My Soldiers
Chief among the problems with playwright Richard Kalinoski's new My Soldiers is that it wants to be a movie. This alone isn't unforgivable; plays can successfully emulate or borrow from film in many respects. The problem with this particular vision is that it calls for split-second transitions to flashbacks and simultaneously requires a level of visual detail that makes it impossible for the performers to execute those transitions in real time. Demanding that the main character change her clothes and appearance from a maladjusted veteran to her green-haired, pierced teenage self (and back again) is asking too much of a stage production. In practice, the Detroit Repertory Theatre professional world premiere plunged repeatedly into silent half-darkness to watch yet another fumbling, back-turned costume change. Under the direction of Hank Bennett, much of the two-and-a-half-hour play buckles under the strain of unavoidably clunky pacing.
The viewer is promised an eye-opening study of an Army medic dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in Iraq, but most of the story concerns Angi (Lisa Lauren Smith) unequivocally failing to recognize, let alone deal with, her obvious PTSD. She's simply discharged and sent home, where her father (Cornell Markham) and best friend (Lulu Nicolette Dahl) act as though nothing has changed, and apparently not one person has ever considered the mental toll of war or can otherwise cogently identify that something is wrong with this suffering, insufferable individual. The audience, in contrast, is spoon-fed plentiful evidence, ranging from expository scenes of a confident pre-war Angi to mysterious flashbacks of panting in the desert to her unhealthy attachment to a stuffed camel, which, if it could speak, would bray out I am a symptom! For the entirety of the first act and part of the second, no one heeds the camel.
To his credit, Angi's father finally summons the wherewithal to strong-arm his daughter to the nearest VA hospital, where he inexplicably leaves her, alone and devastated and adjusting poorly to antidepressant medication. After a useless, near-slapstick comic scene with Dr. Perlman (Barbie Weisserman), the actor returns in the role of a better psychiatrist, and the ensuing relationship between Dr. Provinzano and Angi is sterling. A little overacting is expected given the tough subject matter, but Smith redeems the character of Angi more than I thought possible in finally coming to terms with her demons and opening up about her experience. The final half-hour of the play is its strongest, a solid and honest exchange that throws into relief the shortcomings of the lesser material preceding it.
Without giving too much away, it's a fair guess that most of the expository scenes in Iraq are spent getting to know Angi's soldier friends just well enough to be affected when the bad stuff goes down. Special attention is paid to her first encounter with a lieutenant (Rusty Mewha), and when he's both interested and exceptionally pretty, there can be no question he's a goner. Mewha gives a sweet and understated turn, making his small role well deserving of affection and grief. Piling onto Angi's loss is a drawn-out reveal of the underlying secret reason why this medic is so messed up. Yet what makes the play compelling is the fact of her disorder and how she begins to process it; the why of it all feels ancillary, and doesn't give sufficient justification for the too-long buildup to its arrival.
Harry Wetzel's busy set forces multiple literal settings to coexist. One corner stands in for the army recruiter's office and the psychiatrists' offices at the VA hospital; one café table is alternately a Dairy Queen and an Italian restaurant, and its chairs are briefly the front seat of a car; one area is a living room and then a different living room; one corner boasts the massive flat-screen TV from Two Point Oh (disguised as a thought bubble) to provide occasional imagery and supertitles; and one corner is all Iraq. In the same interchangeable vein, the sheer number of characters requires some actors to play multiple roles (for example, Angi's blind date bears an uncanny resemblance to an Iraqi civilian whose life she saved), but there is little indication whether this is a matter of convenience or a series of noteworthy parallels. In all, it seems unlikely that My Soldiers can ever be accomplished exactly as envisioned unless committed to celluloid. The script's combined flaws of story and execution take too long to awkwardly lay out the groundwork for a condition with which most audience members will have some passing familiarity. The Detroit Repertory production does the best it can with these several obstacles, and the moving final scenes should be rewarding for viewers who appreciate a hard-earned catharsis.
June 9, 2010