Dirty History Postcard

Peephole views of history are peddled in the theater these days the way filthy postcards were once hawked in Paris. Want to see Pope Pius XII do something obscene to 6,000,000 Jews? Scan The Deputy, an original Rolf Hochhuth dirty history postcard. Want to see whites do something obscene to a Negro heavyweight champion? Scan The Great White Hope, an original Howard Sackler dirty history postcard. The theatrical alleys are getting a trifle crowded with these peddlers, but Ireland's Conor Cruise O'Brien obviously thinks there is room for one more. He has a marvelous name for a dramatist, and it is a far, far better line than any in his play, Murderous Angels.

Ably directed by Gordon Davidson and skillfully performed at Los Angeles'

Mark Taper Forum, the play is perhaps best betrayed by description. Acting on behalf of the stockholders of the copper-rich Union Miniere du Haut-Katanga, the U.S. pressures the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjold (George Voskovec), to accede to the murder of the Congolese leader, Patrice Lumumba (Louis Gossett). At the very least, this proposition proves that a sovereign contempt for the playgoers' intelligence is not confined to Broadway.

History Distorted. O'Brien, of course, is much too sly to pretend that he is recording straight history, even though he was a U.N. official in Katanga province in 1961 during its secessionist struggle with the Republic of the Congo. In one of the most disingenuous prefaces ever tacked onto a play, O'Brien announces: "My Hammarskjold and my Lumumba are not to be thought of as the 'real' characters of that name, but as personages shaped by the imitation of a real action associated with their names." What O'Brien is proclaiming here is the dramatist's right to distort history and historical characters in any way he sees fit. Director Gordon Davidson argued in conversation on opening night that Shakespeare did precisely the same thing. The significant difference, perhaps, is that Shakespeare wrote drama, whereas O'Brien simply pontificates and polemicizes.

To what uses does O'Brien put his historical carte blanche? He argues that Hammarskjold was a pederast and Lumumba an avid heterosexual. Disregarding the question of truth, which scarcely seems to concern O'Brien, is it not a sign of intellectual naivete to argue that the political acts of a pederast will automatically be evil and the political acts of a heterosexual will automatically be good? With similar unsophistication, he argues that only whites hurt blacks. Presumably, after almost 21 years of the Nigerian civil war, even his eyes should be a little wider open than that. One insufferable assumption of the play is that anything the U.S. does in the world is unvaryingly venal. Now to err is human, and since Americans are human, they err. But to imply that all their motives in world affairs are malignant, avaricious and murderous is surely to show a strong and unrealistic bias.

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