A few years ago, as America’s attention was diverted from the war in Afghanistan by the bigger and less easily rationalized war in Iraq, American playwrights tended to write many more scripts about the Iraq war than they did about the Afghanistan war. For a while, a new play about Iraq emerged every few months, yet it’s hard to remember any Afghanistan-specific plays since Tony Kushner’s pre-war Homebody/Kabul.
Now, however, Afghanistan gets more attention from the public than Iraq. The death of Osama Bin Laden and the current frenzy about cutting government spending have led even right-wingers to question additional American expenditures in Afghanistan. So perhaps theaters will soon be flooded with plays set in the vicinity of Kabul or the Korengal Valley.
Tom Burmester’s Gospel According to First Squad takes us into the Korengal and offers a nuanced and probing perspective on a confused mission through the microcosmic eyes of a small squad of American fighters. The production continues Los Angeles Theatre Ensemble’s estimable War Cycle, at the Powerhouse Theatre in Santa Monica.
Joe Mahon and Michael Pappas in "Gospel According to First Squad"
Without becoming a docudrama about a “real-life story,” Gospel glances at the issues raised by two of the most controversial incidents in the history of America’s Afghan involvement.
The cover-up of former NFL player Pat Tillman’s 2004 death from friendly fire comes to mind while watching the play’s conflicting accounts of an incident that also results in deaths of Americans at the hands of their military brethren in Afghanistan.
And the 2010 revelation that a Michigan arms manufacturer had included handy New Testament references on the rifle sights of weapons that were being used by US and British troops in Afghanistan – thereby lending credence to the notion that the war is part of a thinly veiled “crusade” against Muslims – also resonates in Gospel According to First Squad. In the narrative of the play, a new member of the squad brings Pashto-language Bibles to the war zone in an attempt to convert the Afghans.
Still, the play isn’t exactly ripped from the headlines, nor is it a didactic antiwar screed. It’s a full-bodied war play, which means that it’s about young, brave, blustery, horny guys who are in an impossibly chaotic and dangerous situation. Some of them are religious and evangelical, but others are wildly profane – and there is even one who’s dubbed an “atheist,” thereby disproving the old adage about the lack of atheists in foxholes.
Nor is the play solely about Americans. AJ Meijer plays the group’s Pashto interpreter, an Afghan and a Muslim who hopes to become an American. Unfortunately, those hopes rest on the relationship he has with the squad’s jaded sergeant (Jonathan Redding), who is the War Cycle’s only character to appear in more than one play – he also showed up in Nation of Two (originally Survived) on the California doorstep of a fallen comrade’s family.
Jonathan Redding, AJ Meijer in "Gospel According to First Squad"
Burmester’s and Danika Sudik’s staging is intensely paced and polished, with more than a handful of crisply drawn characterizations woven into an intricate tapestry. The narrative moves backward and forward between events on the ground and a later investigation of those events, but even those investigation scenes never feel declamatory or otherwise heavy-handed. A hard-driving sound design injects the scene transitions with almost as much energy as the dialogue.
If the script needs any clarification, it’s in the climactic incidents. It would be difficult to create the authenticity of a battleground on the small stage of a 75-seat theater, so we hear what happened in combat primarily in the immediate aftermath of the fire fight. The final scene — set during the subsequent investigation — relies in part on video footage that the audience unfortunately doesn’t see. While I felt that I understood the gist of what happened, the details remained a little uncomfortably hazy.
It would be great to see these details further explained in a larger production of the play, perhaps at one of LA’s midsize theaters. The news that this production is LATE’s last hurrah at the Powerhouse should provide a giant cue to the producers of LA’s large and midsize companies to look into the possibilities of presenting the entire trilogy under the auspices of a more professional (AKA wage-paying) production.
The War Cycle is one of the most impressive multi-play bodies of work to emerge from LA’s 99-seat theaters. It would be a shame if this production is the end of not only LATE’s Powerhouse residency but also of the War Cycle itself.
Gospel According to First Squad, Powerhouse Theatre, 3116 2nd St., Santa Monica. Thur-Sat 8 pm. Closes Aug. 27. www.latensemble.com.
One of the highlights of this year’s Hollywood Fringe Festival was The Trouble With Words, a song cycle by Gregory Nabours, directed by Patrick Pearson for Coeurage Theatre Company. It was presented in Fringe Central in a 60-minute version and also in Coeurage’s home base, Actors Circle Theatre, in a 90-minute version. I liked the former enough to see the latter last weekend in its extended run.
Christopher Roque, Julianne Donnell, "The Trouble With Words"
Again, I was impressed, but not quite as much as I was by the 60-minute version. Some of the material that was left out of the shorter version was apparently cut because it’s just not as strong as what was included. Swings were in two of the male roles last weekend, and in both cases I was more convinced by the original cast members I saw at Fringe Central. Finally, while it’s wonderful to hear a six-piece live band in such a small show, especially considering Nabours’ knack for richly textured arrangements and orchestration as well as composition, it was more wonderful at the Fringe Central mainstage (aka Artworks Theatre) than at Actors Circle. The Actors Circle room is a little too small, considering the level of amplification.
Now, it’s true that the overall theme and the title of the first song are “The Trouble with Words,” and the last song expresses the relief of “No Words.” But that doesn’t mean that it’s not important to hear Nabours’ lyrics. They’re often as intriguing as his music, but they were too often overpowered in the smaller room.
The first and last songs are among the six or seven that are truly memorable. The shorter show had a higher percentage of these. One of my favorites, late in the second act, is “Raincloud,” but “The Silence and the Rain” that follows it feels superfluous and inferior. “Johnny,” by the way, is about a soldier’s sad odyssey (using the melody of “Johnny Comes Marching Home Again”) – maybe some day it could find another home in The War Cycle’s Nation of Two.
Let’s hope that Nabours is busy writing a book musical and that he can include roles for some of the actors and musicians who are in The Trouble With Words. Jason Alexander was in the audience at the performance I attended; I hope that’s a good sign that the musical theater’s movers and shakers are taking notice of this extraordinary new talent.
The Trouble With Words, Actors Circle Theatre, 7313 Santa Monica Blvd. Fri-Sat 8 pm. Closes Aug. 27. Pay what you can. www.troublewithwords.com.
Gospel According to First Squad photos by Rafael Tongol.
The Trouble With Words photo by Kevin McShane.
