Theatre Review / Frank Episale
Anthems for Doomed Youth
Surrender. Conceived and directed by Josh Fox. Written by Josh Fox and Jason Christopher Hartley.
Black Watch. Written by Gregory Burke. Directed by John Tiffany.
Publicity materials for the The International WOW company’s Surrender, which closed in November but will return for a one-week engagement in January, point out that “99.5 percent of all Americans will not serve in Iraq or Afghanistan. The divide between soldier and civilian has never been greater in American history.” This fact serves as the potential audience’s “invitation to get some first-hand experience” which concludes: “Don’t pass it up.”
Surrender is an interactive evening of theatre co-created by International WOW artistic director Josh Fox and Iraq War veteran Jason Christopher Hartley, whose wartime blog (www.recognizant.com/myiraq) was published as the memoir Just Another Soldier: A Year on the Ground in Iraq. The first act of the piece begins when the audience enters the theatre. After signing waivers stating that they are physically sound, men and women are herded into separate dressing areas and handed army fatigues, boots, and a plastic bag in which to place their civilian clothes and any other belongings they brought with them. Once everyone is changed, their laces and buttons properly fastened, the audience is divided into squads, handed replica rifles, and assigned sergeants who will lead them through a series of combat training exercises under the direction of Hartley himself.
Basic marching commands—keeping rifles at “low ready” with safeties on; raising rifles to “high ready,” and firing; entering and clearing a room in cooperation with other squad members; searching the dead; carrying the wounded—are conveyed with extraordinary efficiency by Hartley, whose military experience and professionalism are evident in his every utterance. The squad leaders, actors who presumably do not have real military experience, were trained by Hartley when International WOW was working on their film Memorial Day and, for the most part, perform admirably. Conducting training exercises with more than fifty people in the relatively confined space of a downtown theatre could have been a logistical train wreck. Despite some mild verbal abuse and the occasional audience member forced to drop and do push-ups as punishment for one error or another, Surrender is, among other things, an impressive feat of social engineering and traffic management.
In the second act, the “squads” are asked to put their new training to the test in a haunted house-like maze meant to simulate a combat mission in Iraq. Speakers overhead blast the soundtrack of war: bullets, planes, helicopters. Squad leaders shout instructions to confused participants, who rush to clear rooms, search bodies, and carry the wounded as best they can. The regimented, rational order drilled into them in the first act inevitably breaks down as things begin to go wrong. It also becomes clear that these rules, even as they break down, are what keep soldiers alive.
While engaging and productively frustrating, Act II does not succeed quite as strongly as Act I does. This is, in part, because the training exercises never pretend to be something other than what they are. Hartley refers again and again to the fact that he’s conducting theses drills not with recruits in basic training but with a bunch of theatre fags in SoHo. This transparency, along with Hartley’s authoritative presentation, lend Surrender’s opening sequence an authenticity it doesn’t quite maintain once the “bullets” start to fly. As with haunted houses, the very knowledge that things are about to get “scary” makes it very difficult to actually be frightened by anything that happens. Nevertheless, Act II is a largely successful exercise in interactive theatre that gives at least a hint of the ethical and logistical confusion that confronts soldiers when they apply lessons learned in training to actual combat situations.
After the second act, during which one audience member has been “killed” and many others have found themselves far less focused and cool-under-pressure than they would have liked to believe, it is announced that the squads will be flying home. Cheap beer is poured. Scantily clad, star-spangled women dance provocatively to classic rock and hip-hop while the soldiers cheer them on. This intermission of sorts serves as a segue into the third act of the performance.
Act III is intended to be an expressionistic montage of scenes representing a soldier’s post-traumatic reintegration into society. Unfortunately, it is a conceptual mess, with too many scenes, too many obvious images, and too few insights. Adding to the muddle are moments of “dramatic karaoke” during which audience members are called forward to participate in scenes, reading their lines from a screen while actors play the other parts. These scenes were uncomfortable on a number of levels, but not in the ways that Fox and company intended.
Despite the failings of its third act, Surrender is a uniquely worthwhile experience that finds theatre practitioners and audiences thirsty for engagement with, and relevance in, the world around them. The show’s many successes and admirable ambition go a long way towards making up for its lapses into pretention and self-satisfaction.
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In Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore memorably mocks the “coalition of the willing” that aided the United States in our invasion and occupation of Iraq. Over stereotypical, arguably racist, footage from Costa Rica, Palau, Romania, and other coalition nations, Moore makes the oft-stated point that the great majority of the fighting in Iraq has been, and continues to be, done by US troops. Indeed, in our news coverage of the war, it is unusual (though not unheard of) to come across any reports focused on the achievements and struggles of our allies, even the British, who have committed, and lost, considerable numbers. The National Theatre of Scotland’s breathtaking Black Watch, which is currently enjoying an encore engagement at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, serves as a potent reminder that it is not only the United States military that has suffered loss of life, dignity, and reputation as a result of the Iraq War. The Black Watch is Scotland’s oldest and most prestigious military unit. The brigade’s long history and many honors are passed on to new recruits as a point of pride, as something to protect and preserve. When New York Times critic Ben Brantley (among others) declared Black Watch the theatrical event of 2006, and called it “one of the most richly human works of art to have emerged from this long-lived war,” that initial run of the production quickly sold out. While I was grateful when it was announced that the show would return to Brooklyn for its final engagement, I was also skeptical that any evening of theatre could live up to the adulation that had been heaped upon Black Watch.
In some ways, I was right. The text itself, written by the respected playwright Gregory Burke, is unremarkable. A solid but unexceptional docudrama built around interviews with and anecdotes from regiment soldiers, Black Watch reads like any one of a dozen recent war plays. The text, though, is not the show. What render this production so extraordinary are its exuberant theatricality and the quality of its ensemble.
Two sequences in particular stand out as unforgettable: One which recounts the history of the regiment through a flurry of tightly choreographed and athletically performed on-stage costume changes; and the final scene, in which the ensemble marches in parade formation but finds itself collapsing as various individuals stumble and are rescued by their compatriots. It’s a thrilling and devastating sequence that cannot adequately be described by either stage directions or the words of a reviewer.
While it would indicate a kind of historical amnesia to suggest that the current war in Iraq is the only unjust and incomprehensible one in which the British have engaged, there is an unmistakable disillusionment permeating the stories told by these Black Watch soldiers, a disillusionment born of wounded pride, traumatic memories, and the funerals of too many friends. Ultimately, Black Watch is about the seductive dual tragedies of masculinity and nationalism, two of the forces that have driven so many generations of men to their graves in the name of causes that have not been adequately explained, but which they are expected to take on faith and to defend with their lives.
Surrender. Conceived and directed by Josh Fox. Written by Josh Fox and Jason Christopher Hartley. Created and performed by the International WOW Company. “Dramatic Karaoke” by Sanford Wintersberger. Lights by Charles Foster and Scott Needham. Sets by Nicolas Locke. Choreography by Hettie Barnhill. Reviewed at the Ohio Theatre, 66 Wooster Street (closed; ran October 29–November 16 at the Ohio Theater, 66 Wooster Street. One week encore engagement: January 7–12, Wednesday–Saturday at 7pm. Sun at 4pm, Monday at 5pm and 7:30pm. Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center, 107 Suffolk Street. Tickets: $20. See www.wowsurrender.org for further details.
Black Watch. Written by Gregory Burke. Directed by John Tiffany. Sets by Laura Hopkins. Sound by Gareth Fry. Lights by Colin Grenfell. Costumes by Jessica Brettle. Video Design by Leo Warner and Mark Grimmer. Featuring: David Colvin, Ali Craig, Emun Elliott, Ryan Fletcher, Jack Fortune, Paul Higgins, Henry Pettigrew, Nabil Stuart, Paul Rattray, Jordan Young. Produced by The National Theatre of Scotland. At St. Ann’s Warehouse, 138 Water Street, Brooklyn. October 9 through December 21. Wednesday–Saturday at 8pm. Friday at 3pm. Sunday at 2pm and 7pm. Tickets: $55. See www.stannswarehouse.org for further details.
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