Not since Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and Lear has there been a tragic hero so worthy of playwright and pen. Enter Orenthal James Simpson, O.J. to fan and foe alike, blessed with good looks and charisma, cursed with capacious jealousy and rapacious rage. His victims-ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman-suffer gruesome deaths that go unavenged, while the audience watches in rapt disbelief.
Now, on the 20th anniversary of the murders, playwright Michael Monk, in The Tragedy of Orenthal, tells the O.J. Simpson tale as it might have occurred and as it was meant to be told-in iambic pentameter blank verse, in five acts, with stage direction and a prologue; that is, in the manner of Shakespearean tragedy, with lively, engaging style punctuated with humor. The stalking of Nicole, the murders at Bundy, the police investigation, the slow-speed televised Bronco chase, the trials . . . as Simpson defense lawyer Barry Scheck proclaims, "Double, double, blood may bubble: Proving DNA is trouble."
