Review: 'Kingdom' a bold look at censorship

To borrow from another Midwestern-set play about clashing moral codes and the imminent corruption of young people: Oh, we got trouble, right here in Kingdom City.

The problems facing the folks in Sheri Wilners bracing new play, though, are a bit more pressing than pool halls and Balzac. (And unlike the Iowa burg of The Music Man, theres no sweet librarian in this story's tightly wound Missouri town to make things right, because theres no library).

In Kingdom City, now getting an involving world-premiere production at La Jolla Playhouse, the local high school has just banned a staging of that scholastic staple, Arthur Millers The Crucible." Multiple relationships are melting down as characters take sides over censorship, religion and purity ceremonies," and national media attention has trained a hot spotlight on the towns woes.

Kingdom City itself is unlikely to be booted from a high school stage anytime soon, for the simple reason that its profanity and frankness would make it a dicey candidate for any student production in the first place.

And yet its a piece that (mature) teen-agers could benefit from seeing, because it takes seriously both the kinds of pressures adolescents face and the complicated balance that those who have power over them must find between caring for and coddling them.

Thats not to say theres no trouble in Kingdom City (its a brand-new work, after all). The backgrounds of a couple of key characters could use more illumination, one climactic faceoff takes some bordering-on-contrived turns, and the key figure of a youth minister in particular starts to develop straw-man qualities.

Still, Wilner explores the issues at hand with considerable wit and insight, and weaves in themes and even passages from The Crucible Millers towering allegory of, yes, censorship in some wonderful and surprising ways.

Her play takes its cues from a real-life 2006 incident in which a school production of The Crucible, which is set amid the Salem witch trials, was quashed in Missouri.

In Kingdom City, a pair of married New Yorkers stage director Miriam (Kate Blumberg) and fiction writer Daniel (Todd Weeks) have landed in town courtesy of Daniels college teaching gig.

The dialogue in Wilners first scene crams in some ungainly exposition. But once we get up to speed on the who and the what, director Jackson Gays production finds its feet, as a reluctant Miriam finally agrees to direct a show for the high school, and picks The Crucible off the administrators own list.

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Review: 'Kingdom' a bold look at censorship