Inherit the Wind is set in 1925 in small-town Tennessee, the United States. A young teacher is on trial for teaching the evolution of the species according to Charles Darwin, against Tennessee state law.
Ostensibly, this play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee is a fictionalised account of the so-called Scopes monkey trial, which took place in the same period. Inherit the Wind was written in 1955 when McCarthyism made life difficult for many in the US.
Writers Lawrence and Lee, interviewed many years later, said the play was their way of demonstrating the dangers of McCarthyism, but more than that, it was their plea for individuals’ rights to think as they wished, a plea for intellectual freedom.
Essentially, this play is a clever courtroom drama with the prosecution and defence lawyers arguing each for and against the state’s laws. I’m sure Inherit the Wind does closely mirror the Scopes monkey trial, but I’m not sure how many of the defence’s scientist witnesses were not allowed to give evidence.
In the play, 15 scientists were forbidden by the judge from giving evidence. This play is clever and well written. Our play reading group enjoyed reading and discussing it, so much so that we’d like to see it in production at Repertory Theatre in the future.
