The Mosinee Project at New Diorama Theatre. © David Monteith-HodgeSet during the rabid Reds under the bed hysteria of 1950s America and set in Senator Joseph McCarthy’s own state of Wisconsin, the sleepy Midwestern town of Mosinee is to be used as a means to instil panic and fear (of all things communist) in the average American. Theatre group Counterfactual have developed the piece based on real events and three accomplished performers (Camilla Anvar, Jonathan Oldfield and Martha Watson Allpress) replay the circumstances leading up to the 1st May 1950, in which a group of subversive right wing activists The American Legion plotted to wake-up and shake-up Mr and Mrs America.
With a group of uniform-clad acolytes forming a gun-toting militia, they breezed into Mosinee and enacted a mock communist takeover of the town by quickly rounding-up innocent bystanders before flying the Soviet era Hammer and Sickle flag and taking the town’s mayor hostage in a staged assault on his home. Irrespective of their internal ideological divisions — key sections of the group wanted to turn the whole thing into a playful community event, while others intended it to receive national press coverage to scare and manipulate Americans into believing McCarthy’s rhetoric — it’s seems amazing today that the idea ever got off the ground.
The performers take the audience on a journey, playing various conflicted individuals who participated in the real life subterfuge. They debate and argue the possible means of achieving their sometimes divergent aims, which are heavily informed by personal life experiences. Writer/Director Nikhil Vyas has created a piece in which elements are both illuminating and entertaining but whole is not entirely satisfying — rather like the fake invasion itself which remains an historical anomaly and which neither aided nor hampered McCarthy’s ever more lurid attempts to terrorise free thought.
Several plays and movies were later developed which used a similar mock-invasion premise, notably The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, but here, the eventual outcome is shown for what it was, a half-baked and altogether ludicrous stunt which reflected obsessive media mania about the Commie Menace, fuelling the Cold War and leading to the arms race. In an age where the loudest mouths are once again fuelling anxiety and division by weaponising fear, it is comforting to know that history ultimately takes a very dim view of the men who embark on such behaviour.
