Truth Be Told
Written by William Cameron
Directed by Kim T. Sharp
24 Bond Street, Manhattan, NYC
February 19-March 9, 2025
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| Michelle Park and Francesca Ravera. Photo by Bronwen Sharp. |
Avoidance and denial can be attractive options to many in the face of hard truths, whether personal or, as has become increasingly and visibly widespread, national or global (and, of course, the reasons for the former may often play a significant role in prompting the latter). This is not to say that people have access to a single totalizing Truth but rather that objectively verifiable truths exist independently of any one individual's perception or acknowledgment of them. Kathleen Abedon (Michelle Park) in playwright William Cameron's
Truth Be Told, making its New York premiere at The Gene Frankel Theatre, must face the devastating truth that authorities have concluded that her teenage son, Julian, was responsible for a deadly mass shooting, but she refuses to accept their conclusion itself as true. As Kathleen's desire to tell her story her way begins to create friction with the author planning to tell that story, both the commonalities and the tensions between the two women play out in a complex, absorbing, and sharply observed character study that also acts as a microcosm of America’s post-truth social dynamics.
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| Michelle Park and Francesca Ravera. Photo by Bronwen Sharp. |
The author in question, Josepha Hunter (Francesca Ravera), or Jo for short, has made a controversial name for herself with her previous book, which applied the claim that the bad about someone lives on while the good is forgotten to a man who murdered his family. Kathleen tells Jo that she wants what was good about Julian to be remembered, and Kathleen sees the book that Jo will write as the vehicle for this counternarrative. Jo is a mother as well, of a five-year-old son, Jake; and as the mothers trade stories about their children in an attempt by Jo to draw Kathleen away from the prepared notes to which she clings in order present the specific picture of her family that she both wishes to remember herself and to disseminate to the public, alongside the warm memories and depth of maternal love, we also see the potential for violence in every person–including Jo, including even young Jake. Similarly, we see flaws in both women, some of which are connected to guilt that they carry as mothers, but there is, like Jo's earlier book posited, good and bad in everyone (even if in differing proportions), including Juilan and his stepfather, Harlan. Kathleen works hard to downplay the bad (and as the play progress, it nicely complicates this tendency in her), but Jo is most taken aback by Kathleen's early declaration that she believes that Julian, who died along with more than a dozen others on the day of the shooting, is innocent of the crime. The catalyst for her newfound conviction lies in the right-wing conspiracist mediasphere, and while it is easy to condemn Kathleen's stubborn resistance to evidence, the play also allows us to see why, for someone like her–who has lived a difficult life, is now suffering harassment and ostracization, and doesn't want to be judged–would find the path offered by denial so attractive. Kathleen's experience demonstrates how and why people find solace in the conspiracist ranks as well as suggests parallels to comparable or related impulses such as a reluctance to admit to domestic or child abuse. At the same time, Kathleen is not wrong when she angrily observes that Jo's dedication to finding truth(s) is inextricably entangled with the capitalist imperatives of the publishing industry. |
| Michelle Park and Francesca Ravera. Photo by Bronwen Sharp |
Kathleen has recently moved–although not, as she would like, out of the town she was living in when the shooting occurred–and the stacks of cardboard boxes that make up most of the set, designed by Elena Vannoni, reflect her uprooted life while maybe also hinting at an image of compartmentalized memories. Kathleen and Jo are impressively written not just as characters but as women; and, in realizing them, the performances shine in their authenticity and multidimensionality. Ravera's Jo can be hard, especially when she feels compelled to defend victimized women or, less nobly, the exclusivity built into her book contract, but she also reveals at times her own reservoir of guilt and uncertainty linked to motherhood. Park is not afraid to portray Kathleen as stubborn or unreasonable at various points, but she also channels her character's burdens of pain, loss, and love in ways that are impossible not to sympathize with, especially in the production's potently moving conclusion. On the way to that endpoint,
Truth Be Told compellingly reminds us that people know others in unique ways, which doesn't excuse the evil(s) of said others but rather adds to the truths about them.
-John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards
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