The American Pilot
Theater Schmeater
Through May 24.
The first image: a farmer, in what we assume is an Islamic country,
hauling an injured American pilot on his back. The long, slow walk
across the small, dim stage is a tender and meditative beginning to a
tragedy about how dangerous a superpower can be, even in the form of
one battered man who is barely alive.
The farmer (José Amador) keeps the pilot (Daniel Wood) in his
shed, bringing him food, offering him cigarettes, and waiting for the
local warlord (Chris MacDonald) to show up and decide what to do.
The American Pilot (a 2005 play by Scottish writer David
Greig) is saturated in desperation: Everybody wants something he cannot
have. The pilot wants to go home and, until then, listen to Snoop Dogg
on his iPod. The farmer wants to help his bloody guest. The farmer’s
starry-eyed daughter (Carolyn Marie Monroe) wants to marry the pilot.
The warlord, menacing in his sunglasses and boots, wants to parlay the
pilot into some advantage for his tiny guerrilla army, and his internal
debate about how to proceed is The American Pilot‘s central
dilemma. Should he hold him hostage? Ransom him to the Americans? Cut
his head off for a $1 million bounty that local terrorists are
offering? Just return him and hope for the best? MacDonald gives a
tense, brooding performance as the tortured torturer, a battle-weary
idealist who wants to be merciful, but also wants to do right by his
cause.
A small, intense script about miscommunication and morality, The
American Pilot effectively humanizes both the American military
and the kinds of people who saw off American heads. The production has
only one bad actor and the script has only one major failing—the
overwrought monologues each character gives about what the American
pilot means to him. (The farmer says something about the American pilot
being “too beautiful, with skin like sand flecked with gold” or
something disagreeably purple.) But its drama is taut and its flaws are
few. BRENDAN KILEY
Medea Knows Best
Nebunele Theater at Capitol Hill
Arts Center
Through May 25.
This comical adaptation of a Greek tragedy begins with a man (Jason)
and a woman (Medea), who are reunited in a war-torn country (America in
the age of Terror). The couple happens to reunite in front of a large
TV. On the screen is a program that recalls The Truman Show:
suburbia in an eerie state of perfection.
The reunited couple (played by Laurence Hughes and Heather
Persinger) magically enters the TV land and becomes a part of its
content community. Here, women are women and men are men. The women
cook, knit, and raise children; the men work, work, and fall asleep. In
TV land, the reunited couple has a small home, regular hours of work
and rest, and two healthy babies. But something is wrong in paradise.
That something is human—all too human—desire. Jason falls
in love with Creon’s daughter (Davie-Blue Bacich), a woman who holds
the moon at night. Jason eventually leaves his wife for the woman of
the moon. If you know what happens in Euripides’s play, then you know
what happens in this loose interpretation of that tragedy.
The problems with Medea Knows Best reside in its script,
which was written by the play’s director, Claytie Mason, and one of its
actors, Alissa Mortenson. The writers went wrong in the final
act—it has the heaviness of revealing a final and amazing truth,
but its truth is not heavy or staggering. We already know that life in
the suburbs is empty and soulless. Even people living in the suburbs
know that. Medea Knows Best should never have pushed beyond
the lightness of its music and comedy. CHARLES MUDEDE
S2
Annex Theatre
Through June 7.
The best thing about S2, a new action-thriller by local
playwright Edward Mast, is its ingenious language. The worst thing is
its length—two and a half hours.
Set in a dystopian future, S2 follows a 14-year-old
prostitute named Slate (Alex Garnett) who is trying to sell a suitcase
full of mysterious white powder. He hijacks planes, dodges assassins,
and stumbles into a war zone, all on Annex’s small stage. Too many
productions would confront the script’s action-movie demands by
reaching for weak realism, forcing their actors to flail through
half-assed fight scenes. But Mast and director Robert G. Leigh lean
into the problem. Their actors speak terse stage
directions—grab!, stiletto!,
free-fall!, roll on feet and recover!—giving
the violence a comic-book feel. It works.
And, like all good science fiction, S2 is a satire. Sex
dominates conversation in Mast’s future world as the prime metaphor and
measuring stick for all experience. A soldier, discussing affection:
“Old people are like pets. Love for them feels good though does not
involve orgasm.” A hopeful urchin: “The world has had intercourse with
us forever, but now it turns and touches its lips to our lips.” An
advertisement, blaring from a speaker: “A day at Magicland Amusement
Park will involve no sexual threat to you or your children.”
Unfortunately, S2 is an action-thriller yoked to a
playwright’s preciousness: It’s too convoluted and too long. With the
language, style, and strong acting (especially Garnett and ensemble
member Jaime Roberts), the first 45 minutes sail by. But by
intermission, one wants to escape. So I did. BRENDAN KILEY
