Last call for death row

“Goddamn madhouse tonight,” says Shawna, a prison guard, as she talks to a reporter and sips the upscale beer he paid for. “Never seen it like that — never! All them TV trucks? Never seen a crowd like that…not even for Willie T, and he had a big one...but tonight? Damn.”

The state just executed Bobby Reyburn for setting fire to an African-American church and killing all the parishioners, including 14 children.

In Bruce Graham’s Coyote on a Fence, Shawna recounts Reyburn’s time in jail and his effect on John Brennan, the man in the death-row cell next door, who wants to see the good in people convicted of murder.

Bobby spews racist babble and anti-Semitic slurs with assault-rifle rapidity and with the Aryan assurance that God is on his side. He’s as “evil” as Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, whose murder of a sailor is “good.”

Of course you could say Bobby’s upbringing made him this way: born with fetal alcohol syndrome; tormented to the point of brain damage by his mother, a prostitute; abused so often in prison he has one eye and hip damage.

Among the questions Coyote asks: in other circumstances, could Bobby have been different? The play contrasts Bobby with John Brennan: educated, literate, he writes positive obits for the condemned and doesn’t want “the last thing said about men in here to be ugly.”

An advocate of human rights, John denies kicking a drug dealer to death. Where did John’s “circumstances” lead him?

OnStage Playhouse must conclude the run of their tough, thought-provoking drama this Sunday (February 6). They caution that “this production is intended for mature audiences. It contains excessive profanity and explicit language which may offend some patrons.” It does, and may. But it can also cast light where society would rather not tread.

Craig Noel Awards ceremony Takes place this coming Monday, February 8, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, at 700 Prospect Street La Jolla, from 6:00 to 10:00 p.m. Along with awards in 25 categories, the San Diego Theater Critics Circle will honor Actor of the Year (male and female), Director of the Year, and the Don Braunagel Award for Outstanding Work by a Small Theater Company.

Admission is free, but reservations are required and few seats remain.