Guardians
Written by Peter Morris
at Angel Island, 735 W. Sheridan (map)
thru Oct 18 | tickets: $30 | more info
Check for half-price tickets
Timely and intriguing
Mary-Arrchie Theatre presents
Guardians
Review by Lauren Whalen
This season, Mary-Arrchie Theatre Co.’s thirtieth, will also be its last. The company is losing its lease at Angel Island and has decided to wrap things up as a result. While I am sympathetic, I’ll miss Mary-Arrchie’s unflinching honesty. Its productions aren’t always perfect, but they are always gritty, realistic and risk-taking (three excellent aspirations for any ensemble). Guardians runs a bit long, but is an unflinching, gripping look at our violence- and media-obsessed culture, and two individuals on different, but equally explosive, sides of it.
Guardians is a monolog play, a form I quite enjoy with the right actors and director. At one hour and 40 minutes with no intermission, the script does run long (though director Arianna Soloway does an excellent job with pacing). Playwright Peter Morris could have done with more editing and shaved at least 10 minutes off the script without losing any effect.
What’s strongest about Morris’ script, however, is that it humanizes the American soldier without completely empathizing with her. She’s a tragic figure, having endured abuse and neglect in childhood and Iraq, but seeks to justify her actions and deludes herself that she’ll one day be remembered as someone who simply followed orders and served her country. Entwistle’s performance is starkly moving from beginning to end. A lesser actor may have taken a cartoonish approach, caricaturizing “rednecks” and “poor white trash,” but Soloway and Entwistle are better than that. As someone who grew up in a small town, I knew people just like this soldier, whose fates were basically determined from birth because of lack of opportunity and/or less than ideal family situations. They exist, they are real, and their moral gray areas are both oddly understandable and definitely terrifying.
The Englishman’s story is somewhat less effective, as he’s gratuitously unlikable from moment one. However, even at their most disturbing, his monologues provide much-needed (though darkly comic) levity. While he gets a little loud at times, Soule is appropriately smarmy, cracking jokes about a woman’s body one moment and revealing his deepest desires in the next. The audience gets the feeling of never really knowing this character, because he doesn’t really know himself, but what he does know frightens him.
Like Interrobang’s Katrina: Mother-in-Law of ‘Em All, Guardians realizes the importance of oral tradition – an essential but dying art in the modern electronic age. In the face of unspeakable tragedy, a writing instructor once told me, stories are all we’ve got to not only remember, but also to move forward. It’s likely that everyone in the Guardians audience will remember the disturbing photos from Abu Ghraib and the scandal that followed. Not a pleasant memory, but a compelling story, and in the end all we’ve got.
Rating: ★★★
Guardians continues through October 18th at Angel Island Theatre, 735 W. Sheridan (map), with performances Thursdays-Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays 7pm. Tickets are $30 (students/seniors: $20), and are available online through TicketWeb.com (check for half-price tickets at Goldstar.com). More information at MaryArrchie.com. (Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes without intermission)
Photos by Emily Schwartz
artists
cast
Jaci Entwisle (American Girl), Adam Soule (English Boy)
behind the scenes
Arianna Soloway (director), Grant Sabin (scenic design), Moriah Lee Turner (costume design), Claire Chrzan (lighting design), Eric Vigo (asst. lighting design), Eric Backus (sound design), Jerico Bleu (dialect coach, dramaturg), Mike Sanow (technical director), Anna Micale (stage manager), Jake Fruend (poster design), Susan Gosdick (dialect consultant), Emily Schwartz (photos)
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