The Wall Street Journal - 13.03.2020

A10| Friday, March 13, 2020 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

culation, is given a deeply moving

portrayal by the wonderful Ms. Ka-

zan, and is really the heart of the

story. It’s Bess who’s grown up as

the only Jew in her neighborhood,

who knows isolation and, unlike

Herman, is immediately aware that

under a Lindbergh administra-

tion—in which Henry Ford is given

a Cabinet post and Joachim von

Ribbentrop is given a state din-

ner—the only answer for her peo-

ple lies in that old Joycean formu-

lation: silence, exile and cunning.

Bess’s sister, Evelyn (Winona

Ryder), brings the Lindbergh mad-

ness into the Levin dining room,

in the person of her fiancé and

eventual husband, the prominent

rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf (an epic,

Southern-drawling John Tur-

turro), who early on becomes the

Jewish mouthpiece for the Lind-

bergh campaign and, later, the re-

gime itself. There’s a terrific

scene, as there was in the book, in

which the collected Levins listen

to a Bengelsdorf address on the

radio, during which the rabbi ex-

plains that Lindbergh’s trips to

Germany, his cozying up to Hitler,

were all about serving the U.S. by

JUSTIN LANE/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK

John Turturro, above, and Zoe Kazan, top, in HBO’s adaptation of Roth’s novel

HBO (2)

People walk past theater ads

in Times Square on Tuesday

LIFE&ARTS

collecting information—and that

American Jews shouldn’t be con-

cerned about blood-soaked coun-

tries that never wanted them any-

way. Bess is in tears; Herman is

fuming. What Jews are going to

listen to this? he asks. Only Her-

man’s delinquent nephew, Alvin

(Anthony Boyle), sees the truth—

that Bengelsdorf has been “ko-

shering Lindbergh.”

Don’t you get it? he asks his un-

cle: Bengelsdorf isn’t talking to

Jews. “He’s giving the goyim all

over the country his personal

rabbi’s permission to vote for

Lindy on Election Day.” Bengels-

dorf, as much as anyone, ensures

that the hero aviator will become

the fascist president. In a story

with no shortage of villains, the

rabbi is among the more villain-

ous. And tragic.

“The Plot Against America,”

which grows increasingly nervous-

making as it closes in on an ending

far more topical and obvious than

the one Roth provided, is overly de-

liberate in its period detail and al-

most distracting in its evocation of

time and place (mostly Newark,

N.J.). This is because the world it

presents doesn’t look lived in and

characters living in it often sound

less like people out of the ’40s than

people out of ’40s movies. The most

glaring example is Alvin, who will

depart for Canada, fight in the Brit-

ish army, lose a leg and start to

morph into a kind of John Garfield

character, a guy whose hardboiled

dialogue masks his emotional

wounds. Mr. Boyle makes him an

engaging figure nonetheless, partly

because Garfield was such a charis-

matic type, but mostly because Al-

vin is a man of action as well as

opinions. “The Plot Against Amer-

ica” itself is a call to action—its

own kind of agitprop. Often enough,

it also asks for patience.

The Plot Against America

Monday, 9 p.m., HBO

AMONG LASTyear’s nominees for

the short-documentary Oscar was

Marshall Curry’s “A Night at the

Garden,” about a German-Ameri-

can Bund rally—replete with swas-

tikas andsieg heils—that took

place in a packed-to-the-rafters

Madison Square Garden in 1939.

Mr. Curry made a taut, dramatic

seven-minute film out of footage

he’d discovered. But the most re-

markable thing for many was dis-

covering that the event had taken

place at all.

Some of that Garden footage

can be glimpsed in the opening

credits of “The Plot Against Amer-

ica,” HBO’s adaptation of the novel

by Philip Roth, whose alternative

history of the 1940s was rooted in

the conviction that fascist inclina-

tions have always percolated just

below the American surface. In

Roth’s “false memoir,” as he once

called it, an isolationist, anti-Se-

mitic Charles Lindbergh wins the

presidency from Franklin Delano

Roosevelt, keeps the U.S. out of

World War II, and instigates a Eu-

ropean experience for American

Jews—intolerance, relocation, ap-

peasement of Hitler and, ulti-

mately, pogroms. America has al-

ways been a “blessing” for Jews,

Roth told NPR back when the book

was published. (He died in 2018.)

But it had also been a “historical

lucky break.” What he did in “The

Plot Against America” was let the

chips fall where they hadn’t.

That Roth’s book appeared in

2004 and creator David Simon’s

six-part miniseries is premiering in

2020 is certainly of no small con-

cern, regarding either the content

or the way viewers are going to di-

gest it. Or, be directed to digest it:

When published, “The Plot Against

America” was a counterfactual,

historical thriller. Now, what was

fantastical/dreadful in Roth has

become fatalistic/despairing, with

an ending that veers away from

that of the book and is intended—

as is so much of the adaptation—

to reflect our current politics, no

flattery intended.

The writers, chiefly Mr. Simon

and Ed Burns (the directors are

Thomas Schlamme and Minkie

Spiro), have been otherwise

largely faithful to the source mate-

rial, though the Roths of the book

have become the Levins—Herman

(Morgan Spector), an insurance

salesman; Bess (Zoe Kazan), a

homemaker; Sandy (Caleb Malis), a

gifted young artist; and the

sweetly innocent Philip (Azhy Rob-

ertson), through whose wondering

eyes we watch the disintegration

of a nation reflected in a family.

Herman, as he was in the book,

is indignant, injudicious and ulti-

mately a bore—one who constantly

tells everyone, ardently and insis-

tently, what they can very well see

for themselves. (The writing in

general explains too much.) Her-

man is a thankless role. Bess, on

the other hand, who is equal parts

maternal caution and nervous cal-

TELEVISION REVIEW| JOHN ANDERSON

‘Plot Against America’:

Fictional History for a

Frictional Present

T

he performing arts are

facing a crisis of the

highest seriousness—

and theater in New

Yorkmaybeinthe

biggest trouble of all.

Shortly after Carnegie Hall and the

Metropolitan Opera announced that

they would be closed in an attempt

to slow the inexorable spread of the

new coronavirus, New York Gov.

Andrew Cuomo put in place a ban

on public gatherings of more than

500 people. That includes Broad-

way, whose smallest theater seats

597 and all of which went dark at 5

p.m. on Thursday. Performances are

scheduled to resume on April 13,

but the ban may well be extended if

circumstances require it.

New York isn’t alone, though. Lon-

don Breed, San Francisco’s mayor,

has already ordered the closing of

that city’s largest auditoriums, in-

cluding the various venues that make

up the San Francisco War Memorial

& Performing Arts Center. The ef-

fects of her decision include the can-

cellation of a major San Francisco

Ballet revival of George Balanchine’s

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” im-

mediately after an opening-night

performance that inspired Rachel

Howard, the San Francisco Chroni-

cle’s dance critic, to write that she

had “rarely witnessed a finer—or

more joyous—ensemble triumph.”

Such sweeping measures were in-

evitable, and there are surely more to

come. Yet there is a way for the

show to go on without putting the

public at risk. Thatway is online live

streaming.

Starting with the Metropolitan

Opera in 2006, a fast-growing num-

ber of performing-arts groups have

been using digital technology to

beam their shows into movie houses

on both sides of the Atlantic, and

many older performances can also

be viewed online. “Leopoldstadt,”

Tom Stoppard’s universally ac-

claimed new play, which opened in

London in January, will be simulcast

live on June 25, and audiences

throughout the world are awaiting

it with excitement.

So what’s to stop Broadway and

off-Broadway theaters from live-

streaming their shows, even if

there’s no one in the house to

watch them?

As of now, unfortunately, the an-

swer is: plenty. To begin with, New

York theaters lack the technological

infrastructure needed to simulcast

their performances. They’d have to

nail it together from scratch. More-

over, many theatrical unions have

contracts that call for extra com-

pensation for their members when-

ever a performance is live-

streamed.

On the other hand, there are

plenty of companies that specialize

in simulcasts and streaming, and

according to City A.M., a London-

based financial and business news-

paper, a dozen English theater

troupes are hard at work on contin-

gency plans to live-stream their

shows should they be closed by the

coronavirus.

Not so Broadway’s producers.

“We have not really discussed [live

streaming] as an option,” Charlotte

St. Martin, president of the Broad-

way League, told the New York

Daily News earlier this week. But

why not seize the opportunity to

leap forward into the 21st century

and make live streaming an integral

part of theater in New York in the

same way that some New York jazz

SIGHTINGS| TERRY TEACHOUT

How the Show Can Go On

clubs routinely webcast perfor-

mances for free as a way of promot-

ing the unique experience of hear-

ing live jazz? Lest we forget, 65% of

Broadway audiences come from out

of town. To live-stream Broadway

shows throughout the world would

be an ideal means of spreading the

word about the equally unique ex-

perience of seeing a play or musical

on the Great White Way.

To be sure, the first simulcasts

would undoubtedly be something of a

mess, as the necessary equipment is

put into place and the complex tech-

niques of televising a show direct

from the stage of an empty Broadway

theater are ironed out. But the rough

edges and improvisational quality of

the resulting performances would

also add to the excitement. Except for

jazz musicians, nobody improvises

like theater people: They pride them-

selves on their fabled ability to cope

with whatever mishaps confront

them after the curtain goes up.

Given these rough edges, it would

be appropriate for the first week or

two of live-streamed performances

to be made available free to all com-

ers. After that, they could be put on

a pay-per-view basis, with existing

ticketholders given the option of

watching online instead of asking for

refunds. Would the producers lose

With Broadway shut

down, theaters should

consider live streaming

their performances

money? Yes, most likely. But at least

they’d be bringing insomerevenue,

and they’d also be investing in the

future of live theater once the coro-

navirus is finally vanquished.

In return for that sacrifice, New

York’s theatrical unions ought to

make a reciprocal gesture of good

faith: Given the absence of live au-

diences, which would also reduce

their own risk of contracting the vi-

rus, they should agree to waive any

contractually mandated additional

payments for live streaming.

Undoubtedly countless other

knotty problems would have to be

solved before such a scheme could

be put into place. And it goes with-

out saying that watching a webcast

at home is an inescapably imperfect

substitute for being in the theater.

But as the original viewers of such

now-classic live-TV dramas as

Paddy Chayefsky’s “Marty,” Horton

Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful” and

Reginald Rose’s “Twelve Angry

Men” discovered in the ’50s, the ex-

citement of performing before an

invisible audience of rapt viewers

can be every bit as galvanizing to

actors and their audiences. Now is

the time to give it another try.

Mr. Teachout is the Journal’s

drama critic.