There might be a good show hiding somewhere inside Jim Leonard's lite-rock musical about the torture-filled sex dungeon clusterfuck that was Abu Ghraib, but, if there is, director John Langs didn't find it.
I saw Bad Apples on the 15th anniversary of 9/11. During an earnest and welcome pre-show talk, Langs stepped onstage and connected the nation's "never forget" refrain to Theater's role in the world. The brief speech was followed by the show's opening number: a somber and dull song that repeated the line "it all falls down."
I was to understand that the "it" refers not only to the World Trade Center or the Pentagon or the ideas those buildings embody, but also to the relationship between Lindsay Skinner (Kate Morgan Chadwick), "shutterbug" and sex god Chuck (Carlton Byrd), and Lt. Scott (Keiko Green), three soldiers who engaged in a love triangle and who participated in the abuses at Abu Ghraib. The show's metaphors maintained about that level of sophistication over the course of its three hours.
The problem, like most problems, was structural. Exciting showstoppers weren't positioned in places of power, and the comedic bits went on too long. (Ever heard the one where two of the guys who flew planes into the twin towers argued over whether to put pork on their pizzas at Pizza Hut the night before their act of terror?) The show certainly has no problem "going there" on the issues of torture, racism, police brutality, BDSM, threesomes, meta commentary on the media, treatment of POWS, 9/11, the mores of Islamic culture, and the surveillance state, but it doesn't have much to say much when it arrives.
The cramped stage begot claustrophobic blocking, but you can't fault the performers there. And in general the singers and actors performed well, even as they battled with wonky microphones that occasionally cut out.
Chadwick charmed up Skinner's hick insouciance, which made her more vulnerable moments seem real. Reminded me of the false pride people wore like armor back home. Byrd was magnetic and commanding, and though Green's performance was subtler she was no less captivating. But Frederick Hagreen proved to be the more dynamic and versatile singer that evening. Everybody else hit the notes, but he was able to communicate a true sense of desperation as Cunny, the character based on the real-life whistleblower Joe Darby.
If you have committed the American sin of forgetting some details about 9/11 and the subsequent (and ongoing) disasters of the resulting wars abroad, the play does provide a few bracing refreshers. It reminds you that the sexual abuse of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib did not come about as the result of "a few bad apples" with a penchant for the whip in the sack, but as a natural consequence of the Bush administration's torture policies. The other thing I forgot (if I ever knew it in the first place), was that we have an evangelical to thank for revealing the sadism underpinning our thinly-veiled religious war.
If you were in the audience that night and are only now receiving your Official Seattle Theater Bingo Card for the fall 2016 season, you can go ahead and mark "audience makes 'mmm' sound to indicate ideological sympathy" and "slo-mo scene." But you'll have to keep the "musical offers surprisingly trenchant social critique" space open.
