Review- Value of Names at Next Act

 Cow-tipping is a venerable Midwestern pastime. In The Value of Names, Jeffrey Sweet lives up to his Midwest pedigree with a play that tips a lot of cows—sacred ones. Revisiting the Joseph McCarthy hearings that ruined the careers of artists and writers around the country, Sweet doesn’t flinch from asking some uncomfortable questions about one of the dark times in American politics.
Or at least his characters don’t flinch. The time is 1980, and Sweet’s play brings McCarthy hearing adversaries together on a patio overlooking the Pacific. Leo Greshen (John Kishline) was a film and theater director who named names. Bernie Silverman (Bobby Spencer) was one of the names he named. Silverman’s daughter, Norma (Kelsey Brennan), is a young actress about to appear in her breakthrough play, and Greshen has been assigned to direct it, filling in for a last-minute cancellation. Greshen comes to Silverman’s house to ask Norma to do the play. And the fireworks fly.
The conflict here is rooted in character as well as substance, and some of the conversations might have taken place on a CNN talk show, asking questions we might well as of “The Left” in 2010 as much as The Movement of the 1930s and ‘40s. “Would you work with people who held political beliefs antithetical to your own?” asks Norma of her father at one point. Wasn’t the political theater of the time just preaching to the converted?
After a rather clunky setup in the first act, Sweet finally gives the two men the ideological cage match we’ve been waiting for, and Kishline and Spencer make the most of it. Each have long, well-shaped monologues, and Kishline in particular is able to show how Greshen has learned to deal with old wounds with a deliberate and judicious stance toward his life and work. It’s not an easy play to shape, and director David Cecsarini finds the right rhythms to keep the ideas dramatically interesting. Ultimately, as Cecsarini knows, the play isn’t about a particular issue, but about how we deal with the deep seated differences in today’s political world. And one look at cable news will reveal that it’s a subject worth exploring.