By Jeanine Budd
As Cadet Clevinger marched around the stage to the tunes of songs like Bob Dylan’s “With God on Our Side” and John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero,” audience members trickled into the Itty Bitty Theater in 344 Ryder Hall Thursday. “Clevinger’s Trial”, a one-act play, was put on by the theatre department and the Silver Masque, a student theatre group.
“Clevinger’s Trial” takes place in chapter eight of Joseph Heller’s WWII-era novel, “Catch-22.” The performances, which happened daily last Wednesday through Saturday, were directed by Thomas Lamanna, a junior theatre and philosophy major.
“It’s a short piece and it’s hilarious,” Lamanna said. “I’m still laughing every time I watch it and I want the audience to enjoy it, too.”
“Clevinger’s Trial” was packed with Heller’s absurd humor, set amid the drama and graveness of WWII. At one point, the colonel, played by Mali MacConnell, a sophomore theatre major, yelled to Clevinger, “You’re guilty! Or else you wouldn’t have been accused!”
Dan Doohan, a sophomore English major, said he enjoyed the half-hour he spent at the play.
“It’s short and sweet and definitely funny,” he said. “Joseph Heller is a great, talented writer and it translates well to the stage.”
Lamanna said “Clevinger’s Trial” was not part of the original “Catch-22” play. The scene was taken out because the play was too long and the scene didn’t involve the lead character of the book enough. However, Heller still felt compelled to release the scene in the form of “Clevinger’s Trial.”
The play, like the book, highlights the absurdity of blind, and often confused, authority during wartime.
MacConnell said the role of the colonel was one of the hardest characters she’s had to master in a while.
“I watched military movies, just trying to figure out how to be a woman who is that powerful, who has no idea what she is doing, but acting like she [does],” she said.
The cast even had ROTC representatives come and teach them the technicalities that come with being in the military. At one point, they had to re-block their entire show when they learned that superior officers are supposed to stand to the right of lower-ranked officers, a fact none of the cast or crew had known.
“I feel like people will notice if we’re doing things correctly or incorrectly,” MacConnell said. “I mean, a lot of our students are ROTC members and I hope they come and aren’t offended, and they see that we’re really trying to be as accurate as possible.”
While the one-act play was designed to make people laugh, some audience members said it also carried a powerful significance.
“The message is important,” said Ali Genoa, a sophomore theatre major who attended the performance. “It’s just to make people aware that you shouldn’t blindly obey and authority doesn’t make sense sometimes and you have to scope it out.”
Michael Underhill, a sophomore theatre major who played Cadet Clevinger, said while the play doesn’t aim to influence people to go out and change things, it does aim to educate.
“We try to get people to open their eyes and question things,” he said. “Just don’t take what is given to you. The biggest problem today is that people are just fed things, fed facts, and people accept them and they don’t question them. They don’t do their own research.”
Underhill said the play is still important decades after “Catch-22” was first published in 1961.
“The play is short, effective and it has a nice point to it,” he said. “It’s relative today, much like a lot of scripts written 30-40 years ago.”
