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They say history repeats itself. Award-winning playwright Joe DiPietro’s 2020 play “Conscience” at International City Theatre brings that home in profound ways.
In 1950, Sen. Joe McCarthy — whose alcoholic boorishness is well embodied by Jon Root in this production — publicly announced he had a list of dozens of card-carrying communists (extreme versions of Democrats, in his view) embedded in the U.S. government that he would root out.
This declaration polarized politics in ways reminiscent of today, when our two main parties seem intractably divided and people of conscience seem afraid to voice their opinions lest they be vilified. Who could help restore free speech?
Enter Margaret Chase Smith (Sharon Gardner), a Republican senator from Maine who was the first woman to serve in both houses of Congress — and the first congressperson to speak out against McCarthyism.
Her June 1, 1950 “Declaration of Conscience” speech to Congress called for a change to President Truman’s Democratic administration, but more importantly returning to an “Americanism” that includes the right to criticize, protest and think independently without fear of reprisal.
Typed notecards of Smith’s speech that she annotated are posted in the theater’s lobby, a striking display of how much of what she wrote could apply today. For example, notecard 13 reads:
“The American people are sick and tired of being afraid to speak their minds lest they be politically smeared as ‘Communists’ or ‘Fascists’ by their opponents. Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America.”
And notecard 35:
“It is high time that we stopped thinking politically as Republicans and Democrats about elections and started thinking patriotically as Americans about national security based on individual freedom. It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques — techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life.”
As a female politician at that time, though, her speech didn’t have quite the impact she and her staunch aide William Lewis, Jr., or Bill (Dylan C. Wittrock) — who firmly believed Smith could become vice president — would have wanted.
By contrast, McCarthy and his confident young aide Jean Kerr (Hollis Dohr), who ultimately sides with her somewhat lecherous boss rather than lean into her admiration of Smith, not only dominate the media conversation but do everything to put down Smith and also Bill, whom they denigrate as homosexual.
In one difficult scene, McCarthy confronts Bill in the men’s congressional bathroom, physically assaulting him while accusing him of sodomy, which was considered a crime at the time.
The four actors, directed by the theater’s artistic director, caryn desai, thus bring to vivid life DiPietro’s engaging and highly relevant script, which explores the personal as well as the political, including painful truths about Smith’s husband that McCarthy digs up.
Kim DeShazo’s gorgeous costuming grounds the play firmly in its 1950s time period, especially Jean’s fitted dresses and Smith’s elegant skirt-suits, plus textured fabrics on the men. And Donny Jackson’s lighting helps differentiate locations, including offices and a train linking government buildings, on Brittany Bodley and Mason Irwin’s brick-and-marble congressional set.
Ultimately, we learn how McCarthyism was subdued not only by Smith’s efforts but others questioning the fundamental decency of the senator’s aims. It’s hard to discern amid today’s political noise whether we still collectively share that same sense of civility, or whether our tolerance for indecency has grown so much that we accept anything, even if it degrades the freedoms we value.
Either way, “Conscience” offers a chilling and sobering — yet still entertaining — reminder of how our patriotic ideals are at stake when we allow “totalitarian techniques,” as Smith called them in 1950, to undercut how we define being American.
International City Theatre’s “Conscience” continues through Sept. 13 at the Beverly O’Neill Theater, 330 E. Seaside Way, Long Beach, with shows Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. For tickets and information, call the box office at 562-436-4610 or visit ICTLongBeach.org. Run time is 2 hours, including intermission.