The Witness Room

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To complement the words “In God We Trust” emblazoned on the upper center wall of the set, the graphic for the play The Witness Room has the words “Kill the Truth” centered directly below the title. The audience needs to pick up on that subtlety to truly get the message of Pedro Antonio Garcia’s gripping play.

Four hardened male plainclothes police officers are being coached for a “suppression hearing” – that is a court proceeding prior to trial to challenge the legality of the evidence taken from the crime, whether it be drugs, statements, or identification. In The Witness Room, there are two bags of cocaine that were removed from the crime scene, but the sloppiness of the affidavits filed by the four police officers means some “rehearsal” is necessary for all four men to be in agreement on what actually happened months earlier when a man was arrested. This is not as dense as Rashomon. In place of the exquisite storytelling that offered subjective, alternative and somewhat contradictory versions of the same incident, The Witness Room gives us a very real situation where the slightest discrepancy either frees a criminal or sends an innocent person to jail.

We have no reason to disbelieve the officers’ best efforts to serve (and to tell the story as they knew it to be true). Each one is dedicated to his job to protect, but the Blue Wall of Silence rears its ugly head. That is a term that refers to police officers and their unions always backing the assertions of individual members of the force regardless of whether those assertions are true (or false). As the unseen defense attorney insinuates during one of the testimonies, “You would die for your fellow officer…but you wouldn’t lie for him?”

Garcia’s play is blessed with an exemplary cast, each of the men playing a representation of how mixed the New York City police force can be. As disparate as one would expect them to be, their bond as “men in blue” is a covenant. It doesn’t matter where or how they grew up; they think as one.

Dave Baez plays T-J Moretti, the suave sexy Italian who normally has women become putty in his hands. He’s the son of a cop and has learned artifice is everything. He brings a suit to change into for his interview portion of the hearing. Baez unearths a seething panther under the GQ model exterior when he returns to the room after a disastrous outing in front of the defense attorney and presiding judge. His integrity at question, his not sticking to the script allows the defense attorney to scratch away at what is usually a slightly thicker veneer. His return to the room is white-hot rage.

Moe Irvin as Terrence Sampson, the African American of the group, on the surface is the cooler in temperament of these two which reflects the officer’s coming to the realization he can’t move up in the force as he faces a string of cases before the Civilian Complaint Review Board. Each of the cases featured an accusation of a fabricated affidavit. The defense attorney presents this extraneous information as a means to rile Sampson under scrutiny. In defending what he and his colleagues do, Sampson offers “Why are we in the building in the first place? Because we’re asked by the community to patrol it for criminal activity, like drug possession, so when we come upon it, it shouldn’t be a big fu..ing surprise. And what do we do as New York’s Finest, we stop it.” If he can’t climb the department ladder, he at least wants to stay on the same rung, but one of his team’s testimony could very well throw all of them under the bus. Threatened with this we see how Irvin carefully shapes Sampson’s rage to make Moretti’s pale in comparison. Feeling everything he holds dear could slip away, he’s not above holding a gun to the head of the loose cannon.

“Kevin Brennan, the Irishman in their midst, is also the son of a cop. Like father like son, they both have drinking problems. The defense attorney tosses into his argument the fact that Brennan may have been drunk while under oath. “He asked me if I was ever drunk on the witness stand. He called me an alcoholic who couldn’t even remember if I was even in the right precinct.” Jason SweetTooth Williams imbues Brennan with the disarming gift of philosophizing. He’s the proverbial cop with the donut habit, as comfortable at Dunkin’ as he is perched on a stool at his favorite watering hole. On the surface we see a man that contemplates what his job offers him day in, day out. “We all come into the force with dreams of being good, changing the world, one block at a time, but you soon realize that there is an unending ocean of problems, and when you solve one there’s another one waiting, and those waves of problems never go away, and you can be overwhelmed by it, drowning you.” We can only hope that as he says this to his fellow officer Eli that he takes comfort in the rationale himself.

As Eli Torres, the devout Latino, J.D. Mollison is the emotional linchpin of this production. Torres’ own troubled past of an addict mom mirrors that of the accused. Where the other officers and the Assistant D.A. are already resolved with a quick outcome, Torres’ faith tells him to be more questioning. He is very much on the fence about how the entire process has been handled thus far and realizes if the lying stops here at these hearings everyone will be subjected to a trial by jury with serious consequences. His colleagues would prefer a swift “crossing of T’s and dotting of I’s” and being done with this, rather than calling into question a history of fast decisions that may very well have detrimentally impacted some very innocent people. Questioning not only his faith but his ability to actually carry out justice makes for some very poignant soul-searching for Torres.

The voice of reason, Tricia Small as Assistant District Attorney Andrea Volpi provides the heavy lifting in a set and re-set every time she enters the room. A street-smart Bronx Italian, this is an attorney that understands the serious ramifications of everything that can possibly go wrong with these testimonies. The defense attorney has Latino politicians in his back pocket ready to take aim at a culture that protects the cops more than the civilians, but Volpi has her own culture: one where she never loses. Small sinks her teeth into the no-nonsense, take- charge attorney that will get the desired outcome no matter how many blunders obstruct her plan. She doses out tough love in the midst of a barrage of orders to these men to get with the program. The penultimate moment between Mollison and Small is chilling in the depiction of how far someone in authority will go to protect all at the risk of hurting one so deeply, seeing the big picture and laying out the potential outcomes one more threatening than the other. Their objectives here turn on a dime and in the hands of these two actors, it is something to watch.

Director Will Blum creates an exciting energy with this cast with moments hurtling by, taking us to a denouement that just makes perfect sense. The intensity of the bickering and the handling of the subtleties when the characters speak of their own relationship to morality is spot-on. The only missteps are not harnessing the speed of Volpi’s dishing out of legal process – there are so many legal terms we hear in conversation, the playwright saw fit to provide a glossary in the program, and then there’s one rather comical tableau where with the sound of a knock at the door Volpi has a gun to the head of Sampson, with him being held down by Moretti with the other two looking aghast. It looks more like a farcical out-take from The Play That Goes Wrong than the fever of the moment that is actually being played.

Kudos to scenic designer Daniel Allen for a claustrophobic set that limits how far these lions can pace. One side of the room is piled high to the ceiling with banker boxes. The rest of the room is perfectly functional with the “In God We Trust” sign previously mentioned being a very tongue-in-cheek splash. Costume designer Gina Ruiz helps us to recognize these people on each one’s entrance. Lighting designer Aiden Bezark covers the room in that pale fluorescent where we see the dust mites do their dance as the scenes go on. A nice touch is the confining square of light as each man gives his pre-hearing witness box audition.

The success of Mr. Garcia’s play lies in the fact the audience will seriously consider how justice is played out in hearings like this every day. It’s a wake-up call to just how much corruption plays its role in our everyday lives.

The Witness Room (through October 6, 2024)

AMT Theater, 354 West 45^th Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit http://www.thewitnessroomnyc.ludus.com

Running time: 75 minutes without an intermission