The Vietnamization of New Jersey
Oct. 29th, 2004 12:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidLast weekend I saw The Vietnamization of New Jersey (Christopher Durang), at the Loeb Ex. It's a wacky play, a little bit dated, but over-the-top in bizarre moments.
Ozzie Ann and Harry live with their screwed-up teen-aged son Et and the maid Hazel. Older son Davey is off fighting in Vietnam. He returns, blinded, with a Vietnamese wife... who's actually Irish, and from upstate New York. The family deals with Davey's anti-war stance, falling when the father loses his job and kills himself, rallying again, sort of, when Harry's militant brother Larry appears.
I enjoyed the show, though at times it was too loud, too farcical. Hazel the black maid was wonderfully played by a large white man (it's apparently written to be a man playing the role), and she turned out to be the most central character, a more reality-based foil to the rest of the insane family. She also gave a number of 'Bicentennial Moments', and a stirring reading of some song lyrics. She was the one to hold it all together, sticking with them even though Ozzie Ann always yelled at her as she tried to hold onto her image of a proper housewife.
This was not a neat play. Corn flakes, rice, and water ended up on stage. I thought we were herded out during intermission so they could clean the set, but it was to rearrange the seating to have some of the audience on stage. When Larry appeared, he bullied all the audience who'd sat there to move their chairs back into the original audience space, which felt a bit more interactive then I'd anticipated. I was glad not to have to move.
In the end, I didn't feel much sympathy for either approach to the war, the war-haters who weren't able to see how things had changed, or the militants. Neither seemed to be in a wholly reality-based situation. Fascinating, even so.
Ozzie Ann and Harry live with their screwed-up teen-aged son Et and the maid Hazel. Older son Davey is off fighting in Vietnam. He returns, blinded, with a Vietnamese wife... who's actually Irish, and from upstate New York. The family deals with Davey's anti-war stance, falling when the father loses his job and kills himself, rallying again, sort of, when Harry's militant brother Larry appears.
I enjoyed the show, though at times it was too loud, too farcical. Hazel the black maid was wonderfully played by a large white man (it's apparently written to be a man playing the role), and she turned out to be the most central character, a more reality-based foil to the rest of the insane family. She also gave a number of 'Bicentennial Moments', and a stirring reading of some song lyrics. She was the one to hold it all together, sticking with them even though Ozzie Ann always yelled at her as she tried to hold onto her image of a proper housewife.
This was not a neat play. Corn flakes, rice, and water ended up on stage. I thought we were herded out during intermission so they could clean the set, but it was to rearrange the seating to have some of the audience on stage. When Larry appeared, he bullied all the audience who'd sat there to move their chairs back into the original audience space, which felt a bit more interactive then I'd anticipated. I was glad not to have to move.
In the end, I didn't feel much sympathy for either approach to the war, the war-haters who weren't able to see how things had changed, or the militants. Neither seemed to be in a wholly reality-based situation. Fascinating, even so.