In New Rep’s production of David Gow’s “Cherry Docs,” two men are placed together in a small, confined room. One is Danny (Benjamin Evett), a Jewish, middle-aged lawyer, who begins the play with an explanation of his religious background and a humorous description of the ethnically diverse neighborhood he has chosen to settle in. The other is Mike (Tim Eliot), a young skinhead, whose first monologue compares the white male to the foot - an essential but oft stepped on part of society.

Danny has been assigned to defend Mike, who has been accused of (and has admitted to committing) a violent hate crime. This situation is undeniably ripe for exploration of issues deeply important to human co-existence. Unfortunately, in “Cherry Docs,” the handing of this important conflict lacks the nuance necessary to have real impact. The play consists of talking; circling the small cell, repeating and repeating. There is also a great deal of kicking and yelling in “Cherry Docs;” in almost every meeting the lawyer has with his young convict, one or the other of them throws a chair or violently bangs the table. Harsh words are hurled around. The problem is that all of their words are too obvious - the path of the plot is clear from the moment the two characters meet. I never doubted that Danny really liked Mike, despite his disdain for skinheads, because I never believed that Mike really felt anything negative towards Danny, despite his proclaimed hatred for Jews. Similarly, I never wondered if Mike would eventually come around and see the error of his racist ways; it was clear, from the start, that he would.

The major turning point in the script comes from Danny’s decision to force Mike to come up with his own defense: to think long and hard about what he’s done, and come up with a way to speak about it. This is much of what I found lacking in the script itself; these characters are never given a chance to organically come to a conclusion. They are on an obvious path, and the resolution arrives too easily. Danny and Mike go through the necessary motions – initial dislike, gradual friendship, ultimate lesson learned – but nothing about it feels genuine.

I know that my opinion of this play puts me in the minority, and I don’t mean to undermine anything powerful that other audience members experienced. For me, “Cherry Docs” brought to mind the Oscar-winning film “Crash;” clearly, many found it to be an important movie about race in our society today. Personally, I found it to be preachy and obvious. Simply choosing an important and difficult subject does not guarantee that a piece of theater will achieve depth and power.

Technically, the show works quite well. Jenna McFarland Lord’s small set is strangely beautiful, and Karen Perlow’s subtly powerful lighting is the most communicative part of the production.

“Cherry Docs” ends with an epilogue, in which the playwright explains that he has chosen the names “Daniel” and “Mike” as an allusion to the Bible – Daniel entered the lion’s den, and was unharmed; Michael, God’s Archangel, fell to the depths and then ascended. That the playwright felt it necessary to explain this allegory to the audience is in keeping with the rest of his script; again and again, Cherry Docs chooses not to allow the message to seep through the material, but to deliver it with a heavy hand.

Jana Pollack

Cherry Docs - Walking in someone else's boots

by Frank Furnari, New Rep Reviewer

As you enter the theatre for Cherry Docs, New Rep’s latest production, you see a small, sparse, angular room, with industrial florescent lighting, various grates and vents, as well as a very bright light off to the side emitting a cool light you might expect to find in a parking lot. This sets the stark tone of the play directed by David R. Gammons, who directed New Rep’s amazing production of The Lieutenant of Inishmore a few years back, and proves again that he can handle such material.

Mike (Tim Eliot), a young skinhead from Toronto commits a hate crime, violently attacking a man he doesn’t know with his cherry docs – Doc Martin steel-toe boots (the program contains a note saying that the play is in no way associated with the shoemaker who has taken issue with its contents) - the man is critically injured and later dies from the injuries. Mike is defended by court appointed attorney Danny (Benjamin Evett), and is presented with a dilemma as Danny is Jewish. Danny also must decide whether to defend someone who says that in his ideal world, he would see Danny eliminated. The audience is taken on an intense journey exploring the relationship of the two, motivations for the crime, and how each copes with the situation on hand. The play rings true today with thoughts of hatred post 9/11 and most recently with news about GLBT youth and offers up some interesting ideas of how to address people who spread the hatred as well as is society’s role.

David Gow crafts a smart play with much Jewish imagery, some a little more subtle, others, such as the epilogue where both characters talk about the Biblical meaning of their names, are interesting thoughts, but seem over the top to have the characters spell it out for you.

Both actors shine in this production. Tim Eliot portrays many sides of Mike - at times he is terrifying, others afraid of what might happen to him, and still at other times that he might have just fallen in the with wrong crowd and got brainwashed. Benjamin Evett’s Danny is also complex, matching Mike’s intensity and emotions, as well as showing his own struggle of whether to take on such a case. David Gammons does a great job at keeping the pace and the intensity of this play going, it makes the 90-something minutes of the show go by quickly. This is definitely a production to see this season and is one that reminds us why we still go to see live theatre.

Daniel in the Lions' Den

Cherry Docs | Review

By Richard Martin


Well, most of you are probably wondering what they are. Cherry Docs, I mean.

They’re shoes. Or boots. Doc Martens. Red ones. With air-cushioned soles and tightly stitched leather that support the parts of you that support the rest of you. You can even get them with steel-reinforced toes. You could kick in a wall with one and not even say, “Ouch!” And wouldn’t that feel good? Well, it would to Mike Downey, the young Canadian skinhead who’s at the center of this two-man drama by David Gow. In fact, Cherry Docs are his weapons of choice, the ones he used while drunk at a concert to kick a man senseless because . . . well, Mike doesn’t really seem to know why. Maybe it’s because the man looked Pakistani, or Indian, or just different, but in any case Definitely Not White.

By the time the man died three weeks later, Mike (Tim Eliot) was being held in one of Her Majesty’s frugally furnished Canadian jails, soon to be charged with first degree murder. That much unfolds very quickly at New Rep’s fine production of “Cherry Docs,” which began its New England premiere on Monday night. Now, appointed by the court to defend Mike is – and this must be a jailed skinhead’s worst nightmare – a Jewish lawyer.

Danny Dunkelman (Benjamin Evett) is as smart and tough as his client is bigoted and hateful. But how does he defend a man who has admitted to the crime, shows no remorse, and is likely to be torn apart in court because of what he represents? And since Danny’s faith and religion are vilified by the skinhead credo of hate, why would he want to? This isn’t just a difficult case; it’s personal.

A conscientious if not devout Jew, he fights the growing urge to walk away by clinging to the knowledge that his obligation to defend this man is rooted not only in professional ethics, but in this faith that he finds both a comfort and a burden.

This is personal for Mike too. He may hate anyone who’s not a white, Christian male, but he’s scared and he’s smart, and he knows that he needs Danny perhaps more than he’s ever needed anybody.

It’s an uphill battle.

The meetings between Danny and Mike – seven in seven months – are no intellectual exercise. These two are so up in each other’s face that there’s never a risk of sounding preachy.

At one point, Danny is so angry with Mike that he growls at him through clenched teeth, “If I started hitting you, I might not be able to stop.” To which Mike replies, with an air of superiority, “Now you know how it feels. That’s my starting place.”

Over time, in between the dialogues, under downlights (by lighting designer Karen Perlow) that effectively transform Jenna McFarland Lord’s spare, single set from a prison interview room to solitary monologue spaces, each man reveals the very personal beliefs and doubts that underlie his tentative public viewpoints until the unspoken and the spoken become one. And we see how fear can spawn anger and hatred.

Mr. Eliot and Mr. Evett literally inhabit the roles so skillfully crafted by David Gow. Only once, near the end, does Gow risk sermonizing, but the situation makes it credible, and by then he’s earned it. And David Gammons’s excellent direction has given us a production so natural and seamless that it never seems manipulated.

In the end . . . well . . . you should see it.

"Cherry Docs" Explodes at New Rep

New Rep’s production of David Gow’s Cherry Docs is a startling, explosive, and touching experience. Both actors must be exhausted – emotionally and physically – by the show’s end, but their efforts are worth the toll it must take. The play and New Rep’s production tackle some of the most complex issues of our time with a compassion and seriousness of purpose often missing from political discourse. The production values are brilliant; in particular, the set and the lighting design evoke a prison interview room layered with complex emotions. The masterful direction keeps the tension high, even at moments of silence.

Tim Eliot plays Mike, a white supremacist awaiting trial for the brutal murder of an immigrant. Benjamin Evett plays Danny, Mike’s politically-progressive, Jewish lawyer. The play thus begins with hatred on both sides; Mike’s hatred toward non-whites (including Jews) is met by Danny’s hatred of Mike’s ideas and actions.

Both actors give excellent, albeit quite different, performances. Eliot endows Mike with a combination of incredible kinetic energy, touches of ADHD, and painful vulnerability. Despite the menace Mike exudes, Eliot shows us a man who is deeply sad and lost rather than evil. Evett’s Danny is a self-contained, cynical workaholic, whose rage boils below a rational, professional surface. He mocks and provokes Mike, ostensibly pushing him to build a better defense for the trial. But we sense that Danny’s rage is real as well as pedagogic. As he comes to understand himself he is able to become something of a mentor and father figure to the childlike Mike.

Mike meets provocation with anti-Semitism, nearly succeeding in drawing Danny down to his own level in some of the most telling moments of the play. Mike’s skill in evoking violence is both instinctive and practiced, as if it is a language he has mastered (unlike the language of court, which eludes him). At one tense, brilliant point, Mike urges Danny to hit him, as Danny clearly wants to do. Mike explains: “It will get rid of the feelings.” Here, finally, we see the reason he killed his victim; it is a revelation that is both upsetting and unsettling.

At one point, watching Mike’s anger and fear spill out on the stage, the patron behind me whispered to her companion, “He could plead insanity.” This conclusion, however, is exactly the opposite of what the playwright and the production seem to intend we learn. The point is that Mike is as “normal” as any of us, certainly as “normal” as Danny, who also hates and fears that which he does not understand. In several monologues Danny tells us of menacing encounters with groups of young people who seem entirely alien to him. “I hate these kids,” he mutters, then: “No. I’m afraid of them.” The problem is not that Mike is insane, but that his fear and ignorance are all too common.

Cherry Docs doesn’t provide easy answers to the problem it presents, but sends us out of the theatre moved and thoughtful.

-- Johanna Ettin & Shauna Shames

"Cherry Docs": Making a Point

by Jack Craib, New Rep Reviewer

Fasten those seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night. New Rep’s second production of the season is the New England premiere of David Gow’s 1998 play, “Cherry Docs” (a reference to the colorful steel-pointed Doc Martens combat boots said to be preferred by nine out of ten skinheads), and it’s quite a ride. Unlike many of today’s two character plays, (or “two-handers”), this work is not the result of economic considerations; this is an intentionally tight and focused story of two haunted men and their conflicting values. At first it seems to be about a mutually desired outcome of a crisis, namely successfully defending an imprisoned skinhead who has kicked to death an unknown victim he assumed to be a Pakastani immigrant. It soon evolves into a struggle of wills between the Jewish public defender assigned to the case and his young anti-semitic client. Above and beyond this, however, it is nothing less than a searing probe into the nature of hatred and forgiveness, and whether there ever can be atonement for truly horrific acts.

Gow has constructed seven scenes or days corresponding to seven major Jewish holidays, and this is by no means the only allusion, explicit or implied, to Judaica. He references the seven dimensions in the universe that are interconnected, and proceeds to show how his two seemingly diverse protagonists are themselves interconnected. Before the ninety minutes or so of intense drama is through, his characters, each in his own way, is revealed to be a prisoner of his personal fears and prejudices. Set in Toronto, the play involves some unfamiliar court procedures, but the themes are universal. Gow has stated that “as soon as we look at hatred as being outside our own experience, we have separated ourselves from accountability”. By his powerful representation of how both men are confined by their own demons and how they are transformed when freed from them, the playwright makes the point that all of us are fundamentally connected by our common humanity even as our assumed diverse beliefs divide us.

Benjamin Evett (seen in New Rep’s last season in both “Indulgences” and “Opus”) displays yet more versatility as the lawyer Danny Dunkleman. First portrayed as a self-absorbed liberal attorney seemingly motivated mostly by the chance to advance his own career, he discovers he must change his preconceived notion of humanity in order to accept his innate compassion and forgiveness. As he says to Mike Downey (played by Tim Eliot in his New Rep debut), “I am taking you through the eye of the needle; you are the thread of a cloth, a divine cloth. You want to be a lone thread, go ahead. You want to rip that fabric, go at it”. At first, Mike boasts “in an ideal world, I’d see you eliminated”. Later, he admits to Danny “I like you, you’re smart”, to which Danny retorts “I want to punch you”. Director David R. Gammons has the actors roam the compact stage like two primeval animals intent on intimidating one another. Technically, the team of designers are a part of the seamless fabric. The lighting by Karen Perlow, sound and video by Adam Stone and set by Jenna McFarland Lord combine to produce a believably claustrophobic cage. They effectively complement the sparse dialogue, the intelligent direction, and the amazing acting. Evett and Eliot are giving two of the finest performances of the decade, and are surrounded by an equally superb creative team.

There is little that one could reasonably criticize with this work, other than perhaps the author’s epilogue ensuring that his audience hasn’t missed the significance of the names he has given his cast of two, Michael (God’s Archangel) and Daniel (in the lion’s den). That minor criticism aside, New Rep has set the bar high with this one. There is one word for this production: unmissable.