HYPOCRISY BEGINS AT HOME
In theater revenge is best served quickly. That’s a virtue in David Alex’s 80-minute family drama, now detonating four times a week at Chicago’s Redtwist Theatre. A world premiere from Asuza Productions, Maggie Speer’s intense (as in loud) staging drives home the rifts and grudges that ravaged loved ones during the Vietnam War. Always seeking unlikely links that somehow fit, playwright Alex only needs four characters to connect high school basketball, divided siblings (physically and morally), a nun’s anti-war protests, a brother’s wartime disappearance, and a husband’s sinister secret. It happened then and, though there’s no draft and the indefensible blood-letting n0w happens in the Middle East, it could happen now.
The set-up is simple in this story set in the winter of 1966: Victor Hale (Felipe Carrasco) is a successful small-town basketball coach about to be inducted (a key word here) into a local sports hall of fame. Suffering from myocarditis (which has given him a medical deferment from dying in the rice paddies of Southeast Asia), Victor is married to sweet Sally (Sara Pavlak McGuire). A caring wife, she fears for her brother Buddy whose helicopter was shot down and who is now M.I.A. In his honor she writes letters to the troops and hopes for the best.
Staying with them is Victor’s sister (another key word) who’s also a nun. To war hawk Victor’s patriotic ire, this principled “sister” opposes the undeclared war. Finally, Charles (Garrett Young) is a high school graduate ahead of his time as he teaches computer programming to Sally. (This seems an anachronism but let it pass…) A former player on Victor’s team, Charles lost his athletic scholarship and can’t afford college. So he’s 1-A and eligible to be drafted. Other than not wanting to fight and die, Charles is indifferent to the war. And—well–let’s just say that Charles knows things that could destroy a falsely happy home.
These are the lines Alex draws in his recognizable parable of vengeance and treachery. (The title refers to Beethoven’s third symphony, the title “hero” being Napoleon until Bonaparte betrayed idealists by declaring himself Emperor.) The moral poles in this internecine squabble are the appropriately-named Grace’s abhorrence of falseness of heart and Victor’s adherence to appearances as sufficient unto themselves.
To cap the crisis, there’s a final revelation of family-shattering hypocrisy. Regrettably, it occurs too histrionically for a naturalistic one-act that does not intend to be a modern melodrama. Otherwise, the four well-intentioned survivors and well-tested loved ones are believable, despite the characters’ formulaic polarities and the elliptical dialogue with its plethora of sports and computer metaphors.
photos by Evan Hanover
Eroica
Azusa Productions, in association with Redtwist Theatre
Redtwist Theatre 1044 W. Bryn Mawr
Sun, Tues, Wed at 7:30, Sat at 3
ends on August 7, 2016
for tickets, visit dime.io or the Redtwist Box Office in person
