“A play that every teenager in the region should be taken to see… teaches as much as it enthralls and entertains”

“…the art of the storyteller that this actor possesses and the grace of a ballet dancer that he displays (and that never distracts or confuses) makes the 90-minute play enthralling. There is much to be said for the balance de la Fuente maintains between total reality and utter theatricality. Moments of actual fear for his person infiltrates the audience space as Gordon attempts to live by the words and the spirit of the Constitution. As he defends what is intrinsically American, it is impossible not to reflect on the idiocy of mistakes repeated in our current world as Congress defends the decisions made by our elected leader to do what he believes is right, though it is obviously wrong, about our immigrant situation. The human errors—or inhuman, if you’d like—from the 1940s that startle us each week as new, contemporary solutions to a problem that doesn’t really exist are drawn out here on the Barrington Stage for us to witness up close. It is the power of really good theater that gives us the almost-touch-it feeling as a political mistake beautifully takes place in a local arena. By the end we can almost feel what the American Japanese felt when they were wrongly quarantined for no actual reason.

This is a play that every teenager in the region should be taken to see. It teaches as much as it enthralls and entertains. It’s an important piece.”

The Berkshire Edge
J. Peter Bergman