Cherry Docs

At Pacific Theatre until April 28, 2019
Tickets from $20 at 604-731-5518 or pacifictheatre.org

Posted April 7, 2019

“I wear Cherry Docs, eighteen-hole, steel shank, steel toe, original-air-cushioned, acid, oil, detergent and . . waste-resistant-sole. Combat Model. Combat tread.” And what has 20-year-old skinhead Mike done with these Doc Martens boots? Kicked a South Asian man, a Burger King employee, so badly that the victim later died of a multitude of injuries. How is Daniel Dunkelman, a middle-age, Jewish, legal aide lawyer, supposed to defend an unrepentant neo-Nazi who believes Jews are “the spawn of Satan” that must be eliminated and who calls the Holocaust, “the Hoaxocaust”?

Written by Canadian playwright David Gow in 1998, Cherry Docs unfortunately still resonates today; the problems that provided fertile ground for white supremacists back in the 90s are still with us – including alienation, lack of opportunity and the widening gap between rich and poor.

This is a pressure cooker of a play: a two-hander in the intimate setting of Pacific Theatre. A minimal set. No special effects. Just scorching interaction between Mike and Daniel. Somehow a defence must be formulated. But along the way, Daniel confronts his own demons; at one point, he admits he would really like to hurt Mike but fears if he starts, he would not be able to stop.

In this guest production at Pacific Theatre directed by Richard Wolfe for Cave Canem, Kenton Klassen (Mike) and John Voth (Daniel) are well-matched for this 90-minute verbal sparring match. While Daniel appears to abandon his responsibility by continually – somewhat bewilderingly – telling Mike to build his own defence, ironically the ploy (if it is one) works. Voth, for the most part, plays the liberal, law school-educated attorney with a certain kind of smugness but as the play proceeds, Voth shows the cracks in Daniel’s self-righteousness.

Klassen, head-shaved and multi-tattooed, is Mike. Playwright Gow could have given us a little more back-story on this character because it’s obvious from the beginning that Mike is intelligent despite being a drop-out in Grade 10. What drove him to become a self-described “foot soldier in the Great Aryan Resistance”? And, although he claims his act of violence was not an act of hate but an act of “holy righteous love”, what does he mean by “holy”? He blames the Jews for “killing” Christ, but he does not seem a paradigm of Christian charity.

The playwright plays with notions of the biblical Daniel and Archangel Michael but I do not find this as compelling as a white, privileged lawyer coming to terms with his own supressed hatred while defending one who clearly abhors everything he stands for.

A play about redemption, Cherry Docs is not perfect – the lawyer’s tactics are definitely questionable – but it’s impossible to walk away from the theatre without questioning the state of one’s own intolerance. And it’s chilling to consider Mike’s suggestion that, “soon there won’t be Skins anymore. They’ll get a new uniform; maybe a nice corporate suit and brogues.” We still have Skins twenty years after the play was written and now we have the alt-Right, too. Some of them are sitting in places of power. One of them is building a wall.