Whistle blowers, nude and clothed

A few weeks ago we had an interesting juxtaposition of artistic views about whistle blowers and the public's right to know. We saw Laura Poitras' Academy-award wuinning documentary Citizen4 at the West Newton Cinema, followed by the New Rep's production of Muckrakers. Laura Poitras clearly distrusts the US government and everything it does. Her portrait of Edward Snow allows him to express his viewpoint with no counter, and she regards him as a hero. There is no appreciation of the irony in his stated "I knew what I was doing and was prepared to take the consequences" and his hasty flight from Singapore to escape American justice, and his asylum in Putin's "democratic" Russia. The cinema verité style gets a bit boring, but the subject matter is fascinating, albeit one-sided. Muckrakers is anything but boring. Esme Allen plays Mira, a New York activist who believes there should be no secrets, who is hosting Lewis Wheeler playing Stephen, a British "muckraker" who has published secret US files about the Iraq war. The fast-paced play (75 minutes with no intermission) has the two of them discussing how Stephen came by the files - and there is a more nuanced viuew of Stephen than Poitras gave us of Snow -Did Stephen mislead the lonely homosexual army clerk to get him to pass on the files? Stephen, too, is not a hero, but his protection is not flight. Instead, he uses a host of encrypted unreleased files that he threatens to have released should he be arrested. A scene in which Ms Allen is fully nude on stage adds shock value but does not really add much to the plot or character development. The ending does have a major twist which I will not reveal if you have not seen the play.