Tom Paine, the anti-royal pain
The radical pamphleteer Thomas Paine, whose pro-revolution "Common Sense" was an early American literary hit (about 150,000 copies in three months) in Philadelphia in 1776, was as effective with his pen as George Washington's troops would be with their muskets. He wasn't nearly as powerful in other areas of political and social thought, as the new one-man play Citizen Paine, being staged by Iron Age Theatre in Norristown, makes clear. But his heart was in the right place.
The radical pamphleteer Thomas Paine, whose pro-revolution "Common Sense
"
was an early American literary hit (about 150,000 copies in three months) in Philadelphia in 1776, was as effective with his pen as George Washington's troops would be with their muskets. He wasn't nearly as powerful in other areas of political and social thought, as the new one-man play
Citizen Paine
, being staged by Iron Age Theatre in Norristown, makes clear. But his heart was in the right place.
In fact, much of Paine's vision of democracy - over the top at the time - is now an accepted part of everyday America. Slavery, he said, was impossible to reconcile with the idea of democracy. Women, he wrote, were imprisoned socially, just as they were physically by the corsets his British Quaker father made. Unlike others, Paine acknowledged both women and men; in a well-known passage from "The Crisis," he wrote this five months after the Declaration was signed:
"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country. But he that stands by it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."
Paine also considered the plight of poor children ("childhood" was not nearly as solid a concept then as now), the morality question inherent in executions, and the possibility that organized religion was not exactly a divine inspiration. You can't help but wonder, while watching Adam Altman's volatile portrayal of the man, whether Tom Paine's current, less intelligent incarnation is Bill Maher, with some of the same issues at hand.
Bill Hollenbach's 70-minute one-act is not the first Philadelphia stage premiere in which Paine, one of the city's great Revolutionary sons, is the central character. The Philadelphia Theatre Company and Washington's Kennedy Center teamed 22 years ago to debut Howard Fast's
Citizen Tom Paine
, which depicted him as a man without real relationships, only political allies and enemies. The same is true in Hollenbach's
Citizen Paine
, in which the audience in tiny Centre Theater is supposed to be visiting Paine in his austere home in New Rochelle, N.Y., near the end of his life. It seems we may be the only friends he has left.
He has ticked off everyone (indeed, long after his death, Paine was still considered an irascible menace) and the supervisor at his polling station has disenfranchised him. Paine has sued to be certified as an American citizen, after having lived abroad. In France, he'd been both a part of government and an imprisoned victim of the apocalyptic political decay after its revolution.
His disenfranchisement in the United States is the underlying theme of Paine's venting in Hollenbach's script: He alternately regales us and drones at us.
No one can quibble with the details of the monologue - Hollenbach did his homework. And he offers some scenes with clear insights into Paine's thinking - one, concerning a 17-year-old about to be executed, is particularly well crafted.
In the staging by John Doyle, artistic director of Iron Age, Altman's portrayal has a loose volume control. Paine's lapses into high dudgeon are sudden and swollen. After about 45 minutes, you feel as if you're being lectured; after an hour, you wish the rum Paine constantly pours would make him nod off, so you could quietly tiptoe out.
Citizen Paine
, edited down and with a subtler performance, would make a fine piece at the National Constitution Center or as part of Philadelphia's summer-long Once Upon a Nation program along the city's colonial streets. As a theater piece, it lacks real conflict or tension, except in the sense that we are watching a man in conflict with the world. We know Paine is right and the whole world wrong, but that doesn't make the piece more involving, or cover the mood swings in Altman's otherwise respectable performance.
After all the talk about being disenfranchised, Hollenbach never finds a dramatic device to tell us the outcome: Paine never was declared an American citizen. Now
that's
a real outrage, worth yelling about.
Citizen Paine
Presented by Iron Age Theatre at Centre Theater, 208 DeKalb St., Norristown, through Thursday. Tickets: $15. 610-279-1013 or
» READ MORE: www.ironagetheatre.org
.
Additional performances Feb. 24 and 25 at City Tavern, 138 S. Second St.