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.
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