Word: martinisms
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Ruth Martin...
...actors. Thompson sets the living room in the middle of a basketball court, a heavyhanded attempt to indicate omnipresent memories of glories past. As the audience enters, a young man is shooting baskets, and we find out later that he is supposed to represent the spirit of Martin, the fifth player who never comes to the reunions. He stays there through the beginning of the play, and, incredibly, is seen by one of his ex-teammates when he leaves the stage. Whether Thompson means to suggest that this particular jock has special vision which permits him insights into the spirit...
Watching all of this closely is William Martin, director of the CIA (The Company), who stands to lose his job and his integrity if it is ever revealed that he acted, under orders from President Curry, to ruin a U.S.-supported invasion of a South American country in which several hundred "patriots" died. Martin had earlier predicted that millionaire Governor Thomas Forville would win the Republican nomination and eventually the election; so he courted the governor's international advisor--Austrian-born, Harvard professor Carl Tessler. Martin leaked secret information to Tessler, who used it for his "brilliant" books. Fortunately...
While everybody else in The Company is clearly labeled good guy or bad guy, William Martin's morality is presented in much more complex terms. Sure he's saving his own skin, Ehrlichman seems to say, but he is also working in the best interests of The Company (and thus, of the U.S.), he's trying to preserve former President Curry's high standing for posterity, and he's fighting White House dirty tricksters who want to use his secret info in devious ways...
...pages. St. Martin's Press...