By Ernest Kearney — Ain’t That America offers a truly unique viewpoint on a segment of our country that has been legitimatized and emboldened since the last presidential election: the young alt-right conservatives of the South. More committed to their ideologies, more proselytizing and more extreme in their actions; these are the youths who have been “hyper-racialized” by the likes of Richard Spencer, South Park and Alex Jones, which culminated in the election of Donald Trump.
Two young loners Pat (Dan Schultz) and Red (John Brahan) meet at their small town’s community college. Red espouses the right wing, neo-conservative rhetoric that Rush
Writer, Performer John Brahan (HFF18)
Limbaugh broadcasts every day and—couching it in “ditto-head banter”—lures the more pliable Pat into his orbit.
But when Red despairs of the country ever seeing the truth and decides a deadly “wake-up call is needed,” Pat is faced with confronting his friend and himself.
This is a work that defies the common wisdom, which is common because it is wise. But Brahan and Schultz offer themselves up as the proverbial “exceptions that tests the rules.”
The script is by Brahan and the piece is directed by Schultz. Normally we could describe this mixture of double duties with Gary Larson’s apt term: “Trouble brewing”— but not here, not now.
Brahan and Schultz succeed in creating a superbly structured and intelligent work and simultaneously give two of the finest performances I’ve seen at this Fringe.
Director, Performer Dan Schultz (HFF18)
The two began working the piece while at The University of Mississippi, and the insights into the development of the radical soul are not the product of study but of that environment.
Brahan has never read Eric Hoffer’s 1951 classic The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, still his play reverberates with Hoffer’s findings:
“Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.”
“The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.”
“Every extreme attitude is a flight from the self.”
Brahan’s awareness of the characters he has penned has come naturally and that quality—a quality which most writers struggle and sweat to obtain—permeates the play with an effortlessness that is intense.
Brahan’s intense performance as the engaging and revolting Red is in the vicinity of spectacular.
Perhaps it might seem that Schultz’s performance, though excellent, may have suffered from the demands of the two hats he donned here, but if that is the case, while there was toil on his role, there was none on the production, which was directed with a sure and steady hand.
For the work of both Brahan and Schultz, a PLATINUM MEDAL.
♦ ♦ ♦
Ain’t That America
Played the Hollywood Fringe Festival 2018
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