Alison Moulton (Deborah Hazlett) and Gene Biddle (Rick Foucheux) in 'Something You Did' at Theater J. (Photo by Stan Barouh)

Seventeen days after Willy Holtzman’s play Something You Did opened in New York in 2008, George Stephanopolous asked a question in the Democratic primary debate that would change the play forever. In regards to then-candidate Barack Obama’s association with former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers, Stephanopolous asked, “Can you explain that relationship for the voters, and explain to Democrats why it won't be a problem?”

But before it changed Holtzman’s play, it changed the election, which thrust Obama’s connections to Ayers in the forefront, and culminated in a speech by Sarah Palin, where she accused him of “Pallin’ around with terrorists.” Throughout this, Holzman sat back and watched.

“I should be cynical enough, but it shocked me how much traction it got and how alive these issues are,” says Holtzman. “Also the rhetoric, the way it was talked about and propaganized in this looking-glass world, where things like bombing and terror have new meaning. Some of the figures that might have been romanticized in the 60’s to the general public might look like common terrorists now. So I had to go back in and explore that.”

In Something You Did, Alison Moulton (Deborah Hazlett) is up for parole after more than three decades in prison for her involvement with an underground political group’s activist bombing that killed an African-American cop in the 60s. The other members of the group went free - one of them, Eugene Biddle (Rick Foucheux), grew up to do a political 180 and become a Glenn Beck-inspired pundit. As Alison fights for her parole with the help of her high-powered lawyer, Arthur (Norman Aronovic), Gene makes it clear that his support for her parole will come at a price: Revealing the names of politicians who have worked on her case, so he can run their names through the mud in his next book. Gene is angling for one name in particular – of a certain someone in the White House.

The story is based on that of Kathy Boudin, a Weather Underground member who came from a wealthy leftist family (her father, Leonard Boudin, was a lawyer who represented Fidel Castro). Boudin and other Weather Underground members planted explosive devices in public spaces in protest to “Bring the War Home,” as their posters proclaimed. But when an armed robbery of a Brinks truck went terribly wrong, resulting in the death of two police officers and a security guard, Boudin was captured and sentenced to 20 years to life. She served 23 years before achieving parole.

For Holtzman, exploring Obama’s relationship to Ayers and the public’s reaction to it meant mining his own personal network. And if you want to talk about pallin’ around with terrorists, talk to Holtzman, who considers playwright Zayd Dohrn, son of Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, among his friends. Holtzman says that he ran the play by Zayd Dohrn (who approved of it) as well as consulting with Bernadine Dohrn and Kathy Boudin. In New York, Holtzman says that Zayd Dohrn and Boudin came to the preview together.

“It was a very anxious time for me,” says Holtzman. “My commitment is to my vision and version of the play. I felt entitled to my dramatic license, but you want to be truthful within the realm of fiction and I didn’t want to get anything wrong.”

Boudin offered a few small corrections about matters of her parole, Holtzman says, but was mostly pleased with her depiction. Bernadine Dohrn, on the other hand, “was very complimentary... She was very supportive, and got a big laugh at a sly reference to her in the play, and part of her persona, the leather miniskirt.” In Alison’s confrontation with Gene, he refers to her leather miniskirt and jacket, and she replies, “That was someone else,” meaning Dohrn.

Though the political climate provided plenty of material for Holzman’s update of the play, he finds himself understandably dissatisfied with the political discourse, even though the Ayers-Obama connection did not affect the election’s outcome. Preview night of Something You Did at Theater J was the same day as the big Glenn Beck rally on the Mall.

“There seem to be these professional pessimists out there that do their best to tell us that Obama is not a savior, that he’s caught in typical politics, and I share some of that frustration,” says Holtzman. “But I realize that these things are incremental. We have a president in the White House with an exotic-sounding name. It bothers me that people find new coded ways to be racist, but there are signs of progress.”

That’s similar to a line that Alison says to Gene in the play, except she uses the n-word. Holtzman talks like his characters because there’s a lot of himself in each of them – it’s a play about his generation, after all.

“I think I still share Alison’s idealism and frustration in the fundamental ways things haven’t changed,” says Holtzman. “I share Gene’s outrage at 9/11 and how that seems to redefine global politics. I’m not old enough to be Arthur, thank God, but [I have] his overview of it all, his ability to take the long view, to put things in perspective. In Washington politics, everything old is new again.”

But in playwriting, everything old may just be jettisoned for new material. Politics weren’t the only reason for Holtzman to revisit the play - he also had some work to do on the ending, the dialogue, the characters.

“The New York production imitated life in ways that weren’t dramatic in the right way,” says Holtzman. “I changed that and some internal things, and got rid of some excess.”

That addressed many of the main concerns of critics of the New York production. Charles Isherwood of the New York Times wrote that Holtzman’s words have “the squeaky sound of dialogue that has been polished a little too hard. Alison accuses Gene of speaking in sound bites, but in truth much of the writing, while fluid and eloquent, lacks the ragged authenticity of real conversations. (And somebody should have told Mr. Holtzman to lose the soapy, just-for-old-times smooch between these two; in context it is absurd.)”

This advice was taken, and the kiss is gone (a moment of hand-holding between the two, though, still feels a little icky). But there’s still plenty of snappy, polished dialogue. Some of it hits just the right notes, like when Arthur says of Gene, “I sat in traffic for two hours with this man. It’s like being locked in hell with Dick Cheney.” Some of it falls flat, or rings artificial. A friend remarked, after seeing the play last night, that it sounded like an Aaron Sorkin film. And should a legal drama ever include the line, “So sue me?”

But it’s a new version, in a new administration, in a new city, with a whole new set of critics. They’ll make their opinions known over the next few days. But Holtzman doesn’t worry about alienating people, “As long as I’m telling the truth, the dramatic truth. Especially in a play like this, you want to upset people,” he says. “You’re not doing your job if you’re not.”