Robert Cohen as Harvey Matusow. The Sussex-based actor came across the story of the notorious Cold War supergrass in the University of Sussex Special Collections. Photo by Simon Taylor.
A play based on the confessions of a notorious Cold War supergrass - whose personal papers are now housed in an archive at the University of Sussex - is heading for a run in London in 2013. Sussex-based actor Robert Cohen's play The Trials of Harvey Matusow is a one-man show that revisits the age of the anti-communist witch hunts in 1950s America, and the part played in them by Harvey Matusow, "America's most notorious liar". New Yorker Matusow was a one-time communist who turned paid informer and provided testimony for all the major bodies hunting 'reds' at the time, including the House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, the US Justice Department, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, and, most famously, Senator Joseph McCarthy's Government Operations Committee. He spent four years testifying against former Party colleagues and others accused of subversion - including actors, journalists, union officials and university professors - before finally revealing that he had fabricated almost all of his "evidence". He was eventually to spend three and a half years in prison, before embarking on seven years of self-imposed exile in the UK. Cohen's play revisits Matusow during his English exile, as he reflects on his past while seeking redemption in the worlds of underground art, journalism, film-making and music. It was during this period of exile, in June 1968, that Matusow presented the first consignment of his papers to the University; they were acquired on the advice of Marcus Cunliffe, Sussex's then Professor of American Studies.
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