University archive inspires play about “America’s most notorious liar”
A play based on the confessions of a notorious Cold War supergrass – whose personal papers are now housed in an archive at the University of Sussex – is heading for a 2013 London run.
Robert Cohen as Harvey Matusow. The Sussex-based actor came across the story of the notorious Cold War supergrass in the University of Sussex Special Collections. Photo by Simon Taylor.
Sussex-based actor Robert Cohen’s play The Trials of Harvey Matusow is a one-man show that revisits the age of the anti-communist witch hunts in 1950s America, and the part played in them by Harvey Matusow, “America’s most notorious liar”.
New Yorker Matusow was a one-time Communist who turned paid informer and provided testimony for all the major bodies hunting ‘reds’ at the time, including, most famously, Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Government Operations Committee.
He spent four years testifying against former Party colleagues and others accused of subversion – including actors, journalists, union officials and university professors – before finally revealing that he had fabricated almost all of his “evidence”. He was eventually to spend three and a half years in prison, before embarking on seven years of self-imposed exile in the UK.
Cohen’s play revisits Matusow during his English exile, as he reflects on his past while seeking redemption in the worlds of underground art, journalism, film-making and music.
It was during this period of exile, in 1968, that Matusow presented the first consignment of his papers to the University; they were acquired on the advice of Marcus Cunliffe, Sussex’s then Professor of American Studies.
Matusow was adamant that his papers should be housed in an institution outside the United States. As he explained in an interview with The Times in 1968: "I didn’t believe my papers would be treated objectively in America. They can’t see McCarthy in perspective. It’s all ‘Good Guy, Bad Guy’.”
Robert Cohen came across the story of Matusow while researching ideas for plays in the Library’s Special Collections, where the archive is now held. The material spans the 1940s to the early 1970s and is housed in over a hundred boxes.
“Without the University of Sussex and its Special Collections department,” says Cohen, “my show simply wouldn't have been possible; indeed, but for Special Collections, I probably would never have heard of Matusow – and even if I had, I never could have got so close to my subject simply by reading the books that exist about him.”
Cohen, who wrote and stars in the show, will give three performances from 13-15 January at London’s Tristan Bates Theatre as part of its FIRST season of solo performances.
Brighton audiences saw the play last year in the Festival Fringe, where it won the FringeReview Outstanding Theatre Award.