Joe McCarthy’s Communist witch hunts and the ensuing Hollywood blacklist may have seemed misty water-colored memories of sixty-year-old injustices when Joe Gilford’s Finks made its off-Broadway debut in the Obama-era early 2010s. Such is not the case a half dozen-years later, just one of many reasons not to miss its searing Los Angeles Premiere at Rogue Machine Theatre.

 French Stewart stars as comic Mickey Dobbs, whose recent gigs just might lead to his own weekly Show Of Shows should the TV gods choose to smile down on him.

In the meantime, the Wisconsin senators’s attack on “un-American activities” provides Mickey with plenty of laugh fodder, particularly at soirees sponsored by left-leaning organizations like American Peace Mobilization and United Public Workers of America.

Adding to Mickey’s optimistic outlook these days is his budding romance with voice-over actress Natalie Meltzer (Vanessa Claire Stewart), whose advocacy of day care for working women, better pay for teachers, and peace on earth would seem the least of her concerns were these goals not seen by McCarthy and his minions as a slippery slope towards worldwide communist domination.

 As Mickey and Natalie’s romance blossoms and the Mickey Dobbs Show seems on the verge of getting greenlit, newspaper columnists like Dorothy Kilgallen, Ed Sullivan, and Walter Winchell are hard at work publishing the names of supposed communists.

Meanwhile, Hollywood luminaries like Elia Kazan, Budd Schulberg, and Lee J. Cobb are naming names before congress (among them playwright Gilford’s parents Joe and Madeline) and those daring to invoke the Fifth Amendment find themselves blacklisted, quite possibly for life.

 Finks’ first act alternates (and occasionally overlaps) scenes of Mickey and Natalie’s blossoming romance and their friendships with fellow leftists with the hearings taking place in Washington, led by Representative Walter (Matt Gottlieb), a zealot bent on destroying the lives of anyone whose beliefs he finds un-American, that is unless like Kazan (Daniel Dorr) or Martin Berkeley, Cobb, and Schulberg, (the last three portrayed by Thomas Fiscella), they named names.

 Then comes the moment Finks’ two storylines merge, propelling Mickey, Natalie, and their fellow-leftist friends like closeted dancer Bobby Gerard (Adam Lebowitz-Lockard) and actor/painter Fred Lang (Bruce Nozick) into the battle of their lives.

As gripping as it is edifying, Finks puts a personal face on the havoc wreaked on the lives of Americans who, like the idealists in Rogue Machine’s concurrently running Oppenheimer, had embraced communism as a way of opposing rising European fascism and encouraging social change at home, among them not only the playwright’s parents but Broadway director David Pressman, whose son Michael directs Finks’ L.A. Premiere with particular passion and precision.

 A mesmerizing Stewart attacks the role of Mickey with passion and purpose, aided and abetted by real-life wife Vanessa’s gutsy, gritty Natalie and an all-around superb supporting ensemble.

Gottlieb’s interrogator is soft-spoken evil personified, Nozick is heartbreaking as a man broken by said evil, Lebowitz-Lockard reveals the deeply troubled, conflicted soul of a gay man born too many years before Stonewall, Dorr’s leading man suaveness serves him well as men both sympathetic and less than, and Fiscella’s trio of “finks” deliver their damning testimony in markedly different voices, with musical director Richard Levinson on piano and Stephen Tyler Howell (in a quartet of cameos) completing the expert cast.

 Scenic designer Stephanie Kerley Schwartz manages to fit nightclub, apartment, the House Of Representatives, and more onto a matchbox stage, design kudos shared by Halei Parker’s period-perfect costumes, Matt Richter’s subtly varied lighting, Nicholas E. Santiago’s locale-establishing projections, and Christopher Moscatiello’s equally fine sound design, and Marwa Bernstein stirs in some effective choreography for Broadway “gypsy” Bobby.

Finks is produced by John Perrin Flynn. Cecilia Fairchild is assistant director. Taylor Decker is assistant costume designer. Ramón Valdez is stage manager. Amanda Bierbauer is production manager and David A. Mauer is technical director. Casting is by Victoria Hoffman.

The term “now more than ever” may be overused, but take a gander at any day’s headlines out of D.C. and you’ll see how aptly it describes Finks, just one reason the latest from Rogue Machine packs the most powerful of punches.

The Electric Lodge, 1416 Electric Ave., Venice.
www.roguemachinetheatre.com

–Steven Stanley
November 25, 2018
Photos: John Perrin Flynn

Tags: Joe Gilford, Los Angeles Theater Review, Rogue Machine Theatre, The Electric Lodge