Fair and Decent: Eviscerating, Gripping, Scary Theatre

No, that's not too many adjectives in a headline. Actually, after sitting rapt for the Luna Stage's shiny new production of Thomas Digg's Fair and Decent, I could easily run off a whole bunch more: timely, for example. Disturbing. Hilarious. Confrontational. Machiavellian.
Around a million years ago, there was a thing called the Fairness Doctrine. It simply meant that if a broadcast network was airing editorial material, it would give time to the other side of the issue as well. Do you know what you were doing when the Fairness Doctrine went away? I don't either. This play, part history and part imagination, shows us.

This is not an easy play to write--incorporating historical material can sound like dogma, not dialogue. Fortunately, Thomas Diggs is up to the task. His characters are
intriguing and bold and funny and bitter and self-centered. They all want the Fairness Doctrine gone, but their motivations and machinations make for some shocking, skewed and burst out laughing funny moments.
Trip is the most identifiable, as the Karl Rove character in 1980-81, when the bulk of the play takes place. The other characters--Addison, an embittered conservative academic; Reed, an angel-faced, shrewd Born-Again college mate of Trip's; Reed's exhausted wife Marybeth; and Trip's Dad Gil, a former colleague of Addison's who is dying of colon cancer and is cared for by Trip.
Trip is not favored physically--acne scarred and redfaced, overweight and awkward and shy, Reed describes him to his wife as the 'guy swirlies were invented for.' Trip is a deranged and lonely genius though, when it comes to manipulating the press. He and Reed hope to convince the conservative think tank ("the Council") they work for that they can use the liberal politicians and the press to help them eliminate the Fairness Doctrine and "imagine a world with a permanent Republican majority in Washington". In the meantime, Reed charges Trip a quarter every time he curses (the coffee can fills up quickly) but rejects one of his two children -- the toddler suffering with fragile X syndrome, along with his wife and her demands that he parent both his children. Addison, Trip and Reed's boss, tries to steal their Big Idea, and Gil, Trip's dad, becomes sicker and sicker.
Well, chaos ensues, as they say. I loved this play, found it galvanizing, and no matter what your politics, I recommend it. In view of the ongoing theatrics of our current political and economic climate, Fair And Decent has never been more relevent.