Coming to London for its European Premier is Jeffrey Sweet’s Kunstler.
Available to see from 1st May at the White Bear Theatre, you can book your tickets here!
Starring Broadway star Jeff McCarthy, Jeffrey Sweet’s Kunstler vividly brings to life the Chicago Seven conspiracy trial and the Central Park Five, using the lawyer’s own memoirs to get a sense of his thought process, philosophy and language. Sweet also draws on scenes from public record, including the trial in Chicago and Kunstler’s speeches. Interweaving real moments and imagined scenes, Kunstler brilliantly conveys the lawyer’s remarkable life and work – the Kunstler family have even fed back the reality of the production and Kunstler’s voice
JEFFREY SWEET ON KUNSTLER:
Not all plays are born out of high artistic purpose and flashes of inspiration. This play began because it occurred to me that my friend, Jeff McCarthy, bore a strong resemblance to a man who had fascinated me for years, William Kunstler.
In fact, Jeff was known for playing another lawyer, Billy Flynn in the musical Chicago. He’s played him on Broadway and has been dropped into productions around the world. Billy Flynn, of course, is joyously cynical. He sings, “All I Care About is Love” but we know better.
William Kunstler was certainly a flashy showman. Like Billy Flynn he was prone to provocative behavior that would make reporters happy. But Kunstler was not remotely cynical. He actually cared about social justice. Time and again, he put himself at risk to defend some of the most controversial figures of his time, often without compensation.
He also was funny. In fact, it’s generally agreed that what killed him in 1995 was over-exerting himself doing a comedy set on his birthday in a nightclub too soon after an operation.
I don’t want to convey the impression that this was a casual or a whimsical decision on my part. The specific spark for the play may have been Jeff’s resemblance to Kunstler, but I had been fascinated by Kunstler for years. I’m a child of the Sixties, and no lawyer had a higher profile in the causes of those boisterous times than Kunstler, who had dealings with everyone from Martin Luther King to Roy Cohn to John Lennon.
To do justice to him, I knew I would have to have permission to draw on his writings, and for this I needed to contact members of the Kunstler family.
In particular I needed to deal with Sarah and Emily Kunstler, who had dealt with their father’s legacy themselves when they co-directed a terrific documentary called William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe.
I contacted Sarah and Emily and they suggested I met them at the Waverly Diner in Greenwich Village. The Waverly is a famous spot in New York lore. (Perhaps you remember the song in Hair that begins, “I met a boy named Frank Mills in front of the Waverly.”) It is a short walk away from what had been the Kunstler family home on Gay Street. Kunstler often met his clients in a Waverly booth. Jeff McCarthy and I were mindful of this as we sat in a booth opposite Sarah and Emily.
They looked at him for a minute and then said, “Yes, we can see it.” They asked me if I intended to write a solo show, and I said no, I thought there should be someone to challenge him, as they themselves had challenged their father when he was alive and defending cases they didn’t like. For a second they were apprehensive that I intended to put them into the play. No, I said, I felt it should be a young law student who speaks up when he’s giving a seminar at a law school. Relieved, they decided to grant me permission to draw on their father’s work. What was as gratifying, they asked for no right of approval of what I came up with.
Not long ago, Sarah, Emily, Jeff and I reunited at the Waverly. They told Jeff that of all the actors who have played their father – including Mark Rylance, Anthony Zerbe and Liev Schreiber – he has come the closest to embodying the man they knew and loved. In fact, not long after, Jeff was in the subway and heard voices calling to him, “Mr. Kunstler!” He looked across the tracks to find Sarah and Emily waving to him with big grins on their faces.
