Maybe I'm the wrong person to review this play.
I did accept the Rapscallions' invitation to see it, and I rearranged my schedule before departing Austin so as to get there for the opening. I empathized immediately with the leads Scot Friedman and Val Frazee as they explored for us the intimate pain for a married couple of his arbitrary abduction in mid-80s Beirut.
That core story is powerful because of its simplicity: abrupt separation, lives torn apart, a forced interiorization of loss and the hallucinatory escape into memories and wishes.
Blessing's framework for that tearing story shows tawdry incomprehension of the realities of the time. He seeks to complement the interior story with an exterior story, a sort of j'accuse, portraying with contempt the imagined actions and attitudes both of the U.S. government and of the U.S. press. He presents us a bloodless State Department official who has been assigned the task of keeping the wife Lainie quiet and compliant, and he presents us with a bloodhound reporter convinced that he can bust this story wide open by befriending and betraying Lainie.
As the action went forward and the auxiliary characters pressed Lainie and lied to her, I felt a growing distaste, almost a nausea, and my systems began to shut down. Because I had been there.Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .
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