If it weren’t true, you wouldn’t believe it. About a year before Pearl Harbor, some American Nazis teamed up with a German Nazi to build a compound in the hills above Los Angeles that would serve as headquarters for Adolph Hitler to rule over Western America. And the architect who designed the 50-acre property in Rustic Canyon was an African-American architect, Paul Revere Williams, designer of such local landmarks as Saks Fifth Avenue and the County Courthouse. These are the historical facts playwright Laurel M. Wetzork has used in the composition of Blueprint for Paradise, now in a world-premiere production at the Hudson Theater, directed by Laura Steinroeder. It is chilling even today to think just how many Nazi sympathizers were running around southern California in those pre-war days, including such big-shots as Harry Chandler, publisher of the LA Times, and Caltech physicist Robert Millikan (both of whom were trustees of the Human Betterment Foundation, which sought to sterilize some ten million “defective” and “degenerate” Americans. The Nazi doctors learned a lot from them). In Blueprint, a fictional couple, Clara (Meredith Thomas) and Herbert (David Jahn), are plotting with Wolfgang Schreiber (Peter McGlynn) and Ludwig Gottschalk (Steve Marvel) to build Hitler’s haven. Herbert, a wealthy businessman is both a fascist and a racist; his wife is non-ideological (though she does attend meetings of the National League of Mothers of America, which aims to keep America out of the war). With her love of fine things and high art, it falls to her to deal with the design of the Nazi White House. Going on reputation alone, she invites Paul Revere Williams (Regi Davis) to bid for the job, not knowing until he walks in the door that he has black skin. To her credit, the neurotic, tightly-wound Clara is able to rise above her inborn prejudices and treat Williams with respect and, eventually, affection. The same can’t be said for her husband, a one-size-fits-all hater of all minorities, immigrants, and leftists. He is ready to give Williams the boot, only to be brought up short when the German Nazis, Schreiber and Gottschalk, suddenly decide Williams is, after all, the right man for the job. Much of the play pits the gentlemanly, dignified Williams against the generic condescension and hostility of the Aryans. (Why he chose to work for them is never satisfactorily explained). The play also deals with complicated subplots involving Clara’s servants, the Chinese-American Fen Gao (Ann Hu) and the Italian-American Alessandro Farnase (Alex Best). Unfortunately, the director made Hu speak in garbled pidgin-English which ruins her performance (and much of the text). As for Best, his character as written is less than believable, though in a climactic revelation, he delivers a big plot surprise. Melodramatic and awkwardly staged as it sometimes is, Blueprint for Paradise still manages to uncover an important, evil bit of American history and shine the therapeutic light of truth on it.
