Shepherdstown, West Virginia—In 2011, America’s 9/11 tragedy—a sudden, fiery mass murder and act of war committed on these shores by a cadre of faux-religious fanatics—will celebrate (if that’s the word) its tenth anniversary. Yet in all this time I’ve yet to see a TV series, novel, or play that’s treated this country’s justified and justifiable response in a way that demonstrates one jot of sympathy for the US, its people, its government, or its military. Apparently, in the artistic community and in the media at least, we deserved to be attacked, and everything we’ve done since then in this regard simply proves the point.

A case in point is Lidless, currently running at the Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF). Penned by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, it’s a nonstop indictment of America, its military (particularly with regard to interrogation techniques), and its dysfunctional nuclear family structures. En route, the play, whilst exploring all the above, teaches us that our fanatical foes—at least the one in this play—are innocents and probably saints and we’re the sinners. It’s propaganda, really, entirely lacking in subtlety.

In Lidless, Bashir (Barzin Akhavan) is a “high quality” detainee at Guantanamo early in the war effort. Proclaiming his innocence, he’s interrogated/tormented by a soldier named Alice (Eva Kaminsky), who’s been put in charge of him presumably because such a social role-reversal will shake up his fundamentalist Muslim psyche. Alice is reluctantly counseled by her military friend and associate, Riva (Zabryna Guevara), who later reappears in the play, serving a similar dramatic function.

Flashing forward into our own future (circa 2019 or so), we find Alice out of the Army, running her own floral shop, happily married to Lucas (Michael Goodfriend), and proud parent to a bright and precocious daughter, Rhiannon (Reema Zaman). Aside from the fact that Rhiannon looks somewhat exotic for being the daughter of Caucasian parents, nothing seems amiss. Until Bashir shows up in Alice’s flower shop.

We discover in rapid succession that Alice actually raped Bashir in the play’s ambiguous opening sequences; that Rhiannon is actually Bashir’s daughter; and that Bashir himself is about to succumb to a fatal liver disease he contracted from, you guessed it, Alice, who is apparently a carrier.

Complicating matters, Rhiannon’s doing a high school research project on Guantanamo and starts to freak out when she nears the truth of her own situation. And, oh yes, ideal husband Lucas starts getting unhinged as well. After all, he’s a recovering drug addict, and the whole scene is a bit much.

Politics and attitudes aside, the over plotting of this play and its almost Dickensian dependence on medical, religious, biological, and geographical coincidence strains credulity. Its bathetic conclusion (which we won’t spoil by giving away), makes things even worse. The whole play has a kind of clunking, deus ex machina sense about it, with every detail stretched, pulled, and prodded to fit an ideological conclusion. Elsewhere, the playwright claims that the literary technique of “magic realism” was an influence on the play’s structure. But there’s really nothing magic here at all.

Socially, all the American characters in the play are emotional dunderheads, either unwilling or unable to take responsibility for their own past actions (in the case of Alice and Lucas), or too impulsive to arrive at reasoned conclusions—moderately understandable in the teenaged Rhiannon. However, Rhiannon’s almost instantaneous character shift from bright, innocent teen to avenging truth-seeker, is to abrupt to be believed, even in context.

As for “friend” Riva, she simply doesn’t want to get involved. Which in its own way is probably a good choice in this play.

Bashir, on the other hand, would be a candidate for canonization in Rome were he not a Muslim. Asserting his innocence in Guantanamo, he alleges he was a victim of circumstance, a Pakistani-Canadian scooped up by US soldiers in Afghanistan simply because he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

When we fast-forward, he’s been freed and tells the rest of his woeful family saga. We’re apparently to take it at face value while damning the cold-hearted, evil Americans for his problems at every turn. The playwright leaves little if any room for us to suspect that Bashir is “spinning” his story, unlike his American tormenters who, one supposes, are naturally duplicitous.

There’s not really much more to say about this unfortunate play. From a dramatic standpoint, the American characters are two-dimensional. Bashir is more fully realized. Yet his character, apparently without moral blemish or flaw, is simply not believable in this context.

From a political and historical standpoint, “Lidless” simply gets in line as yet another anti-US diatribe, faulting us for the real and alleged cruelties of war while giving the shadowy and fanatical enemy a pass. It’s academic post-colonialism at its facile worst, a doctrinaire indictment of America which, perhaps along with Israel, is the only place standing in the way of the new world socialist order.

It’s all kind of tiresome, really. We see similar dramas with similar anti-US, anti-military plots on television with some regularity, particularly in series like the “Law and Order” stable. Most of them, including this one, betray at best a knowledge of secular and military history not gleaned from experience but from library books with a leftist tilt. At worst, such material departs from believability and deteriorates into pure propaganda. Since that’s available via the web every day, there seems little justification in paying to see more.

The small cast of “Lidless” does a fine job with the material they’ve been given. And no doubt, they’re on board with the play’s message, which certainly helps the effort. But ultimately, that’s not enough to rescue yet another tiresomely strident anti-US diatribe from the dustbin of dramatic history.

Rating: 0 (Zero stars.)

 

At the Festival:

Running through August 1, CATF will be rotating in repertory the following dramatic offerings:

• The Eelwax Jesus 3-D Pop Music Show, a world premiere by Max Baker and Lee Sellers. The first musical at CATF at least since we’ve been reviewing the festival for the Washington Times (circa Y2K), this show promises “toe-tapping” pop songs and a satirical look into our current theater-of-the-absurd era.
• Lidless, a first production by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig. A look into Guantanamo Bay through the eyes of both the interrogator and the interrogated. Will the U.S. be the bad guy again? Stay tuned.
• Inana by Michele Lowe. An unusual treatment of a compelling behind-the-scenes story from the Second Iraq War interweaving heroic attempts to save priceless artworks with an unexpected love story.
• Breadcrumbs, a world premiere by Jennifer Haley.  An elderly writer grapples with early-stage Alzheimer’s as she attempts to write what will probably be her last work of fiction—or not.
• White People by J.T. Rogers. Three plays within a play dealing with the third-rail topic of our times—the Decline and Fall of white America.

 

Tickets: Prices begin at $25 per seat depending on package purchase. For single and group ticket sales, call 304-876-3304, or see below.

 

Information, including directions to Shepherdstown, WV: Visit www.catf.org or call 304-876-3473 or 800-999-CATF (2283).

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