Alexander Gemignani and Harry Lennix Photo by Liz Lauren

Why this is the case is something of a mystery. The visual presentation is, as usual for the Goodman, stellar. Collette Pollard's set design does more than make good on the directive in the original play that "it is important ... that the town is visible always, looming there, as much on trial as the individual defendant." Pollard sets the town's skyline, such as it is, in a rich wooden circular frame, high above the stage. The buildings evoke the setting for a child's model train, and its windows glow and go glassy and blank at appropriate intervals. The stage itself is dominated by a circular wooden floor that resembles the face of a compass that is raised very slightly upstage and tilts down toward the house. Building on this element, which folds the audience into the courtroom itself, Pollard adds a small platform that thrusts outward from the stage, serving a pier as well as a train platform and doubling down on this technique as characters arriving from out of town make their way through the audience, luggage and all.

The original music and sound design by Richard Woodbury, the lighting by Jason Lynch, and especially the costume design by Jessica Pabst build on Pollard's design to create a strong sense of nostalgia, community, and the fiction of the past. Early on, when the town comes together to welcome Matthew Harrison Brady as a hero, the production succeeds in creating a kind of humming, idealized portrait of a small community that might, as Godinez notes in a program interview, "want to stay frozen in the past."

But perhaps because of this (sometimes effective) focus on implicating the audience in the play's action, the production does occasionally lose sight of the onstage community that, by the playwrights' dictate, is "equally important throughout, so that he court becomes an arena." The result is a play that reads as a story comprising (very good) set pieces, rather than one that harnesses the dangerous energy of a community that has chosen stagnation and is determined to make good on its vow to forcefully defend it.

As noted from the start, Harry Lennix is extraordinary as Henry Drummond, and the power of his performance speaks, in large part, because Alexander Gemignani establishes an equally commanding character as Brady, albeit one with entirely different energy. Although the production falters in some ways, because of the skill of the two actors and the surety of the direction, at least when it comes to the two leads, we experience these two men not as past, present, and happily inevitable future, but as sharp minds and compelling souls that apply themselves to the task at hand. This does give life to the production beyond the dusty polemic.

As the Judge, Kevin Gudahl also serves to elevate. To the extent that the community of "Heavenly Hillsboro" remains present in the minds of the audience, the credit goes to Gudahl, who sides consistently with Brady, yet at every moment manages to convey the soul of the town, without ever coming across as simply some victim of provincial thinking.

In the rest of the cast there are strong performances and performances that (occasionally) reveal the production's ambition and potential. As Meeker, the janitor-cum-bailiff, Robert Schleifer offers insight into Bertram Cates (Christopher Llewyn Ramirez), the man and the prisoner, not just Bertram Castes, the defendant and former schoolteacher. The rapport that Schleifer and Ramirez cultivate in a few brief scenes enriches the whole of the production and deepens it, but the production doesn't return the favor, as it largely sidelines them once Drummond arrives in Hillsboro.

The play does not give its women much to work with, but the production doesn't do much to remedy these shortcomings. As the town preacher's daughter, Rachel Brown, Tyler Meredith has some nice moments with Ramirez (even as she encourages him to simply apologize and move on), overall, the approach to the role that the production takes is somewhat over-heightened and some of the impact of the character's struggle is lost.

The same, to some extent, is true of Mi Kang as E. K Hornbeck, the critic from Baltimore who is intent on seeing her paper getting their money's worth for funding the spectacle. The dialogue that was sharp in 1955 comes across as mannered and unproductively cynical in 2024 (particularly at the end of the play). Kang unquestionably has the chops to handle such a role, and her body language (to say nothing of the divine costuming of her that Pabst arrives at for the the character) is delicious, but a delicious afterthought in the grand scheme of the production.

In other supporting roles, Terry Bell (Sillers, the juror) and William Dick (Mayor) offer strong contributions that nod toward what might have been if the the vision for the production had been more invested in considering the community more deeply.

Inherit the Wind runs through October 20, 2024, at the Goodman Theatre, Albert Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, Chicago IL. For tickets and information, please visit GoodmanTheatre.org or call 312-443-3800.