[NEohioPAL] REVIEW: "Dear America..." in Canton

[Tom Wachunas]

Writes of Passage
By Tom Wachunas
    “Dear Bill, I came
back to this wall again to see and touch your name. William R. Stocks. And as I
do, I wonder if anyone ever stops to realize that next to your name, on this
black wall, is your mother’s heart…”  -
from a letter written by Mrs. Eleanor Wimbish, mother of SP/5 William R.
Stocks, 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry, 198th Light Infantry Brigade, American Division, who was killed in a helicopter crash
in Vietnam, February 13, 1969 – 
    It is important to
me to tell you that even as I begin this commentary, I’m struggling to avoid
sentimentalizing, sermonizing, or otherwise wearing my heart on my sleeve too
much (which I fear I’ve already done with this sentence). But if I break my
self-imposed rule here to never let you, the reader, sense my sweat and tears
over composing a critique, I don’t mind telling you that today I just don’t
give a rat’s derriere about journalistic form or etiquette.
    My drive home last
night (Veterans Day) from the opening performance of “Dear America: Letters
Home From Vietnam” at the Kathleen Howland Theatre was eerily like my blackouts
from darker days in another life, sans mind-altering substances. Yet I was
indeed altered.
     Not sure how I arrived home safely.  Can’t remember traffic lights or the route.
Only a flood of memories from 1968 to about 1971, some of which I’m not proud
about. The infamous draft lottery of 1970. Panic. Plans to flee to Canada. Fear
and loathing. The ‘Sturm und Drang’ of collegiate protests. The riots at my
alma mater, Ohio State University. The May 4 mayhem and tragedy at Kent State.
Heartbreaking conversations with bereaved parents and siblings of college chums
who never returned from the bloodied, smoldering jungles of Asia. Words and
faces that hadn’t crossed my mind with such jarring clarity for many years.
Altered. Artful theatre will do that sometimes.
    Phillip L. Robb
directed this production that he adapted for the stage from the book of the
same title.  First published in 1987, the
book was edited by Bernard Edelman, and was comprised of more than 200 letters
written to families and loved ones by men and women who served in Vietnam. HBO
produced an Emmy-winning documentary based on the book in 1988. Here,
approximately 70 of the letters were read in alternating fashion, with genuine,
often impassioned and startling sensitivity, by a solid six-member cast: Greg
Emanuelson, Robert C. Fockler, Jim Long, Denise Robb, Rod Lang, and Jacki
Dietz.
    No fictions here.
No ‘based-on-a-true-story’ speculations or saccharine dramatizations. No need
for costumes or sound effects. The projected images on a sheet at the back of
the stage, largely synchronized to echo content of the letters, are real
photographs of real people fighting, flying, running, resting, hiding, hurting,
dying, crying and yes, sometimes smiling. This is not so much war illustrated
as war illuminated. War told by writeous warriors, as it were, who wrote with
surprising eloquence of fear, loyalty, courage, love, confusion, anger,
longing, and pride with searing intensity. War not as a vague memory, but made
newly present through the dying art of letter-writing. And here, war read out
loud by real people with heart-breaking reverence for the living and the dead.
    There are too many
truly moving passages in this performance – shared equally among the cast -  to enumerate here. But two of them refuse to
stop rattling in my memory. In one, late in the second ‘act’, Rod Lang, with
steely, chilling determination in his voice, reads a letter from soldier
Gregory Lusco, published in 1970 by a newspaper in Massachusetts. It’s an
articulate but supremely blistering rant against the immoral, insensitive
divisiveness and misplaced political sensibilities in this country at the time
of the Kent State shootings - a soldier crying out for compassionate attention and
respect for those who sacrificed their lives in Vietnam. An equally
unforgettable moment (quoted at the beginning of this review) is the epilogue,
wherein Denise Robb, with glassy-eyed pathos, effectively becomes the mournful
mother who leaves letters to her son at the memorial where his name is etched.  
    Another memory during my drive home was of a
popular poster during the volatile, heady Hippie days of my youth that read, “What
if they gave a war and nobody came?” Now, while I’m sincerely grateful to have
witnessed last night’s powerful and relevant remembrance, more than ever I’m
thinking a better idea would be for us to forget how to do war altogether. To disappear
it from our lives. To alter our minds forever. Call it a benevolent blackout. 
   “Dear America:
Letters Home From Vietnam” performances November 12, 18, and 19 at 8 p.m  at the Kathleen Howland Theatre, located in
Second April Galerie, 324 Cleveland Avenue North, downtown Canton. Tickets
$10.00 for adults, $5 for students, senior citizens, and anyone with a public
library card. ALL VETERANS ADMITTED FREE. To order call (330) 451 – 0924,
or  www.secondapril.org
    For
other reviews and commentaries by Tom Wachunas on the performing and visual
arts in the greater Canton area, please visit his blog, ARTWACH, at  www.artwach.blogspot.com
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