Review: In Fatherland, a Son Informs the FBI about Dad’s Role in the Jan. 6 Riot

On August 1, 2022, Guy Wesley Reffitt was sentenced to seven years and three months in federal prison for participating in the mob that breached the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. The case, United States vs. Guy Wesley Reffitt, featured testimony from Reffitt’s own 19-year-old son, Jackson, who secretly recorded his father talking about that day and presented this evidence to the FBI. Depending on your politics, the son could either be seen as a patriot who put country before clan or a socialist snitch who sold out his own father for Twitter likes and $158,000 from a GoFundMe campaign.

Director Stephen Sachs presents both arguments in Fatherland, his invigorating courtroom drama, which is now making its off-Broadway debut on Stage II of New York City Center (the production made its world premiere with LA’s Fountain Theatre). Adapted from the actual court transcripts and evidence, it spotlights an especially public family crack-up in our ongoing era of bad feelings.

It wasn’t always like this. In his direct examination by the US attorney (Anna Khaja), Son (Patrick Keleher) talks about the good years, when Father (Ron Bottitta) was making great money as an oil rig worker and flying his family on trips all over the world. But when the price of oil collapsed in the mid-’10s, dad found himself back in Texas with little money and few prosects. And that’s when Donald Trump rode his golden escalator down to the lobby of Trump Tower to take his place as the main character in our politics, a position he still occupies today.

As dad drifted right, son moved left, embracing the democratic socialism of Bernie Sanders. The summer of 2020 (lockdowns, protests, riots) acted as an accelerant for their realignment — a perfect storm of paranoia and resentment leading into the presidential election that Donald Trump lost. You know this already. You lived it.

But you may not know what it’s like to live with a Fox News addict who is actively involved with several militias, who buys 1,000 rounds of ammo and zip ties to take to a protest at the US Capitol. “If you turn me in, you’re a traitor,” Father menacingly tells Son after returning from DC, “and traitors get shot.” Would you be able to brush this threat off as the hyperbole of a revolutionary LARPer, or would you go to the FBI, as the Son did?

Khaja is commanding and persuasive as the US attorney, directing her witness with gentle insistence, instructing him to speak clearly into the microphone whenever he shrinks away with teenage embarrassment.

Keleher is fresh-faced with an endearing squeak to his voice, like a young Michael J. Fox. He masterfully rolls out the bulk of the exposition, easily convincing the audience that he still loves his father but had no other choice other than the path he has taken — although I doubt the off-Broadway audience needs much convincing (I would love to see this same production play Branson, Missouri). And then the cross-examination begins.

As the defense attorney, Larry Poindexter surgically injects doubt into the narrative, questioning the son about his multiple media appearances and his coinciding online fundraising drive, the proceeds of which he has not shared with his distressed family. “In fact,” he says, the glint of a knife’s edge twinkling in his eye, “isn’t what you said to your mother and sister, ‘It’s GoFundMe. Not go fund us’?”

Battitta gives the most memorable performance of all, delivering a one-man reenactment of the January 6 riots that radiates pure adrenaline. “Fuck you! I am Superman! I am fucking invincible,” he shouts at the police after they shoot him with rubber bullets. And in that moment, we see the Father clearly for what he is — not a monster motivated by hate, but a 50-year-old man who sees the irrelevance and invisibility that awaits him on his slow march to death, who has decided that he will not surrender willingly to this fate.

Stewart Blackwood lets us know that he’s in good company with his force-multiplying sound design, which brings the Capitol riots into the theater, as well as the voices of Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump, the pied pipers who have led so many Americans down the road of madness. That would be enough to support this piece, but Blackwood oversteps when he veers into audio commentary, underlining key moments of testimony with soap opera-like notes of tension.

No other element in Sachs’s fast-paced and pared-down production is quite as heavy-handed: Joel Daavid’s set conjures the imposing adamantine quality of a federal courthouse without resorting to courtroom clichés. Alison Brummer’s lighting works in tandem with the sound to transport us across time and space. Danyele Thomas’s costumes complement the performances without distracting from them, which is crucial because you really need to pay attention to the words of this play.

“We had thousands of weapons on January 6th and fired no rounds,” the Father says in his closing statement to the court. It would be his most convincing defense if he could manage to restrain himself from adding, “Next time, we will not be so cordial.” Lesson learned?