Photo by A.J. Magoon
The City of Benedict della Crosse cast and creative team
The City of Benedict della Crosse cast and creative team: bottom row, left to right: Gaetano Marangelli (Playwright) and Cody Estle (Director); middle row, left to right: A.J. Magoon (Benedict della Crosse), Nate Press (Billy Williams), and Caroline Norton (Assistant Director); top row, left to right: Libby Amato (Emilia Barnes), Matt Specht (Christopher Lucas), and Mohammad Elbsat (Stage Directions)
Milwaukee writer Gaetano Marangelli has gained a measure of international interest for plays that ask difficult questions. His newest, The City of Benedict della Crosse, premiers this month with a reading at MARN Art + Culture Hub. Next Act’s Artistic Director Cody Estle will direct.
As the play begins, Benedict is an idealistic Wisconsin state senate candidate in the early months of the 1988 election cycle. He belongs to the Republican Party’s then still extant liberal wing in an election year when his party’s campaigning took on a nastier edge. In 1988, the notorious Lee Atwater and Roger Ailes pushed the presidential campaign of George H.W. Bush toward populist fearmongering and rabble-rousing. Bush dismissed the significance of such posturing with a phrase borrowed from Mao Zedong, “Empty cannons of rhetoric.” But what happens when rhetoric becomes reality?
“1988 is the beginning of a story in American politics that continued through the 2016 election, the 2020 election and the 2024 election,” Marangelli says. “The cannons of rhetoric have become the state of our government.” Benedict’s idealism is threatened soon enough by his older sister, who serves as his campaign manager. She had belonged to the far-left SDS in the late ‘60s but turned drastically rightward. She begins to mount a smear campaign against Benedict’s opponent, an incumbent Democrat, charging him with complicity in the 1970 bombing of UW-Madison’s Math Research Center, killing one student. As a result of her smear, Benedict’s poll numbers rise.
The questions The City of Benedict della Crosse asks are related to the questions raised by the first two entries in a triptych of Marangelli plays. The first, Iron County (2022), asks who owns the land we call America. It asks us if land can be truly owned. The second play and still a work in progress, Star, asks, “who governs the land and how we govern the land,” Marangelli says. The City of Benedict della Crosse asks how do we govern ourselves?
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Cody Estl agreed with Marangelli that The City of Benedict della Crosse is an important play to present in our current election year. The playwright recalls him saying, “‘Why don’t you send me the manuscript?’ And then he said, ‘Hey, I’d love to direct this.” The cast for the play includes A.J. Magoon as Benedict della Crosse, Libby Amato as Emilia Barnes, Matt Specht as Christopher Lucas, and Nate Press as Billy Williams, with stage directions read by Mohammad N. ElBsat.. There will be a talk-back following the reading.
The Saturday, Aug. 24 reading at MARN Art + Culture Hub is sold out. There will be a second reading at 3 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 25 at MARN, 191 N. Broadway. Doors open at 2 p.m. for a pre-show wine social.
