A Sensitive Play Against War

Arlington. Company of Angels. 9/9/06.

As an anti-war play, Arlington by Garry Michael White has moments of elegance and subtlety. At a few points, it is clear and interesting and powerful. Unfortunately, it is equally often convoluted, preachy, or wordy, creating a complex but flawed production that could, with a few rounds of revisions, be fascinatingly compelling. As it is, it left me engaged but contemplating what could have been.

Arlington, at its strong points, depicts the ravages of war on the home front, including its effects on soldiers before and after battle and the impact on families. According to the author, "In this play, no battlefield blood is spilled; no foreign soil is touched," and yet a history of violence looms large throughout the play. It very powerfully made the point that there has been no time within the past century when there weren't people alive who lived through and fought in wars. As a person born since Vietnam, that's not something that has ever really hit home for me, despite my father's stories of being in the national guard, barely avoiding being drafted, and despite the constant reminders of everyone's vetran status every time a major election roles around. A stylized version of Arlington National Cemetrary lurks in the background of this Company of Angels production, directed by Curtis Krick and Sean Dillon In the moments in which the faceless white tombstones coincide with the plot of the play, this a haunting testament and tribute to those who have fought and died, while strenuously objecting to those deaths.

The play depicts vignettes from 5 different time periods: 2008, 1972, 1953, 1945, and 1917, moving backwards in time while following a few intertwined characters that intermittently act as a through-line to the play. It initialy appears to center on one family, the Smiths, as they navigate a family history of millitary service and a national history of war. When we reach 1945, the show diverges from this seeming through-line into an incongruous depiction of World War II with an appearance by Judy Garland (played by Sarah Zoe Canner, who lacks the vibrancy of the real Judy). The scene from WWI returns to a family ostensibly named Smith, but if and how this family is related to the one from more recent decades is unclear. Personally, I wish the play had continued to trace the same characters backwards through generations and wars, exposing how the military and the national ceremony grew to importance through generations. The frustrating thing about this play was that no through line went all the way through. Even Arlington disappeared after 1953.

The most powerful moments of Arlington came at the heart of the play, in 1953. Tricia Allen gave a moving performance (as Joanie, I believe - the program makes it profoundly difficult to follow characters' names though different scenes and I strongly reccommend that the company list which actor plays which character in each scene) as a mother who loses her husband in the Korean War. For me, this was easily the strongest performance and the strongest scene in the whole show.

Also excellent and consistent in the strength of his performance was Colter Allison. He was fabulous as the perpetual soldier in the 1972 and 1953 scenes, conflicted by loyalty and family, and I would have liked to see him continue to play similar, related but different characters back through the family tree. He was equally compelling in the 1917 scenes as a slightly mentally-challenged baker-turned-farmer, though this role overly-simplified his symbolism as a representation of innocence.

This 1917 scene brought up a few fascinating issues and most successfully demonstrated the uses of past wars as a metaphor for the present. The brief reminder of the atrocious Espionage Act of 1917 and atmosphere of surveillence feel chillingly contemporary, providing links with the present political climate that were mostly missing in the other scenes. 1917 was, however, a little disingenuously portrayed as a more innocent time. As the final scene in the play, it ended in a strange wimper, with the main character not going off to war. It left me as an audience member asking, if this is a moment bittersweet of triumph in which the young man eludes the spectre of war hanging over him, how does this relate to the rest of the play?

While Arlington develops fascinating (if inconsistent) stories about the relationships of Americans to war, its portrayals of women are atrocious. Not only does it mostly ignore female contributions to the war efforts (as soldiers, in factories, as nurses and ambulance drivers), it portrays them as perpetually pregnant, only serving to breed new soldiers and to mourn the dead (or as a Judy Garland obsessed with her contribution of entertaining the troops). In 1972, 1953, and 1945, pregnacy is a major issue and the women's lives seem to revolve around it. While the macabre image of women as baby factories perpetually producing children to send off to war is a disturbing basis for an argument against war, this doesn't seem to be the argument Arlington is making. It doesn't seem to question the fecundity of its women, using it mainly as a device for portraying the connections between generations, decades, and wars. Courtney Elkin as Sunsong in the 1972 scene is not only pregnant, but ends the scene pleading her desire to get married. Joanie from 1953 is the only female character with any strength in the whole show.

The play in general needs significant reworking to be the truly powerful, sensitive plea against war that it has the potential to be. I'd like to see it cut some of the more direct speech-making and exposition, and maybe even a few extaneous characters. There are many unnecessary elements that could be trimmed or eliminated while keeping the play simultaneously epic in scope and profoundly intimate, but Arlington shows a great deal of hope as a theatrical response to war that avoids being bellicose. In its best moments, Arlington demonstrates the possibilities for political theater to be passionate and moving without being overly didactic or strident. It may not consistently hit that mark, but the moments when it does are breathtaking.