'Cat's-Paw,' Now at the Beck Center, Focuses on the Wrong Enemies in a World of Terror

Terrorism has been on the minds of many people in the U.S. and around the world for a long time. So, it’s no surprise that about 40 years ago, playwright William Mastrosimone decided to write a play titled Cat’s-Paw about a sinister eco-terrorist cell in Washington DC.

Unfortunately (for this play and all the rest of us) the ensuing decades have provided a bloody, horrific education in the dynamics of terror. But this well-intentioned production fails to be either instructive about the past or relevant to the present. And under the direction of William Roudebush, the talented cast manages to hit a bunch of wrong notes.

It all takes place in a warehouse in DC after these eco-terrorists, calling themselves “Earth Now,” have recently killed a passel of U.S. Senators in a suicide car bombing that was meant to bring attention to the fight for clean water(!). The honcho of this cell, Victor, has also abducted a high government official to use for his propaganda purposes. And out of all the possible high-profile kidnapping targets in our nation’s capital he grabss, wait for it, an EPA bureaucrat.

Victor’s plan is to have his captive, Mr. Darling (Michael Dempsey), interviewed by another person he’s kidnapped, Jessica Lyons, who is a hard-hitting investigative network TV journalist. And to ensure he gets the results he wants, Victor injects Darling with a truth serum so he can’t help but spill the beans about the terrible things the EPA is allowing polluters to get away with—pouring pollutants into our rivers and streams.

This play is saddled with the unintentionally hilarious premise of relying on an anonymous EPA paper-shuffler to reveal scandalous truths about government fecklessness, while dragging media collusion into the mix. (Cat’s-Paw is an old-timey term for a person used by another to do distasteful work, alluding to his use of Jessica.)

It doesn’t help that Victor seems less like a desperate homicidal terrorist and more like a put-upon waiter as he accedes to Darling request for a different kind of broth for his pre-interview meal. And when Jessica arrives, the tone of the play suddenly shifts into a 1930s Hepburn and Tracy set piece as Victor and Jessica trade rat-a-tat barbs while spouting their respective beliefs about government malfeasance and the role of the media.

These side-by-side polemics do little to advance the drama at hand, and while there is a chuckle or two tucked into their verbal fencing, it all leads nowhere.

In the role of Victor, the fine actor Chris Richards is never allowed to establish his character as a venomous, blood-thirsty terrorist, when he morphs from a squishy host for his abductees to a furious defender of the country’s pure water supply, and then back again. Mielcarek fares better as Jessica, delivering her snarky, rim-shot retorts with an aplomb Hepburn would admire. But she is also caught up in the web of a script that can’t get out of its own way.

In the last half of the one-act, there is an extended interview of Darling by Jessica that reveals absolutely nothing, followed by a tragic accident involving Victor’s assistant Cathy (Grace Favarro). But even that event provides no resonance for a play that already jumped the tracks an hour earlier.

One is tempted to cut Mastrosimone some slack since he wrote it long before 9/11 and all the other politically inspired terrorist attacks we have endured. It might have been more startling and effective back when it debuted, when the Mario Bros. video game was first introduced and the TV series M*A*SH ended.

But if you’re going to mount this work now, you must be aware of the inherent absurdity of focusing on ecological warriors (who are typically non-violent) and investigative media as your punching bags. In another era, we might just shrug this one off. But it will soon be 2024, when our democracy will be up for grabs in the next election, and we best be focused on who the enemies of truth really are.

Cat’s-Paw
Through October 22 at the Beck Center, 17801 Detroit Ave., Lakewood, beckcenter.org, 216-521-2540.

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