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Nov. 13--In Quiara Alegria Hudes' "Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue," the battlefields of the war in Iraq -- the likes of Fallujah or Kirkuk -- take their place in the psychic history of modern American warfare, alongside the nomenclature of Vietnam or Korea. This feels premature.
Certainly, one can appreciate where the playwright is going. "Elliot," currently in co-production by the Rivendell Theatre Ensemble and Teatro Vista as part of the Steppenwolf Theatre's visiting company initiative, is an 80-minute play about three successive generations of a Puerto Rican family, all of whom headed off to war -- Grandpop (Gustavo Mellado) to Korea, Pops (Eddie Torres) to Vietnam, then Elliot (Juan F. Villa) to Iraq.
Escapism
For all three men, going to war is a way, perhaps their only way, of escaping poverty. Each experience terrible trauma leavened, paradoxically, by intensely intimate friendships. And all three men experience a dislocation from the stated purpose of the war. They're not politicians or avowed freedom fighters. Like most soldiers, they have their own war narrative and its dominant concerns are as necessarily personal as they are militaristic.
Hudes' point here is that war is war and soldiers are soldiers regardless of the geographic location or which generation is doing the fighting. Indeed, "Elliot" actually is structured like a Bach fugue. One voice states the theme, moving to contrapuntal accompaniment as another voice takes over, and then a third. Ultimately, you have three narrative threads forming a larger thematic whole.
Hudes is a composer as well as a playwright and "Elliot" is most certainly a well-crafted, lyrical piece of writing with a good deal of formative interest and a skilled juxtaposition of epic matters with the little stuff that informs our everyday. But even though the play deals with such primal matters as sex and death, it's also a rather cold work that's not especially dramatic. It's determined to remain in a minor, glancing key --no heartfelt symphony this -- and it often feels as if form is triumphing over point of view. And then there's the troubling matter of fusing two completed wars with one very much in progress, a disparity that the playwright never adequately addresses.
Some spark
Lisa Portes' production tries for a middle ground between the musicality of the work (emphasized here by extensive and sometimes deadening underscoring) and its latent humanity. The piece has some spark, most especially in Villa's funny, humanistic depiction of Elliot, the youngest of the three generations of soldiers. And as Ginny, the woman of the story (Juan's mother and Pops' Vietnam nurse), Meighan Gerachis offers a rich performance rooted in emotional complexity.
But the show is hardly a riveting affair. Some moments are well-crafted, but the overall stakes seem curiously low and the conception experimental rather than experiential. It feels as if we're listening to a recital in a concert hall instead of arriving at some far-away battlefield, and then fighting on behalf of an entire generation.
"Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue"
When: Through Dec. 10
Where: Steppenwolf Garage Theatre, 1624 N. Halsted St.
Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes
Tickets: $20-22 at 312-335-1650.
cjones5@tribune.com
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Copyright (c) 2006, Chicago Tribune
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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