The wry, understated humor that Sinclair Lewis weaved through his novels comes along regularly like tart morsels in the work-a-day lives he described in such satires as Babbitt and Main Street, and it also can be found in the lesser-known It Can't Happen Here, which can deal in far darker matters. Early on, the narrator reflects on the central character's affections for his wife: "He had lived with Emma for 34 years, and not oftener than once or twice a year had he wanted to murder her." This kind of trademark backhanded satire �" usually thought but unspoken �" is a mighty challenge to render on the stage, and a new adaptation at Berkeley Rep conjures it fitfully in the first act and loses most of it in the second.
Tony Taccone and Bennett S. Cohen's adaptation of the 1935 novel is more flavorfully layered in the earlier scenes, but when the stakes are raised to life-or-death levels, the dramatizing turns to action-thriller mechanics. In the novel, however, Lewis was able to maintain his distinctive tone even as a totalitarian is elected president and civil war is about to erupt. In the new fascistic order, individual states have been eliminated: "San Franciscans who had considered Los Angelinos even worse than denizens of Miami now wailed with agony when California was sundered and the northern portion lumped in with Oregon, Nevada, and others as the 'Mountain and Pacific Province.'"
But Berkeley Rep probably didn't have these distinctive essences in mind when Taccone and Cohen set out to bring It Can't Happen Here to the stage. The catalyst was surely a fellow named Donald John Trump, whose rise to political exaltation has often-uncanny antecedents in the book's Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, both of whom appeal on a gut level to populaces discouraged by business-as-usual and who don't care if the candidate's windbag pronouncements make no practical sense. Both our real-life candidate and Lewis' fictional creation deal in fear-mongering, often directed at various racial, religious, and xenophobic targets.
The story's central character is typical Sinclair. Doremus Jessup, a small-town New England newspaperman, is perfectly happy that his life doesn't often require him to stray far from home. Family picnics are to be endured, children tolerated, and national politics worthy of the occasional tut-tut editorial. That abruptly changes when Windrip is elected president, punishes dissent, and turns Doremus and his family into cross-border fugitives. A literal presentation of the book on stage is impossible, and Taccone and Cohen, along with director Lisa Peterson, have taken a stylized approach to the text that, even though streamlined for the stage, can become a dizzying pageant of action, characters, and locales.
The production's non-realistic intentions are announced even before the story has begun, with the cast presenting itself as an informal gathering to advise of various aspects of the production, including the use of racially blind casting and cue cards that get the audience to applaud, cheer, and boo at appropriate times during a huge campaign rally at Madison Square Garden.
A cast of 14 plays many more characters than that, and there are times when keeping track of who is who is a challenge. But the steadying presence of Tom Nelis holds focus as the gently charismatic Doremus, whose easy-held beliefs are upended and his courage tested. Most of the other performers make memorable contributions in at least one of their roles: David Kelly as the dangerously buffoonish Windrip, Charles Shaw Robinson as the sinister official who enjoys toying with Doremus, Sharon Lockwood as Doremus' nattering wife, Caroline Sanchez and Anna Ishida as their resourceful daughters, Deirdre Henry as the local liberal gadfly, and Scott Coopwood as the bad-tempered family handyman who turns the tables on his boss when the new order takes charge.
Lewis was moved to write It Can't Happen Here during an alarming rise of dictatorial populism already seen in Europe and exemplified at home by Huey Long of Louisiana, then contemplating a possible third-party run for the presidency that could have Franklin Roosevelt sent out of office. But when Long was soon assassinated and FDR was reelected in a rout, the specific urgencies of the book were undercut. That won't be a problem during this run of It Can't Happen Here. The run ends two days before the election.
It Can't Happen Here will run at Berkeley Rep through Nov. 6. Tickets are $22.50-$97. Call (510) 647-2949 or go to berkeleyrep.org.