Stage review: 'It Can't Happen Here' at Berkeley Rep

PHOTO BY KEVIN BERNE

David Kelly as Buzz Windrip, a presidential candidate who vows to make America great again

Even though few if any critics hailed Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here as great literature, its message came through with such clarity and force that reviewers across the country saluted its timeliness as an American social document. One major commentator — Clifton Fadiman of New Yorker — even called it “one of the most important books ever produced in this country.”

I won’t go out on Fadiman’s limb, but I have to argue that Berkeley Repertory Theater’s new adaptation of the novel is as timely a piece of political theater as anything this country has seen since the ‘60s. It’s as pertinent as next month’s presidential election and it strongly suggests consequences that the election could bring.

Dramatically, though, the adaptation by BRT artistic director Tony Taccone and Bennett S. Cohen moves so swiftly through so many scenes — at least 20 — that it often becomes a struggle to keep track of who’s who and who’s doing what to whom. The production features 14 actors as 21 named characters and many more unnamed roles.

Lewis set his novel against a background that has clear parallels in 2016, even if these times can’t match the depths of dislocation of the 1930s. As election day approaches, today’s newscasts, political speeches and rage-filled social media shout without end about economic inequality, immigration, racial and ethnic conflict, foreign competition and much more, as we know.

The same essential message comes from the demagogue who drives events in It Can’t Happen Here, a scary charmer who vows to make America great again and guarantees a better standard of living for all. That politician is named Buzz Windrip (played to eerie perfection by David Kelly).

He’s the catalyst for the drama but not its central figure. That position goes to small-town newspaper editor Doremus Jessup (Tom Nelis), a Vermont liberal who believes deeply in individualism, tolerates differences in political philosophies and trusts that American democracy can overcome any domestic challenge. When the disaffected masses elect Windrip as president, Jessup discovers that his confidence in democratic resiliency was wrong.

(Since the early ‘30s may be ancient history to many readers, let me digress to note that the Depression and Dust Bowl of the era brought destitution to millions of Americans; the period saw consolidation of power by murderous dictators in Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union; and the new mass medium of radio produced immensely influential personalities like Father Charles Coughlin, who mixed anti-Semitism and pro-Nazi leanings with religious sermons heard by multitudes.)

Windrip’s accession to the presidency brings predictable results: the formation of uniformed goon squads to keep the populace in check, prison camps for dissenters and summary executions for anyone who strays too far from the official line. Among those swept up for incarceration is Jessup, of course.

Events cascade across rapidly shifting backgrounds, suggested by props and set pieces that are hauled on and off stage by the cast, as well as by quick changes of costume. Every moment is clear, but the speed blurs the total impact and makes engagement with individuals difficult. Perhaps to save the narrative from total bleakness, it closes on notes of ambiguity, with hints of optimism peeking through.

Among the more notable and distinct performers are Sharon Lockwood as an orating super-patriot and as Jessup’s wife, Deidrie Henry as a vocal skeptic at a throng of Windrip supporters, Scott Coopwood as a lowlife who revels in vicious power under the new regime, and Charles Shaw Robinson, whose varied roles include a Windrip-backing preacher and a genially sadistic military judge.

Rachel Hauck designed the set, which resembles a high-walled fortress with steel doors and windows that facilitate all the entrances and exits, and Alexander V. Nichols did the lighting, giving able support to the transformations.

Perhaps appropriately, It Can’t Happen Here is scheduled to close on Nov. 6, two days before we discover whether it might be prescient or consignable to paranoid history. Let’s hope there’s no reason to extend it.

It Can’t Happen Here runs through Nov. 6 in Berkeley Repertory Theater’s Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley. Tickets are $29-$97, from 510-647-2949 or berkeleyrep.org