Attorney for the Damned
Written by Denis Woychuk
Composed by Rob McCulloch
Directed by Stephen Vincent Brennan

ABOUT "ATTORNEY FOR THE DAMNED"

The musical's form is reminiscent of The Who's "Tommy," in that it is staged entirely as a rock concert. But the story might be characterized as "Law and Order" meets "Silence of the Lambs" meets "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." A very funny, horrific story is told in a Rock idiom.

Its comedic aspects notwithstanding, it is a cry from the conscience of a lawyer who made a living representing the rights of the criminally insane. Playwright/lyricist Denis Woychuk is a former lawyer who represented the rights of mental patients for more than ten years in the '80s and '90s, working out of Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center, a maximum security hospital in New York. This musical is actually a dark, symbolic treatment of his 1996 autobiographical book, "Attorney for the Damned" (The Free Press), in which he confessed, "I live with the painful knowledge that I am somehow complicit in the horrible acts some of my clients commit after I ease their legal constraints and help them get released."

Attorney for the Damned, The Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster, 1996.

Woychuk's memoir contained frightening tales of a system so inept that a serial killer was released because the D.A.'s representative forgot to show up at his hearing. The book illustrated how both the perpetrators and the public are failed as dangerous people return to society while victims of the system remain locked in mental hospitals. Woychuk lasted ten years in legal service to the most dreaded people among us. It tore away his innocence but left him with lessons and memories that he can probably share in works of autobiography, drama and fiction for the rest of his life.

As if to emphasize the theme of innocence, in his script, Woychuk has replaced himself with a young, idealistic, woman lawyer named Skyhorse, who works in a big firm but wants to help widows, orphans and the poor. Her boss assigns her, pro bono, to represent two destitute mental patients at the maximum security hospital for the criminally insane. One is charged with murder when he is found to be wearing the finger of a missing woman around his neck; the other is charged with rape of a child.

Skyhorse's new clients frighten and disturb her, but when she asks the judge to let her drop their cases, she is denied. "The wheels of justice will not turn if lawyers could drop clients whom they find repugnant, or just don't like," rules the judge. Because she is a conscientious and shrewd lawyer, despite her misgivings, she gets them both off. Their release sets loose a dramatic roller-coaster in which one of her clients kidnaps the other characters of the play, to judge them as they judged him, seeing himself as God's avenging angel. Her other client emerges as a hero, sacrificing himself for the good of others and answering the central question of the piece: "What makes a hero?"

Woychuk holds that killing is not a senseless act of violence to the killer. It makes sense, however twisted by delusion and transference, to the perpetrator. On the other hand, Woychuk asserts, just because you're psychotic doesn't mean you're a bad person. In fact, the seeds of heroism can be buried in the hearts of the mentally ill, like any other citizen, to emerge in unexpected moments of courage and self-sacrifice.

What the audience gets is an adventure story told with dark humor, weird science and outsized, grotesque characters. The story is played out as if to the accompaniment of a down-market band in a beat-up club, with a cadre of sexy back-up singers. The music, composed by Rob McCulloch, is hook-filled garage band rock which ranges from ballads to grooves to all-out, wall-of-sound rockers. While the setting and production elements do not change, the staging artfully uses physical theater to establish characters and locations and fill out the stage picture.

The roles (all singing) include a Judge who has lost his soul; a foul-mouthed, hard-bitten Assistant D.A. (who is also a nymphomaniac); a prison doctor who is also a sort of mad scientist; a drug-addicted street whore; a silly, pedantic psychoanalyst who is really a song and dance man; and a young, fresh-faced, pro bono Defense Attorney in the process of losing her innocence. Her clients are two recently released, criminally insane individuals: one could be a brother to Lucifer; the other is sort of saint, who acquits himself morally.