Photos by Andy Henderson Photography
A courtroom is, let’s face it, the scene of a largely scripted spectacle. The audience for this spectacle is referred to as the “jury.” Witnesses are rehearsed. Attorneys’ speeches are prepared and the judge directs the whole show. So courtroom drama tends to have more than its share of eloquence, even if it’s typically set in an artificial kind of laboratory of life and law. The characters in this world, after all, have time to perfect their presentation. There are some great courtroom dramas, typically well crafted and with carefully written and delivered speeches. But they typically lack the music, luster and excitement of extemporaneous dialogue.
“The Witness Room,” however, has none of that sense of polished, prepared speech and rehearsed recapitulation of planned testimony. Unlike typical TV crime stories, it takes us behind the scenes and shows us lengthy dialogue in one confined space. This intense drama by Pedro Antonio Garcia, as directed by Will Blum, has the claustrophobic feel of people not in a jail cell, but in a small room where they cannot escape one another, responsibility and consequences. Television takes us from place to place. "The Witness Room" forces characters to confront themselves, each other, and their decisions, in real time and a realistic situation. The dialogue is so dead on, so written in “cop,” that it truly feels as if we are listening to intimate, behind-the-scenes conversations, which is often a sign of theater at its best. This play is written in cop speak and, more precisely, the languagef New York and law enforcement.
In this taut, tight drama, officers T-J Moretti (Dave Baez), Terrence Sampson (Moe Irvin), Kevin Brennan (Jason SweetTooth Williams), and Eli Torres (JD Mollison) are here to present, polish and orchestrate less than truthful testimony about a bust, to avoid getting in trouble. Tricia Small, who plays Assistant District Attorney Andrea Volpi, is going to prepare and direct them. The actors, however, talk about what they feel, think and want, before each taking their turn in a chair , a kind of hot seat, facing the audience, recounting their rehearsed version of events, in a bright spotlight, providing artificial accounts in an artificial situation before the more chaotic pace of life resumes. Periodically, one after another, the cops disappear to testify before a judge, or magistrate named Waxman (is wax artificial as in a wax museum?). We get the results, as we build to a conclusion as to what the truth is and whether one of the officers will tell it.
This is truly a roller coaster of a play carried forward on uniformly great performances with clashes between cops – and Tricia Small as the one with the hardest edge of all. To survive in this sexist world, she has to be tough. The cops refer to each other as brothers and the play has a little bit of the feel of brothers battling it out in "True West." The drama is in the dialogue, the character, the situation, the information and the decision regarding whether to do what we know is the right thing, or the "right" thing for them. From the moment the play begins, as the four male officers burst into the scene, wearing plain clothes and laughing, we see them as one unit, one family, one team. While we hear about a cop as a Christ, he is also a potential Judas to the others. The dialogue and rhythms are rendered with surgical precision: They all speak the same language, another bond in this brotherhood.
It all feels so real including the shorthand such as IA (internal affairs) and the CCRB (civilian complaint review board: Every time you make an arrest, you get a complain) and slang that captures conversation like a beautiful butterfly pinned to the precinct wall. They are friends who will protect each other, even if it means sacrificing a suspect who, well, probably did something else. “Don’t worry,” Baez says with chilling conviction. “I know my lines.” He might as well have said, “I know my lies.” While JD Mollison starts to see himself in the suspect, others remind him that he is a cop, not Christ, not a Saint, not Serpico. “You can’t save everyone,” Moe Irvin says. We might ask, whether they can save one person or even themselves.
Instead of the polished stage of a judge’s courtroom, Garcia in this play takes us backstage and shows us what is behind the badge, so to speak, and behind the scenes. This is what happens when you take shortcuts to do anything in order to get an arrest. We get some possibly too philosophical debates that seem to be the playwright speaking and maybe not enough argument about how they truly are protecting others, even if they break a rule or two. But we also get good procedural disagreements about whether to call the suspect a “perp” which is short for perpetrator, and assumes guilt, or a defendant. We also hear a lot about the cops’ personal lives and struggles, including custody battles, divorces, and Irvin’s character’s undying, unrequited love of the Knicks. It isn’t clear, at least to me, exactly what era this is, although it’s after Amadou Diallo, who is mentioned, which could place events in the early 2000s or later. But it seems set in the past when the public and the courts at least may have still cherished the naive notion that people who put on badges become truthtellers, although we see here police as willing to lie or at least gild the lily to get a conviction and to protect themselves. And they do say a lot, even as they tell us they write the minimum on their reports.
What we hear in this play without an intermission is an earful, not a fly on the wall, but a microphone in the room as these officers converse, dealing with each other, their jobs and the at once mundane, and all too common, dilemma they find themselves in. Pedro Antonio Garcia, who is also a defense attorney, captures conversation with the meticulous ear of a microphone. These cops talk practically in code, initially showing us four men whose bubble of braggadocio is soon broken when a female ADA arrives unexpectedly. What follows is an intense game of cat and mouse where it’s never clear who is the cat and who is the mouse. Although the court proceedings are going on off stage, it’s clear these police have lied, pretending to believe there was a gun, so they could barge in. They find cocaine, but that search could be illegal. And even then we learn later that the man arrested for the cocaine may actually have plead guilty to protect someone else, before having a change of heart. After so many pleas, this suspect retracts his confession and demands a trial. The truth could come out, that police used an imaginary gun to let them burst in and find cocaine that, it seems, didn’t belong to that man.
On the most basic level, this is a play about the blue wall of silence, not just realistic speech. Eli Torres (JD Mollison) wearing a cross and a white t-shirt is referred to as a clean cop suddenly seeming more like a Christ figure. We see his internal struggle in his face, his posture and dialogue. His back is turned to us through big chunks of the play, as if to say he is not one of them, and this is not TV, where backs never face audience. Mollison's character may even come across as too good and too naïve, as he talks about sacrificing himself, telling the truth, because he realizes they did an illegal search and got a possibly false confession. Terrence Sampson (Moe Irvin) after emerging from the hearing tells us that the defense attorney got him to acknowledge he would die for his fellow officers. Doesn’t that also mean he would lie for them? Tricia Small, as Assistant District Attorney Andrea Volpi, says judges and the public need to believe the police are a well-run paramilitary organization that operates with the “illusion of military precision.” The idea that police may be inefficient, prone to error, sometimes biased or prejudiced, would mean the entire system is rotten.
The drama and dialogue are very strong, keeping the play rooted in and working in the present. Terrence Sampson (Moe Irvin) says he wouldn’t “walk naked” into this building, by which he means without a gun. But when guns come out, brandished almost cavalierly, cops pointing them at each other, and even at their own heads, it feels affected and exaggerated. The dialogue and emotions are explosive enough and the guns start to feel like they are lifted from TV. This play also is about how, when people plead guilty, cases never go to trial and the truth may never be revealed. A suspect who refuses to plead, but demands due process, throws the courts into chaos. Eli Torres Torres (JD Mollison) asks whether their “first loyalty” is to the law. Kevin Brennan (Jason SweetTooth Williams) says that revealing they lied could lead to a “never ending ocean of problems” overturning many other, legitimate convictions. At times ethical debates actually may weaken the drama, but it always gets back on track.
“The Witness Room” is a well-written, well-structured, well-directed and well-acted play where an arrest provides a situation, but is not the whole story. It may feel like a police procedural at first, but it's about the characters, not the case. And the intimacy of live theater suits these performances well. The dynamics between this workplace family are at the core of this cop drama. The characters at times may be a little one sided regarding their views on corruption, with everybody pushing for lies except for our own Jesus with a badge, longing to tell the truth. When guns come out, it goes more cowboy than cop. The emotions feel real. The guns, wielded with an easy indifference, do not. Still, it’s an extremely powerful play and a great, intense ride with great dialogue and a great story that shows that cops can be characters on stage, not just cogs in the wheels of police TV shows. After seeing this play, you may just wonder what goes on behind the scenes, outside courtrooms, what people really think, and what really happens behind closed doors. For nearly an hour and a half, with no intermission, it feels like we really get a chance to see some of that. And it’s exciting, exhilarating and entertaining as we write our own ending as to what will happen to the suspect we never see and the cops we do following a surprise ending that shows, for some, humanity is just a strategy to get what they want.
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