Oswald Delves Into Kennedy Assassination

By John Farrell

You would think every fact has come to light and been discussed, torn apart and reconstructed in the more than 50 years since President John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

You’d be wrong.

In the newest and most informative production, Oswald, the Actual Interrogation has found some new evidence about Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination.

Oswald, the Actual Interrogation, by Dennis Richard, provides another angle of perception to that still-controversial killing Nov. 22, 1963.

Richard spent years reconstructing the interrogation of Oswald, from a few handwritten notes and the recollection of police officers who met Oswald. Surprisingly, as the playwright revealed at a post-opening night conversation, there were no recording of these sessions. The Dallas Police had ordered a tape recorder as an equipment upgrade but it hadn’t yet arrived. There was no stenographer present, either, no video recording (of course) and only seven pages of notes.

The play doesn’t tell everything that Oswald said, but it does cover the important parts of his discussions with yet.

Twelve hours of questioning took place with Captain Will Fritz (James Rice), head of the Dallas Police Department’s Murder Squad, keeping his cool despite the frenzy that the shooting caused: Two hundred reporters, television teams, CIA and FBI agents and all. Fritz is played with sang-froid and a Texas accent by the accomplished James Rice. He almost never gets excited, even when the mayor wants him on the line and he refuses. Fritz is head of the murder squad and an accomplished interrogator.

But he met his match in the calm and icy Oswald, played with appropriately sullen demeanor by Cylan Brown, who took on Oswald while playing in Hamlet with Shakespeare by the Sea. His Oswald in calculating and unhelpful, intentionally using his knowledge of interrogation techniques, never admitting anything despite the huge body of evidence amassed against him.

The play is an intellectual struggle between Fritz, who keeps heaping up the evidence against Oswald and Oswald, who never admits anything he doesn’t have to. It is also a picture of a police department under siege. Oswald is arraigned in Fritz’s office because it is safer that way and Charles M. Howell IV keeps Judge Johnston cool and matter-of-fact. David Graham plays two roles, as a CIA agent who wants to take over the investigation and as a postal inspector who has evidence of Oswald’s alleged deviousness. Bill Wolski is Detective Sims, who suggests torturing Oswald, and Rodney Rincon is District Attorney Bill Alexander. They are all there for brief moments, but the struggle is between Fritz and Oswald.

The press is there when Oswald is allowed a few moments in the harsh light, but otherwise the pressure Fritz is under, the pressure Oswald so successfully avoids, is all psychological. The play ends with Jack Ruby’s assassination of the accused assassin, but by then you will have much to think about, whatever theory you have personally about that event.

(One note: most people in the audience hadn’t experienced the assassination themselves, making one critic, anyway more than a little old.)

Performances are Wednesdays and Thursdays at 8 p.m. through Sept. 4 with two added matinees Aug. 31 at 2 and 7 p.m.

Tickets: $22, $20 for seniors.

Details: (310) 512-6030; www.littlefishtheatre.org

Venue: Little Fish Theatre

Location: 777 Centre St., San Pedro