"Molly's Hammer" opened this past weekend at the Rep Studio. Like "Georama", also seen on that stage earlier this season, it's a product of the Rep's Ignite! New Play Festival. And like two other plays at the Rep this season, those on the Mainstage, it's essentially a political play. That's a good thing, on the whole. One of the jobs of art is, in the words of Finley Peter Dunne, afflict the comfortable – in other words to make us think. People are thinking more and more about their stand in relationship to national and world events recently, but the topic here is one we've mostly put aside for the time being: Nuclear proliferation.
Yes, serious stuff. Very serious stuff, about a mother of six, the true story of a woman who decided her commitment to the good of the world was so important she would take action and possibly go to jail for it. Nancy Bell plays Molly Rush, whose children range from 12 to grown and out of the home, one of whom is pregnant with her first grandchild. She's an intelligent woman, but not an educated one. Her husband Bill, played by Joe Osheroff, is a blue collar guy with a decent job where they live in Pittsburgh. The other characters, from Daniel Berrigan, the still-living peace activist and Jesuit, to many of Molly's brothers and sisters, are the work of Kevin Orton. Molly's civil disobedience as she, along with the rest of what came to be called the Plowshares Eight, enters a plant making nuclear warheads, is the focus of the story.
And yet, unheralded, there's another story here. It's about how marriage works, how differences are found and argued over and bargained about and maybe resolved, how adjustment can occur and how belief in the other person can sustain. I left thinking more about that thread than the one about civil disobedience.
Bell and Osheroff grow in their roles as the play progresses and we learn more about who they are. The script in its exposition leaves them rather two-dimensional at first, but it, and they, expand things. Both of the actors really blossom in the second act. Osheroff, in particular, emerges as more of a hero than we'd suspected. The set, which runs from a kitchen sink to a courtoom, is the work of scenic designer Gianni Downs and lighting and projections designer Mark Wilson. Seth Gordon directs what is a complicated play for only three actors and manages to keep things moving and nicely separated.
Molly's Hammer
through March 27
Studio Theatre
Repertory Theatre of St. Louis
314-968-4925