Cherry Docs

In David Gow's gritty drama (whose title refers to the cherry red Dr. Martens boots popularly worn by skinheads), an ambitious lawyer, Danny (Aaron Davidman), improbably decides to defend a young neo-Nazi, Mike (Eric Rhys Miller), who's being held in solitary confinement in a Canadian prison for murdering a Hindu man. Interspersing lyrical speeches on Jewish ritual with dark thoughts about life in jail, Gow's writing is as hardheaded as it is poetic. Although Davidman doesn't quite convince us of his character's reasons for taking on the case in the first place, both actors give carefully drawn, purposeful performances. Davidman makes for a suitably nebbishy, tortured lawyer, while Rhys Miller's Mike is all pinched-faced cynicism and snarling hate. The play's structure -- which goes something like this: monologue-monologue-dialogue, monologue-monologue-dialogue, etc. -- gets somewhat tedious after a while. Naomi Newman's direction brings out the emotional struggle and the ideological contradictions in Gow's play, but does little to alleviate the monotony of its rhythm.