REVIEW>Eleven-Zulu in Thunder Bay

[David Akin]

This review appeared under my byline in The Chronicle-Journal on Jan. 12,
1996. The Way, Way OFf-Broadway Players is a recently established amateur group.
 
REVIEW of Eleven-Zulu. By Sean Clark. Directed by Jim Hobson. Sets by Jim
Hobson. Lights by Jim Chalmers-Gow. The Way, Way, Off-Broadway Players. At
Magnus Theatre Jan 10-13, 1996.
 
In its brief existence The Way, Way Off-Broadway Players have demonstrated a
commitment to challenging, interesting, and intelligent theatre.
Their first production last fall was The Zoo Story, and, chestnut as it is,
their's was a smart, crisply played version of Edward Albee's American
classic. Since then, the group has been working on Canadian
playwright Judith Thompson's Lion in the Streets. And in June, the group
plans to produce Sam Shepard's Fool For Love.
But this week, it is producing Sean Clark's Eleven-Zulu at Magnus Theatre  -
a work
of marginal value to Canadian audiences in the 1990s performed, by this
otherwise
thoughtful group, as a shameless and frequently distasteful tribute to
puerile, male
GI Joe war fantasies.
Clark's script is  little more than a dull, fractured murder mystery that
tries to pass
itself off as art by using a confusing series of flashbacks and imagined
characters.
As the lights dim to begin this play, it is 1971 in Vietnam and and two American
soldiers are lolling about the stage smoking pot. They are part of an eight-man
platoon guarding a piece of broken-down equipment in enemy territory. Late
in the
first act, we discover that one of the men has been killed by what looks
like a bullet
fired by one of the men in the platoon. The Vietnamese then booby-trapped
the dead
man's body and when another platoon member comes to help, he, too, is killed.
Once, perhaps when it was performed for American audiences while Vietnam was
still a hot scar on that nation's conscience, Eleven-Zulu might have had
something to
say about war. Now, though, in its current incarnation, it is as dated and
ugly as the
tie-dyed top one of the characters wears.
At its best, this production of Eleven-Zulu is poorly conceived hollow
mythology; at
its worst it is macho jingoism.
Director Jim Hobson has his male characters - who are all handsome, muscular
men - swagger about the stage displaying firm biceps while they chomp on
cigarettes and brandish automatic weapons. They look like little boys
playing guns in
the backyard.
To make this male romance complete, all the women in the play exist only in
relation
to the men. None of the women - and there are six of them - ever speak to one
another. They relate only through the men and for them. They are variously
mothers,
girlfriends, wives, and, notably, a centrefold fantasy.
Could no one in this intelligent group see the irony of a scantily clad
women fondling
a huge rifle between her legs? If they did, no one played it that way.
Instead, some
strong performances by many of the women in the cast are wasted because they
strive for earnest understanding where there is none to be had.
David Akin                      jdakin at foxnet.net
Staff Reporter                  VOX (807)343-6200
The Chronicle-Journal           FAX (807) 343-9409
Thunder Bay, Ontario            CANADA