Theater Online - New York Theater Reviews

Sophistry, a play by Jonathan Marc Sherman and put on by South Ark Stage, is really two plays in one: the first, a not-so-interesting depiction of gormless students interacting in their dorm rooms, and the second, a far more compelling tale of a tenured professor accused by a student of sexual molestation. Would that more attention was paid to the latter.

It is 1991. We know this because applicable pop music is played during every scene change: sometimes good (Pearl Jam), sometimes not so good (Dan Fogelberg). On the campus of a small, New England college, Whitey McCoy (Jonathan Hogan, convincing as a professor past his prime) is giving a lesson on sophistry (meaning: a method of argumentation that seems clever but is actually flawed or dishonest) when a student comes in and hands him a piece of paper. Whitey has been accused by Jack Kahn (Michael Carbonaro, very fine) of getting him drunk and sexually molesting him. Whitey asks another student, Ex (Charlie Hewson) to be a character witness, as he fears he will lose everything he has earned over the last 18 years of teaching. Ex asks what happened, and Whitey re-enacts that dreadful night. Later, Jack re-enacts the scene as well, from his perspective. Of course, both are completely different accounts, so it is a mystery as to whom did what to whom. It is true that Whitey is a drinker and is gay and lives alone; it is also true that Jack is a drug taker and an outsider who no one believes or respects. Neither would be a great candidate for president.

By the time Whitey is fired (without any trial, it seems), takes a job at a local mall playing Santa Claus and has to break the fourth wall in order to sing a Christmas carol, albeit drunk, the suspension of disbelief dissolves, and too many questions come to mind: why wasn’t Whitey arrested“ Why didn’t Jack press charges? Would Whitey, who left the college in disgrace, really stay in the immediate vicinity and take a highly public job where everyone would surely know him and what happened? And would he really be allowed to have children sit on his lap?

Perhaps this plotline would have worked had there not been the distraction of the other, minor play, where three male roommates, all either dumb, drunk or philanderers, inhale via a bong in their dorm or try to pick up chicks while inebriated at a party. This is not the stuff of great drama. The women, Robin (Natalie Knepp), a fellow student and budding journalist, as well as the president of the college (Ellen Dolan) are the ones who have their stuff together, being either smart or principled or both.

In a scene towards the end of the first act, Robin interviews Whitey for the school newspaper, so she can give him the chance to explain his side of the story. She asks him if he did it. Whitey shakes his head, and says no. Robin asks him to look into her eyes. “I can’t tell,” she says. Before she leaves, she looks at him and says it again. “I still can’t tell.” Tell… if he’s guilty or not? His eyes are supposed to give it away? Is she a trained detective, or a medium? What would Ted Bundy have said? Jeffrey Dahmer? Bundy would have molested her, and Dahmer would have eaten her, right after they said they didn’t do it. Sophistry is an apt title for this play. I can’t tell what the playwright was going for, either.