By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO—It's a small but interesting fact that in a play in which the main character talks about Betty Friedan, Jacob Perlman, Felix Frankfurter, Ruth Stern and Groucho Marx, one never hears the words "Jew" or "Jewish."

Even more surprisingly, given the premise of Trying, Jews are not even mentioned in the context of the Nuremberg Trials, in which Francis Biddle served as the Chief Judge for the United States. Instead we hear Biddle reminiscing that Hermann Goering, Hitler's Reich's Marshal, "sat in the corner of the defendant's box with a rug on his knees."  Furthermore, he comments, to say that Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess was a psychopathic personality "is like reporting Hitler wasn't well-adjusted!"

The lack of direct reference to Jews as a people raises a question mark—was this intended by the playwright, and, if so, why?  However, it does not detract from the enjoyment of the presentation of Joanna McClelland Glass's  two-person play running through May 21 at  the Old Globe Theatre's Cassius Carter Centre Stage.

In  Trying, a crotchety Biddle (Jonathan McMurtry), a former solicitor general and attorney general of the United States under Franklin D. Roosevelt, is dictating  his memoirs to Sarah Schorr (Christine Marie Brown) during the last year of his life. In the office that Biddle maintains over the garage of his Georgetown home, Sarah eventually takes on more personal assignments like balancing the forgetful octogenarian's checkbook.

Although the play offers us snippets of Biddle's life, for the most part it deals quite humorously with his relationship with no-nonsense Sarah from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan— a relationship that is transformed from bullying to affectionate dependence. Playwright Joanna McClelland Glass had inside knowledge about this relationship, as she in fact had occupied Sarah's job. 

We learn that Biddle was a grammarian who would not hesitate to correct Sarah or others about not splitting their infinitives, or the difference between "lay" and "lie."  We learn some of his favorite expressions—such as a "tune up" referring to an argument, and "thorn in my side" referring to nearly everything that displeased him.

We also learn that he was a man of conscience, and that one of the chief regrets of his life was that, as attorney general, he failed to oppose the demand by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson to inter Japanese Americans during World War II.

Sarah is no cipher, but rather a woman who exasperates and yet endears herself to Biddle by trying to keep him on task.  Soon he is slyly incorporating some of her prairie vocabulary into his own, such as the fact that she is "a bugger for work."

So, in what contexts are the various Jewishl figures mentioned?  Sarah works for Biddle between 1967 and 1968—the tumultuous year of an unsuccessful Vietnam War in the twilight of Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency, the time of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the era of emerging feminism.

Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique, was invoked during Sarah's initial job interview.  Biddle assumes that she will be opposed to fetching him some coffee "what with Betty Friedan and one-half of you burning your...(obviously embarrassed to say 'bra').. upper underwear."  Actually, Sarah doesn't mind; she'd do the same thing for her grandmother.  Later, discussing what the pregnant Sarah will do after she has a child, Biddle suggests that she'll have to put her career on hold, adding: "Abeyance is a woman's plight.  Biology decided that, Betty Friedan notwithstanding."

One assumes that Prof. Jacob Perlman is the former government economist who was involved in the development of the Social Security Administration.  In the play, Biddle responds through Sarah to his question about whether it was Justice Felix Frankfurter who had  recommended him to Franklin D. Roosevelt for the position of solicitor general.  "The short answer is yes."

Ruth Stern?  Frankly, I'm not sure, but apparently an academician of some type.  In the play, Sarah relays her question to Biddle about whether he had been a clerk to Oliver Wendell Holmes.  He rebukes Sarah  for not referring to the jurist as "Justice Holmes."  Lack of proper respect is a thorn in his side, you see.

And, finally, Groucho Marx?  Biddle quotes the comic. "I'm not like Groucho Mark—(who said) 'If you don't like my principles'"—and here Biddle pretends to tap his cigar a la Marx—"'I've got others.'"

The Old Globe production, directed by Richard Seer, makes good use of the Cassius Carter's theatre in the round (or square, as it may be).  McMurtry, an associate artist of the Old Globe, received a standing ovation Thursday evening, April 27, not only from the audience but also from a deferential Christine Marie Brown, a recent Master of Fine Arts graduate from the University of San Diego. She also received appreciative applause for a strong performance. McMurtry  portrayed Biddle's aches and pains so persuasively it was good to see him bound down the stairs at play's end to take his bow.