{"id":7132,"date":"2018-03-19T07:26:44","date_gmt":"2018-03-19T11:26:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7132"},"modified":"2018-04-05T07:23:56","modified_gmt":"2018-04-05T11:23:56","slug":"trying-a-play-by-joanna-glass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7132","title":{"rendered":"Trying: A Play by Joanna Glass"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The story of 20th century figure Judge Francis Biddle comes alive in Trying<\/em>, an engaging play by Joanna McClelland Glass, who was Biddle\u2019s assistant during his last year of life. On stage at the George Street Playhouse<\/a> through April 8, the play is directed by Jim Jack.<\/p>\n

It has an apt title, because the irascible judge was very trying during this period, plagued by illnesses, painful arthritis, and growing infirmities. But he also wanted to finish his memoirs, and Glass (in the play, her character\u2019s name is Sarah) must cajole and persuade and badger him to \u201ctry.\u201d She learns to work with the prickly, demanding Biddle, and they develop a strong mutual affection and a relationship that contains a healthy dose of humor.<\/p>\n

Biddle was the quintessential \u201cPhiladelphia lawyer,\u201d accomplished, educated at elite U.S. institutions and related to or acquainted with a significant number of the country\u2019s patrician leaders. He served numerous posts in the administration of Franklin Roosevelt, including as U.S. Solicitor General and U.S. Attorney General.<\/p>\n

When the internment of Japanese-Americans was proposed, he initially opposed it, and regretted his later support. (In the play, he expresses this regret and said that episode is where he learned to mistrust the phrase \u201cmilitary necessity.\u201d) He took actions to support African-American civil rights. Perhaps his most notable achievements were as America\u2019s chief judge at the post-World War II Nuremberg trials of leading Nazis. The lobby displays posters with a number of his strong human rights quotations.<\/p>\n

Ironically, Glass says in her notes accompanying the play, at the end of his life the two events that preoccupied him were the deaths that robbed him of a young son and his own father when he was six. The lost opportunities to know those two people haunted him.<\/p>\n

Even though there are only two actors in the cast, the story clicks right along. Biddle\u2014\u201c81 years old, elegant, sharply cantankerous, and trying to put his life in order\u201d\u2014is played by Philip Goodwin, with increasing frailty of body, but not of spirit, and Cary Zien plays off him well as a sympathetic and energetic young Sarah. The set design conveys the passage of time, with the changing weather and flora outside the window, and though spring arrives and the days grow longer, they are a constant reminder that Biddle\u2019s days are coming to an end.<\/p>\n

This is a lovely play, and gives audiences a lot to think about, with respect to the contributions a single person can make\u2014Biddle in his legal career and Glass with her acute perceptions about what constitutes a well-lived life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The story of 20th century figure Judge Francis Biddle comes alive in Trying, an engaging play by Joanna McClelland Glass, who was Biddle\u2019s assistant during his last year of life. On stage at the George Street Playhouse through April 8, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Trying: A Play by Joanna Glass - the last year in the life of accomplished jurist Francis Biddle. Irascible, ill, and full of life.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[265,61,366,104,147],"tags":[1268,1270,128,1269,416],"class_list":["post-7132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography","category-character","category-drama","category-the-morgue","category-theater","tag-francis-biddle","tag-george-street-playhouse","tag-history","tag-joanna-glass","tag-real-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1R2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7134,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7132\/revisions\/7134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}