STAGE WEST: "Sense of Decency" at North Coast Repertory Theatre

Brendan Ford (left) and Frank Corrado in "Sense of Decency."                              Photo by Aaron Rumley

            I remarked to the ticket usher on my way into see “Sense of Decency” the other night at the North Coast Rep that 90-minute, no intermission shows were always music to my ears.
            She immediately reminded me that these would be 90 very tense minutes.
            Lesson: Listen to your usher.
            This world-premiere play written by and co-directed (with David Ellenstein) by Jake Broder is based on Jack El-Hai’s book “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist.” Just as you might say the premise of “Titanic” is “ship sinks,” you could say that “Sense of Decency” is indeed a story of a Nazi and a psychiatrist.
            In terms of gravitas, however, James Cameron’s mega-movie and this historical examination couldn’t be further apart.
            El Hai’s 2013 book (the full title is “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist: Hermann Goring, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, and a Fatal Meeting of the Minds at the End of WWII”) tells the story of Army psychiatrist Kelley’s sessions in a Nuremburg prison with the infamous Goring. His job was to make sure that Goring, and other imprisoned Nazis like him, were healthy and mentally sound enough (meaning not on the verge of suicide) to stand trial. What Kelley did was mine Goring’s psyche for answers to what could cause such evil.
            The dramatic device of staged psychiatric interview is a tired and ubiquitous one in theater, television and film, an economical way to get inside the head of the patient and REVEAL something. But as the centerpiece of “Sense of Decency” it makes for compelling theater. Broder also has built in scenes and asides with both Kelley’s wife Dukie and Goring’s wife Emmy (each played by Lucy Davenport) that allow the probing psychiatrist (Brendan Ford) to step out of the prison-cell setting and air his feelings, his anxieties, his shifting analyses. Further, the sessions with Goring (Frank Corrado) are bookended by scenes between Ford and Davenport that establish the doc’s character and, on the back end, demonstrate his own psychological metamorphosis.
            In an interview with me for the San Diego Union-Tribune recently, Broder emphasized that in researching Goring, he found the man to be less immoral than outright amoral, a manipulative narcissist to the nth degree. In a studied performance that is also chilling because we know the backstory of this terrible Reichsmarschall, Corrado demonstrates this very Goring that Broder discovered. Utilizing ingratiation, stupid (and racist) little jokes and unexpected restraint when challenged, this Goring plays Kelley, who brings his own bag of tricks, futilely, to the prison cell,  with ease.
            Much of what Broder’s script illuminates is how, tragically, the Nazi basis for the Final Solution was inspired by among others America, the high-minded nation that fought a war for slavery and even at the time of the Nuremburg trials had a bloody history of racism (though Nikki Haley would deny that, remember?).
            Corrado’s Goring plays this card in his encounters with Kelley, whose own psychiatric card tricks pale by comparison. At first indignant and defensive and outraged, Kelley comes to recognize the undeniable truth in the universality of hate, exclusion and worse – and this carries the character into the devastating last half-hour of the play. That’s when Kelley tries to make the world see what he sees. He does not deny the horror of Goring and the Reich, but what he believes he has learned goes beyond that prison cell.
            After an uneven beginning on the evening I saw “Sense of Decency,” Ford seizes his character and reflects Kelley’s desperation and deteriorating vividly as the play winds its way toward a startling conclusion.
            This is a tautly performed and frequently riveting hour and a half of theater that should make one examine with careful and uncompromising thought the past and the present. Come to think of it, where we may be headed as well.
            “Sense of Decency” runs through May 12 at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach.