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THE SPECTOR OF DEATH Review by: Beth M, Jan 8, 2009 |
I had the good fortune this afternoon to catch the Roundabout Theatre Company’s revival of David Rabe’s 1976 play Streamers, set in 1965 in an army barracks in Virginia where a group of soldiers are waiting for their assignments for active duty in Vietnam. I wasn’t planning to write about Streamers as it closes in a few days. However, I found this play to be so extraordinarily affective and effective that I felt moved to say something. ... read more I found the play to be extremely compelling and was totally absorbed by it.
There have been many plays set in wartime in recent years. Several very powerful ones immediately to mind: An American Pilot and Journey’s End, both presented a few seasons ago, and last season’s The Overwhelming, also a Roundabout production, all of which had a strong impact on me. And in reading lots of reviews of off and off-off Broadway reviews, one finds many interesting sounding plays set during war time, often addressing the impact of war.
What makes Streamers so unusual, from my experience is that it in not set during a war, but instead it is set during the dark and extraordinarily tense period of limbo, when everyone is waiting, not knowing when they will be called, where they will go, and most significantly, what their fates will be. Streamers is about the impact of waiting. The atmosphere is filled with deep fear, and also a struggling to find some ways to temporarily escape the claustrophobic sense of night and doom that enshrouds and hovers over. Streamers is about waiting for death.
The great stress of the experience of endless waiting creates a variety of powerful emotional responses, expressed in different ways, sometime with touches of humor and sadness, sometimes with personal reflection and story telling, and there is considerable sexual expression. There is also a great deal of pent up anxiety, homophobia, racial tension, misunderstanding, confusion, wondering why they are there at all, and anger, all of which leads to some explosive acts of violence, which are both shocking and unexpected.
The play focuses on 3 soldiers, all Privates, Richie, Billy and Roger, who share a room in the barracks, and a mysterious, extremely unruly, mentally unstable, and violent “transient” named Carlyle, who is on ‘KP” duty, (which as I understand it involves washing dishes in the mess hall). Carlyle is very drawn to these particular solders for a variety of reasons that emerge as the story develops. The three soldiers and Carlyle have extraordinarily different backgrounds in terms of race, class and sexual preference, which are the primary themes of Streamers, in addition to the specter of death. The characters are extremely well developed.
One of the most macabre moments in the play is when two older and very war-experienced Sergeants come into the barracks to “teach”, or perhaps to seemingly “torture,” the young men about the horrors of war and the endless facing of death. They suddenly begin to sing a rather horrifying “parody” of the song “Beautiful Dreamer,” in which they sing “beautiful streamer, open for me…” Here they are revealing the meaning of the play’s title: streamers are what someone will see when they look up and realize that their parachute has failed to open, and realize the inevitable: that they will experience a violent death once they hit the ground.
The acting was extremely impressive. While everyone did a very fine job, I was extremely impressed by Hale Appleman as Richie, who is making his New York debut.
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My recommendation:
Go see if you get a chance
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I saw this show with:
Alone
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Recommended for:
Seniors, Adults
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