Gregory Burke's "Gagarin Way'

If I could draw one conclusion from Gregory Burke's Gagarin Way, it's "Don't look to playwrights for answers."

Over the past half-century democratic instincts have dug deep roots around the world— not only in government but also in theater, where playwrights shrink from the notion of dictating their ideas to actors or audiences.

In Burke's play, two Scottish factory workers (Eddie and Gary) believe that management will soon shutter their plant, so they've taken middle-manager Frank (and security guard Tom) hostage to "send a message" to the bosses who control their livelihoods. They plan to murder Frank as a conscious statement of protest against multinational capitalism.

Gary wants to bring political violence back into fashion through the "propaganda of the deed"; the thuggish Eddie, along for the ride, indulges savagery as part of his occupational therapy. Tom tempers their outbursts by arguing, "It doesn't have to be capitalism or socialism; you can pick what you want from both." To this Frank laughs in reply, adding, "Capitalism can't be domesticated."

As the vicious conclusion descends— in crime, it's in for a penny, in for a pound— the only point you can hear clearly from Burke is one Marx made over 150 years ago: economics uber alles. Ninety-five minutes later, the audience, despite the intoxicating power of this play and production, must still wonder: What can these men, or any men, do?

Space put to good use

Inis Nua Theatre's intense, exceptional production can't be blamed for Burke's script. Though Meghan Jones's set consists of just a factory wall and some poles, crates, boxes and metal shelves, it establishes the tiny teacup into which the hurricane of this hostage drama can rage. (It also finally shows future designers how to put the Adrienne's Playground space to good use.)

Before Jered McLenigan utters one nearly-incomprehensible word in Eddie's butter-thick brogue, he affects the posture, nervous tics, snorting and phlegm-sucking of the thug who sits at the edge of a bar just itching for a reason to fight. Jared Michael Delaney's Gary arrives wearing a Soviet pin affixed to his commissar's jacket, and brings the gun wrapped in the emblem of global capitalism— a McDonald's bag— a nice touch that indicates the care in Tom Reing's direction.

In contrast to McLenigan's bumbling thuggery, Delaney speaks with a poetic cadence and traipses softly across the stage, the hallmark of ineffectual intellectuals (a redundancy in terms, I know). Throughout, Reing invites us to laugh at their cajoling barbs before shaming us into silence with the actual barbarity.

Lost in the flow chart

Through the cast's sharp performances, the beauty of Burke's structure emerges. Each character represents one layer in the global economy: the clueless worker distracted by consumerism, the son of miners looking to get on with a career and better himself, the union rep frustrated by the workers' lack of organization, and the middle-manager lost in a poorly defined flow chart of executive power. In a world governed by a ticker tape, the owner— that elusive character who never appears— could be any or all of them.

For all of them, the global industry has destroyed lives, disrupted communities, and driven down standards of living, turning the factory into a slaughterhouse. But Burke's evenhanded approach muddles the question of where to place our sympathies, whether with the two dolts lucky enough to hold jobs they think they're owed, or the achiever who only pretends allegiance, or the executive who could fire them.

The playwright's role

I don't expect Burke to rise to the level of George Bernard Shaw (a dramatist who in any case would scarcely succeed as an economic philosopher these days). But I do want to know what he expects an audience to take away from his play.

Does Burke— like the writers and artists taking out full-page ads in support of Palestine, Pakistan, Kashmir, Chechnya, Georgia— believe activists should bring political violence back into fashion? Would he then acknowledge a similar right for anti-abortion crusaders like Scott Roeder, who shot an abortion doctor in their shared church in Wichita?

Those who argue that "providing answers" would reduce theater to propaganda lack faith in the skill of contemporary playwrights. Ultimately the difference between art and mere dramatization is an author's voice.

Otherwise, we don't need theater to live out a drama like Gagarin Way. We could just turn on the evening news and watch Belgian workers at InBev, who essentially enacted the plot of Burke's play last week. I'll bet they'd tell us what side they're on. So why can't playwrights?