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Pictures revisits Patty Hearst
BY LIZA WEISSTUCH
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Pictures of Patty Hearst
By Bill Lattanzi. Directed by Sidney Friedman. Set by Marc Olivere. Lighting by Ethan Kaplan. Costumes by Mark A. Pearson. Sound by Benjamin Young. With Kimberly Green, Brendan Scoggin, Ben Lewis, Jessica Hain, Christina Grance, and Baron Vaughn. Presented by Playwrights’ Theatre at Boston University at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre through October 19.
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Crimes and scandals involving celebrities often have the same elements that make a dramatic work compelling: unexpected turns of events, ambiguous motivations, sympathetic protagonists, an openness to interpretation, and a capacity to maintain a firm grip on your attention even when the plot drags. Little wonder, then, that the media present these incidents as epic sagas on which the public can hang like an audience on the edge of its seats. Such was the case with the drama of Patricia Campbell Hearst, the kidnapped heiress turned terrorist fugitive turned bodyguard’s wife turned B-movie actress, of whom Bill Lattanzi once again makes a spectacle in Pictures of Patty Hearst. The play, which has been entered in this year’s Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival and is currently in its world premiere at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, is structurally sound and buttressed by effective performances, but its bricks and mortar are a little weathered. Given a case already defined by heightened drama and speculation, you have to wonder what a theatrical dramatization can dish out that hasn’t already been served up by media pundits, social commentators, and soapbox fanatics. The answer here is, not much. The play is not so much a meditation on the elusiveness of the truth as it is a rehashing of the question "What really happened in 1974?" But instead of cramming his convictions into our consciousness, Lattanzi tosses together everything that’s been preserved in the fridge and arranges it in a gorgeous display. It’s a smorgasbord of theories and possibilities for us to eyeball, pick and choose from, and then assemble into our own supposition and digest at our leisure. Patty Hearst (Kimberly Green), granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst and daughter of Hearst media-dynasty honcho Randolph, was 19 in 1974, when she was kidnapped from her Berkeley apartment by members of the Symbionese Liberation Army, a leftist revolutionary group with a vague agenda to protect the rights of the people and blot out the oppression brought on by "puritan capitalist ethics of competition, individualism, fascism, racism, sexism, and imperialism." That’s according to its leader, Field Marshal Cinque, who’s played with fervent indignation by Baron Vaughn. Patty was blindfolded and locked in a closet for 57 days, during which time her family received tapes of her saying she was okay and demands from the SLA that they distribute millions of dollars worth of food to California’s poor. Then the kidnap victim was caught on surveillance camera, rifle in hand and beret on head, holding up a bank. She was put on the FBI’s Most Wanted list and became a fugitive until her arrest in September of 1975. After what the media dubbed "the trial of the century," she was convicted. After almost two years, her sentence was commuted by Jimmy Carter; eventually she was pardoned by Bill Clinton. Even after the publication of her 1982 autobiography, Every Secret Thing, it remains unclear whether she was brainwashed into becoming an SLA soldier or willingly joined her captors, either for survival or as a scornful swipe at her bourgeois upbringing. In two hours, Lattanzi’s play incorporates all this information and plenty more background and commentary, but it doesn’t offer any fresh insight. Green plays Patty’s shift from cowering horror to brash militancy with an undercurrent of girlish curiosity that can be read either as a self-defense mechanism or as the thrill of living recklessly. In numerous rapid-fire scenes that move at a fluid pace under Sidney Friedman’s direction, Lattanzi integrates texts of taped statements, speeches, and actual events culled from the public record. He works them into sharply written episodes involving Patty and her strict Catholic parents and Patty and her SLA comrades. The five actors, mostly BU undergrads, switch among the various roles with ease. Lattanzi also supplies conspiracy theories and commentary spewed by brassy talk-show hosts, gossips, intellectuals, and a tart, cynical female reporter set on drudging up evidence that a promiscuous Patty, taken by the SLA’s sexual candor, maneuvered the entire abduction. On Marc Olivere’s set, which consists of jail bars festooned with photos of the actual Patty, the result is a 48 Hours–esque presentation of the saga. What’s next, Images of O.J.?
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