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| L-R: Jeff McCarthy and Nambi E. Kelley in KUNSTLER at 59E59 Theaters. |
William
Kunstler, an ACLU director from 1964 to 1972 was a staunch civil rights
advocate, attorney, and liberal icon who gained both notoriety and acclaim for
his spirited defense of clients ranging from the Mississippi Freedom Riders to
the Chicago Seven, from the Black Panthers to the Attica Prison rioters, and
from the American Indian Movement to the Weather Underground. But if his clients were controversial (and
they certainly were), so was the man himself.
On the one hand, for example, he argued that he defended his clients
because, guilty or not, everyone is entitled to the best possible defense. That is why, he contended, he didn’t limit
his clientele to men like Martin Luther King, Jr. or the Mississippi Freedom
Riders but also chose to defend such unsavory characters as Colin Ferguson (the
black man who killed six people in a shooting rampage on a Long Island Railroad
train), Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman (the blind sheikh responsible for the World
Trade Center bombing in 1993), and such mob bosses as John Gotti and Joe
Bonnano. And yet, at the same time he
refused to defend right-wing groups such as the Minutemen, proclaiming that “I
only defend those whose goals I share.
I’m not a lawyer for hire. I only defend those I love.” Similarly, Kunstler viewed due process as
merely a means to an end, unabashedly politicizing the issues in his cases if
he thought that doing so might inure to the benefit of his clients.
Kunstler by Jeffrey Sweet,
currently being staged at 59E59 Theaters on East 59th Street in midtown
Manhattan, is an enormously entertaining paean to William Kunstler, featuring
an absolutely bravura performance by Jeff McCarthy in the title role. But the 90-minute two-hander in which William
Kunstler is gently confronted by Kerry (Nambi E. Kelley), a young, black female
law student who challenges him to justify his defenses of John Gotti or Colin
Ferguson, could have been even better if it had addressed the contradictions in
Kunstler’s persona more forcefully. As
it is, the play merely alludes to but generally glosses over Kunstler’s
shortcomings – from the infidelities that led to the collapse of his first
marriage to his rationalizing justifications for Ferguson’s murderous behavior as
being “understandable” in terms of “black rage,” providing Kerry with limited
opportunity to provide a strong counter-balance to the positive depiction of
the liberal icon presented throughout most of the play. And as a result, the play is neither
intellectually stimulating nor thought provoking, although it certainly is
extremely entertaining.
And
maybe just being entertaining is quite enough.
