Reviewed
by Jerry Kraft
James
McClure's "Pvt. Wars" is a brilliant little play about three psychiatric
patients in a veteran's hospital during the 1970's. Voluntarily committed, we
see the three men is a series of fragmentary vignettes that create both
humorous snapshots of their everyday life and interaction, and occasional
breakthroughs into deep, sympathetic perceptions of broken, frightened and
desperately lonely individuals. Widely produced, it is an odd little stray of a
drama, speaking both to the specific period of Viet Nam and to the timeless
circumstance of the mentally ill in a world where there is "no place for
wild and wounded animals."
The
comic construction of the script is excellent, with incisive and witty lines
balanced by running gags and telling, humane insights. Most importantly, the
three characters are distinctive and genuine, feeling both specifically detailed
and universal, neatly crafted without seeming contrived. This production is
beautifully directed by Todd Szekely, and features three meticulous performances. I've seen
this play in at least half a dozen productions, and this is easily the best.
Silvio
is a nervous, impulsive tic of a man who fills his days with the adventure of
flashing nurses from the windows of the ward, intruding into the lives of his
fellow patients, and making futile plans for living with his sister. Jason
Adkins has just
the right blend of behavioral excess and personal inadequacy, violent anguish
and psychological impotence. This is the sort of mental illness that is too
often overdone on stage, becoming a clowning exhibition of ridiculous action
rather than a physical expression of internal chaos. Adkins keeps the balance
just right, so that when we ultimately discover the actual nature of his
"injury" it is less like an explanation than a re-focusing, a
clarification of everything we've seen him do.
The
character of Natwick is perhaps the least well-realized in the script. A
somewhat stereotypical intellectual from an upper-class background, he is
self-alienated from the others and carefully protected by layers of
psychological artifice and compensatory superiority. Always reading, always
self-removed from his commonplace companions, his is the isolation of a man who
thinks too much, knows too much, and understands too little. As he tries to
explain why a man "dare not eat the peach" in T.S. Eliot's "The
Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" he delivers his own diagnosis in
strikingly simple language. "It is always the small things in life that
defeat him." Kevin Love plays the role well, with a hint of the effete that
never becomes prissy, articulate without being cogent, a wallflower at the
dance of his own life.
Finally,
George Jonson
brings to the simple country boy, Gately, an amazing strength and focus. His
performance combines a broad grin and an unfettered laugh, personal faults that
overwhelm his entire life, a clarity of engagement with the others while being
simultaneously estranged from his own being, technical skill subservient to
magic, and physical power teetering on emotional fragility. There was not a
false stroke in the entire performance.
A
bit of self-disclosure. I worked as a counselor in acute psychiatric mental
health, primarily in State hospitals, for thirty years. In addition, during the
Viet Nam War, I was briefly in a military psychiatric facility, not as a
worker. When I say that these characterizations were accurate I'm not just
speaking from a theatrical perspective. The resonance of this small story of
small men trying to sustain a minimum body heat in an emotionally frozen time
and place affected me deeply and personally. When Silvio tells us of his female
visitor, in a touching story that ends with her telling him to "Come
home," it was a voice that spoke to an entire generation, to all of us
affected by that other, earlier mis-guided, pointless and un-winnable war.
The
tiny theatre at The New Space in Shoreline is attempting to create a studio
environment where physical production is secondary to the actor and the text,
where performance transcends the apparatus of spectacle. Their ambitions are
admirably achieved in this production, and they deserve a substantial audience.
This is a funny and entertaining production, but also one with a human heart,
and recognizably visceral injuries in need of understanding and healing.