War Fever

In Conflict

If emotion had color, the stage would’ve looked like a rainbow throughout the show; the audience would’ve been a sea of all different hues. Director Douglas Wager turns Yvonne Latty’s book of inteviews with Iraq War vets into something that truly touches the heart.

The on stage production does not vary from its textual counterpart, but Wager throws in some tidbits of what I would like to call, war movie scenes. March! Salute! Wheel the armchair around the stage! These were fine additions to a even finer story. Latty finds and interviews members of the National Guard, the Navy, and the Army; each member speak of their experiences over on the other side of the Atlantic. Most suffer from postwar trauma. The actors on stage protray each and every soldier with flawless ability, from facial expressions to tone of voice. The details, things like “chopping the legs off” of wheelchair bound soldiers, and the movie clips meant to support the stage play invigorate and highlight the pangs of the story being told. The story in itself is not Disney material – there is no happily ever after ending. The interviewees elaborate on the stories we read or hear about how soldiers lose their limbs, their lives, and even their souls over in Iraq.

The night I was there, in a talkback offered at the end of the play, Yvonne mentioned how she tried to keep balance in the book in terms of how each soldier felt about the war. Am I pro-Iraq? Was I pro-Iraq? Very intimate questions in the time of war, especially for the soldiers. Despite this effort, the play comes off very strongly as anti-war. The things you see and hear on stage have no choice but to rob you of all your support for the war (assuming you had some to start with) – the baby crushed by a squad of tanks makes it so.