIA MAURO
The sharply choreographed opening montage for Defiant Theatre’s production of "Dope" – a drug bust ending with a greedy glimpse at a corrupt cop – encapsulates in two provocative minutes what takes playwright Christopher Johnson well over two hours to jab into our collective veins. Johnson’s encyclopedic exposé of hypocritical and opportunistic U.S. drug policy since the country’s founding certainly exhausts the tainted corridors of government, academia and most political movements.
But his play -- receiving its world premiere at American Theater Company -- is not really an exposé because nearly all the events chronicled, from General Noriega imprisoned as a scapegoat for America’s "War on Drugs" to George W.’s cocaine-ingesting past, are common knowledge.
This is unfortunate, considering the breadth, scope and infinite complexity of drug-related issues in this country. Instead of acutely deconstructing the concept of drugs as a key tool in nationwide power plays – and placing them within a multitiered context – Johnson opts to merely give us a didactic and gratuitously sensationalistic lesson in hemp history. The playwright needs an editor to not only reign in his tendency to clobber us over the head with repetitious buffoonery but also to sift through this psychedelic theatrical thesis and find a gripping seed of relevance.
"Dope" is structured as a maniacal timeline, beginning with George Washington’s hemp crops and slogging through the subsequent decades – and presenting, with the utmost sophomoric unoriginality, every public official as a hyperbolic goon. The motif of a new president being sworn in – only to re-shuffle drug policy to his advantage – grows stale as early as FDR. Johnson’s point may be that for all the "Just Say No" rallies, nothing has changed. But mirroring such a static idea in a dramatic-comedic format can threaten to bore an audience to tears.
If the playwright zeroed in on truly groundbreaking cases and spent more time artfully showing rather than blatantly telling, "Dope" could be a potent weapon in the very sane argument for legalizing drugs. Instead we just get a re-hashish of the daily news – and its most superficial aspects to boot: Nancy Reagan’s red suit and self-serving war on drugs; a long-winded and unclear segment on Watergate; Timothy Leary’s LSD experiments and the Beat poets; author Ken Kesey at Berkeley; Pablo Escobar’s Colombian drug empire; the 1968 Democratic Convention; a mincing George Bush, Sr.; an excerpt from "Miami Vice"; and Clinton’s inspired spin of not inhaling. Indoctrination of poor, mainly black youth into the drug trade – via higher capitalist powers – is a point made ad nauseam.
Most maddening, however, is Jennifer Gehr’s "pregnant crack whore" character, whose sole purpose (besides enticing Mayor Marion Barry to smoke a crack pipe with her) is to announce the locations of each scene – from Harvard to Harlem -- in a wasted growl before lighting up and stumbling off the stage.
Directors Johnson and Jim Slonina take a hyperactive sight-gag route – yet the staging, despite full-frontal nudity and shoot-outs (including one shameless hocking of the battle scene in "Apocalypse Now"), is deadly dull. A high-energy cast portraying multiple roles often appears to be running in circles of forced edginess on a ragged, duct tape-lined set. Ultimately, "Dope" is little more than a parade of presidential impressions, which provide as much enlightenment about our country’s hopelessly dire drug dilemma as "MSNBC."
Johnson has squandered his potential for bringing to the fore deft and cogent arguments in favor of a re-haul of farcical U.S. drug policy. His extensive research gets the best of him, and his points exhaust themselves in nanoseconds. The legalization – and, therefore, decriminalization – of drugs should be one of our nation’s top priorities. It’s insipid shows like "Dope" that need to be outlawed.•
Defiant Theatre’s production of "Dope" runs through August 10 at American Theater Company, 1909 W. Byron (at Lincoln). Tickets: $15-$20. Call 312-409-0585 or log onto www.defianttheatre.org.
