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"What is there left for us that have seen the newly discovered
stability of things changed from enthusiasm to weariness but to rediscover
an art of the theatre, which shall be joyful, fantastic, extravagant,
whimsical, beautiful, resonant, and altogether RECKLESS?"
-- William Butler Yeats
1901 |
"In tonight's tall tale from the timberlands of the 'Twilight Zone,' Kurt Schneiderman takes us deep into the heart of a war zone." It's a pity the late "Twilight Zone" creator and narrator Serling wasn't on hand at Subversive Theatre's premiere of "Waterboarding Blues" at the Manny Fried Playhouse Friday night. But the otherworldly one-act, an original piece by Subversive's founder and artistic director Schneiderman, had Serling's irresistible and heavy-handed stamp all over it. Schneiderman's company, which moved into its very utilitarian theater in the Great Arrow Building last September, has always produced theater whose primary goal is to awaken its audience to global injustices. With "Waterboarding," Subversive turns its laser focus on the war in Iraq (or "the global war on terror," or, lately, "the overseas contingency operation") and infuses it with just the sort of stylized language and moralistic premise that made the "Twlight Zone" such a cult favorite. The play centers on a Marine intelligence officer, Gordon Tashjian as Captain Sterling (the reference to Serling is not accidental), whose primary duty is to extract information from prisoners of war using a litany of post-9/11 tactics, including stress positions, sleep deprivation and waterboarding -- which is widely defined as torture. His commanding officer, Col. Carnovsky (who could be played a bit more commandingly by Dennis Keefe), is a sort of Patton-esque blowhard who, along with Sterling, is the subject of derision and scrutiny from the media after a respected imam dies in Sterling's interrogation room under suspicious circumstances. Shortly after meeting Sterling and his subordinate Lt. Thorne (James Wild), the weirdness begins. A man who speaks only Polish is dragged into the interrogation room and later claims to be a member of the Polish resistance to the Nazis during World War II. Sterling chalks it up to insanity or a bizarre political stunt, but soon enough a humble carpenter dressed in Arabic clothing is brought in. He speaks only Aramaic, pleads for the release of his son, Jesus Christ, and mistakes Sterling for -- you guessed it -- Pontius Pilate. Schneiderman's writing is smart, strong and, for the most part, deeply affecting. A speech delivered by Keefe as the colonel is as devastating and well-crafted a description of the imperialist ethos as I've heard. But things start to go off in an irrevocably preachy direction even Serling might have balked at during the play's overwritten climactic scene between Sterling and the last of the bizarre prisoners, a soldier from the Revolutionary War. It could use some paring down, as could scenes involving the humanizing but largely superfluous character of Merissa (Jessica Stuber), Sterling's daughter. But with "Waterboarding Blues," Schneiderman puts us all on notice: While we listened to inane reports about the definition of waterboarding on NPR, some supposed enemy combatant halfway around the world was lying on a wooden plank with his head wrapped in cellophane. No matter how many times he stretches credulity with this play, Schneiderman forces us to think about that image in deeply critical ways -- something Serling would be proud of.
| Presented by Subversive Theatre through April 19 at the Manny Fried Playhouse in the Great Arrow Building, 255 Great Arrow Avenue. For more information, call 408-0499 or visit www.subversivetheatre.org. |
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Copyright (c) 2002-9, Subversive Theatre Collective. All rights reserved. |
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