The Burning House Group
Review: "Gulf War"
'Gulf War' power brought out by
acting, direction
Peter Vaughan, Staff Writer. Star Tribune .
Minneapolis, Minn.:
Sep 07, 1996 . pg. 03.E
Joyce Carol Oates' "Gulf
War" is an intriguing one-act
exploration of personal and
national emptiness that combines humor, theatrical images and
a touch of mystery to
make its considerable impact.
Oates is best known as a novelist
and short-story writer, but if Burning House Group's
taut and skilled staging of "Gulf War" is representative,
she has a future in playwriting as
well.
The Gulf War in question is not this month's variation
but the Bush-Hussein
confrontation in 1991, which quickly replaced sitcoms, police
dramas and talk shows as
the favored fare for America's television-obsessed masses.
In Oates' play, the war is the backdrop for other wars played
out over the deep gulfs of
acrimony, distrust, anger and loneliness that color a couple
of contemporary marriages.
Stuart and Nicole Bell are prototypical
narcissistic yuppies, gauging every action and reaction by
what it will bring them in terms of social or career enhancement.
Stuart's
best friend is his mirror. Nicole is beginning to taste the
emptiness and has turned to
drink and depressive behavior.
They have a new house and are
preparing to entertain one of Stuart's workmates and
his wife. Things begin to go wrong when an aging corporate
drone and his voluble
younger wife show up, when a far more successful colleague
and his wife had been
anticipated.
The encounter between up-and-coming vapidity and
its declining cousin has echoes of Edward Albee's "Who's
Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and
is played out in the clipped,
pause-filled, presentational style associated with Harold Pinter.
It is this touch of the
absurd, mixed with suggestions of menace, that gives the Burning
House staging its
power and allure.
Director Matt Guidry has found just the right
cool, detached style to bring Oates'
mordant tale to life. The characters are cold, emotionally
rigid creatures whose rare
bursts of honesty and pain race across the stage with flaming,
persuasive power.
Guidry orchestrates this social and personal study with the
aid of a fine cast composed
of Noel Raymond and Randal Berger as the hosts and Heidi Hunter
Batz and Allen
Baker as the guests.
Raymond is the very picture of the pain
that emptiness brings. Berger seethes with the shield of self-importance
that up-and-comers like Stuart bring to their marriages and
careers. Batz provides most of the energy with a vibrant portrait
of a corporate wife who
realizes she is on the wrong boat but can't disembark. Baker
is wonderful as the addled,
angry and slippery company man who has neither core nor heart. |
