Muckrakers

Reviewed by MartínHernandez

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Where does one draw the line in uncovering the private lives of the rich and powerful? What is the cost for an opportunistic reporter and his innocent sources of pursuing the truth? And in that pursuit, can a journalist be as hypocritical as the two-faced politicians she sets out to expose? These are some of the questions that playwright Zayd Dohrn’s taut cautionary tale explores as it pits an idealistic activist against a cynical cyber-journalist in a political battle of wills.

After a talk co-sponsored by Mira’s (Erica Bitton) political organization, Mira escorts Stephen (Darren Keefe), a Julian Assange-like web correspondent, to spend the night at her cubbyhole Brooklyn flat (Michael Keith Allen’s exemplary set) because her group can’t afford a Manhattan hotel room. While Mira dodges Stephen’s drunken passes, she also picks his brain on how he acquired secret and compromising U.S. government military files and videos, information that could land him in jail, and his source into a graveyard.

For Mira, the purveyor of an “online agitprop news source” dedicated to revealing politicians’ sordid activities, there is no distinction between the public and private (to Stephen’s inquiry on where she draws the line on privacy, her icy response is “I don’t.”) Stephen, however, feels that what one does in private should not invade one’s public life. (“I don’t need to be led by a saint” is his snarky retort to Mira’s litany of politicians whose personal peccadillos she feels compromised political policy.) As part of their respective self-righteous crusades, Mira questions Stephen on whether he exploited the confused sexuality of a U.S. Army private (sound familiar?) to access the secrets. The duo alternate as cat and mouse in a game revealing their own duplicity in getting to “the truth.”

Bitton and Keefe have an engaging rapport as they convincingly warm then cool to each other, aided by director Don K. Williams’ bob-and-weave staging. But the two often drop or walk on lines when they rush Dohrn’s cogent dialogue. Also annoying is why the globetrotting Stephen (his next stop is Berlin) travels with an empty knapsack, why the impoverished coffee shop waitress Mira cannot afford a TV but can afford an Apple computer and a video projector (well, maybe that’s why). Despite these foibles, it is a timely and provocative production, especially in an era when a private cell phone conversation, secretly and illegally recorded, can bring down a billionaire businessman.

The Art of Acting Studio, 1017 North Orange Dr., Hlywd.; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; through July 2, www.artofactingstudio.com. See the playwright Zayd Dohrn’s essay on privacy and transparency on Stage Raw.