Los Angeles Times
June 24, 2005
THEATER BEAT
Trauma is not drama, as Tom Cole's brief 1976 case study
"Medal of Honor Rag" illustrates all too well.
This rote confrontation between a nebbishy therapist (Paul
Schackman) and a troubled Vietnam vet (Heavy D) strikes some eerie wartime
resonances and rises to a few moments of genuine emotionÑbut where's the play?
Director Delroy Lindo, while nurturing a strong, contrasting pair
of performances, hasn't found it.
Sgt. Dale "D.J." Jackson is one of those less-counted
casualties of war, the soldiers who come home too rocked by horror to adjust to
civilian life.
Jackson's post-traumatic stress is exacerbated by home-front
ambivalence about the conflict: Pro-war folks blame him for the war's
stagnation, while "kids with long hair" call him "baby
killer."
Worse yet, Jackson's Medal of Honor came for "conspicuous
gallantry" in battleÑa grand-sounding phrase for what he remembers as a
mad killing spree of Viet Cong who had besieged his tank.
Based on real-life veteran Dwight H. Johnson, Jackson is a compellingly
torn figure, and the hulking, droop-eyed D plays him with a mixture of
resignation and unreachable despair.
In the thanklessly expository role of the doctor, Schackman is
unerringly precise and unsentimental.
But the conversation that unfolds on Nadia Morgan's realistic
holding-cell set has a flat emotional arc, almost no leavening humor and few
vivifying details. A soldier physically intact but internally destroyed might
be a provocative metaphor for a nation at war, but "Medal of Honor Rag"
doesn't have that kind of weight.
"Medal
of Honor Rag," Egyptian Arena Theatre, 1625 N. Las Palmas Ave., Hollywood.
8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends July 17. $30. (323)
650-3100. Running time: 1 hour.