The silence is excruciating as the man wrestles with conscience and self-loathing. Seated at a desk flanked by an American flag, he hesitates, fidgeting, eyes lowered, second after excruciating second. His three Congressional inquisitors wait for the allegations he is desperately trying not to make.
This searing moment is in some ways the linchpin of Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?: An American Docudrama, the riveting and timely production directed by Anna D. Shapiro at Arena Stage. Playwright Eric Bentley built variety into his 1972 script when he wove it together from transcripts of certain 1940s and ’50s House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) hearings, specifically hearings that interrogated artists about Communist influence in show business. We meet people who cave, who bluster, who rebut the committee with withering zingers. But that moment of agonized indecision by Larry Parks (Aaron Bliden) — Parks was an actor famed for the movie The Jolson Story — underscores the sobering moral choice each witness makes.
Recently seen off-Broadway with a mostly different cast, Are You Now clips along at a brisk pace on set designer Andrew Boyce’s approximation of a Congressional hearing room. Adding perspective are Brittany Bland’s projections, which include sentences of historical context, as well as collages of newspaper articles and headlines related to HUAC and its prey. After wrapping up their testimony before the committee’s Chairman (John Leslie Wolfe) and the bullying Committeeman 1 and 2 (Philip Earl Johnson and Jason Babinsky), the witnesses often take a seat at the rear of the stage — their continued presence underscoring the lasting reputational and societal consequences of their statements.
One of the era’s most famous statements — “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions” — came in a letter to HUAC from dramatist Lillian Hellman (Rivka Borek in a red dress, exuding brainy aplomb). In Are You Now, we hear her deliver that letter. (Johanna Pan designed the costumes. The lighting design by Donald Holder and the sound design by Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen include atmospheric flash-bulb and typewriter effects.)
Also pairing courage with flair is singer, actor, and activist Paul Robeson (Kevin Mambo, magnetic and quietly seething), whose career, by the time of his 1956 appearance before HUAC, had suffered because of his publicly expressed social-justice views. Tangling at length with the committee, especially its bigoted chairman, Robeson stands by his positions, indicts flaws in American society, and is sometimes scornful. “I invoke the Fifth Amendment loudly!” he snaps with stentorian wryness after a committeeman has complained about being unable to hear him.
As that exchange suggests, Are You Now is often funny. Some of the humor reflects the incongruity of art snagged in bureaucratic mindsets. A glum Jerome Robbins (Stephen Cefalu Jr., acing a hangdog look) recalls once being asked by a Communist Party member how dialectical materialism had helped with the choreography of his hit ballet “Fancy Free.”
But most of the funny sequences mine personality, whether it is Lionel Stander (a feisty Jeff Still) badgering the committee as fiercely as it badgers him, or a jaunty Ring Lardner Jr. (Cefalu) quipping that he could answer the eponymous question of whether he had ever been a Communist, “but if I did, I would hate myself in the morning.” (Like Cefalu, Edward L. Simon and Greg Stuhr juggle multiple roles, including, respectively, Elia Kazan and Edward Dmytryk.)
In a hilarious scene, the writer and director Abe Burrows (a marvelously breezy Peter Jacobson, flashing the odd in-character grin at the audience) manages to drown the committee in oversharing. In Communist circles, he confides nonchalantly, “I wasn’t very well trusted. I was called chichi because I did satires on folk songs in a period when the Communist Party had” — tone of gleeful snark here — “taken the folk song very dearly to its bosom.”
The funnier sequences are inevitably tinged with gallows humor — many of the characters were blacklisted or suffered other grave repercussions for their positions — complementing the play’s grim resonance. Are You Now feels all too topical in our own day, when, many would say, assaults on free speech and civil liberties are rife, public courage can court vindictiveness, and Federal authorities seem to feel entitled to intimidate and selectively persecute. The fact that charges of “Communism” have again become political attack lines adds an extra stinging twist.
In the play, when Larry Parks finally names names — after pleading to be allowed to take a more honorable path — his voice is low and sobbing. A committeeman assures him that the people he cited were already known to HUAC.
That, Parks says, “is no comfort whatsoever.”
Running Time: Approximately one hour and 45 minutes, no intermission.
Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?: An American Docudrama plays through December 6, 2026, in the Kreeger Theater at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater, 1101 Sixth St SW, Washington, DC. For more information and to purchase tickets (starting at $37), call the box office at 202-488-3300 or go online.
The program for Are You Now or Have You Ever Been? is online here.
SEE ALSO:
Arena Stage adds critically acclaimed docudrama to fall 2026 lineup (news story, September 10, 2026)
