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Jason Hammond sat in on the panel at the Prop Thtr that discussed the play we had just seen there, The People’s Republic of Edward Snowden, which is constructed as a news conference Snowden is giving in Moscow; Natasha, a vamping Russian intelligence agent, passes along to Snowden the questions her smartphone tells her the world most wants answered—boxers or briefs? is one of them—as NSA agent Flenkins hovers, glowering at Snowden and reminding him from time to time he’s a scuzzy traitor. As Natasha and Flenkins soon figure out for themselves, they have a lot more in common with each other than either does with earnest young Snowden.
The play, which originated as an idea that came to the Chicago writer W.C. Turck as he read about Snowden and the NSA and got really steamed, is informative if sporadically didactic, and thank God it is funny too. It doesn’t pretend that Russia and Vladimir Putin are anything but an authoritarian nightmare and a narcissistic strongman, though Natasha does allow that her boss is kind of a hunk. Russia’s a ridiculous place for Snowden to wind up but whistleblowers can’t be choosers—not when they’ve told the people stories about their government that a lot of people wish they didn’t know.
