Jean-Claude Carriere’s “The Controversy of Valladolid” opens off-Broadway, and apparently, the acting and directing falls flat. But AP reviewer Peter Santilli finds that the bland delivery doesn’t overcome the importance of the subject matter of the documentary play: the re-creation of a secret debate that took place in a Spanish monastery in 1550, wherein the Catholic hierarchy sought to determine how Native Americans should be treated based on whether or not they were fully human. The debate, presided over by an Italian cardinal, was argued by Dominican priest and human rights advocate, Bartolome de Las Casas, and an academic, Juan Gines de Sepulveda, and Carriere’s account is based on the writings of both men.