Los Angeles Times
July 8, 2005
Antiwar play topical but unpersuasive
Most conscientious objectors stay home. Imagine, though, what
havoc one might wreak on the front lines, particularly in the current, chaotic
Iraq embroilment.
Nicholas Kazan has, in his impassioned, maddeningly simplistic new
antiwar play, "A Good Soldier." With "Antigone" as an
inspiration, Kazan gives us a willowy, quietly intense young Army private,
Annie (Kaitlin Doubleday), who has turned on the U.S. occupation after
witnessing a bloody scene of prison torture. As she tells a fellow female
soldier (Ali Hillis), "It drove me a little crazyÑin a nice way, I
hope."
That quote crystallizes why "A Good Soldier" feels by
turns bold, silly and pernicious. Putting the Iraq war debate into its very
midst gives the arguments a bracing immediacy, but neither pro- nor antiwar
positions are given persuasive voice. When the craven Gen. Creedon (Clancy
Brown) invokes Saddam Hussein's mass murders, Annie replies, "Yeah, OKÑbut
it was their mess." Later she says of insurgents she's been secretly
supplying with food and medicine, "They're not insurgents, they're
people!"
Brown has natural gravity, and Michael Anderson Brown, as his
sneakily irreverent son, brings welcome nuance to his role. But under Scott
Paulin's workmanlike direction, these characters have all the military bearing
of the cast of "Scrubs."
Annie spends much of the show slouching and pacing, hands in
pockets, with a righteous, needling pout that wouldn't survive basic training.
Audiences starved for topicality might still salute "A Good
Soldier." Those looking for a stage tragedy worthy of the world's tragic
state will have to keep looking.
Rob
Kendt
"A Good Soldier," SK-Tribe at the Odyssey Theatre, 2055
S. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays.
Ends Aug. 7. $25. (310) 477-2055 or www.odysseytheatre.com. Running time: 1
hour, 35 minutes.