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Shows Worth Seeing:
Lidless
By Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig
Walkerspace
46 Walker St.
Box office: (866) 811-4111
Lidless, the professional debut of playwright Frances
Ya-Chu Cowhig, might be described as an All My Sons for
the War on Terrorism era. No defective airplane parts here, but
the work is a comparably hard-hitting allegory about fateful moral
compromise by an otherwise upright and respectable American trying
to benefit personally from a war. In fact, it veers toward the
sentimental and hortatory in the manner of Arthur Miller, though
one quickly forgives it for that (as with Miller) because the
characters are so appealing and seductively honest and the story
is so sharp and compelling. An interrogator at Guantanamo—a
woman trying to use the army to climb out of a social rut—receives
an intelligence memo in 2004 suggesting that the best way to break
a pious Muslim prisoner is via sexually charged “invasion”
of his personal space. She acts on this hint a bit too enthusiastically,
and fifteen years later the dying victim tracks her down and confronts
her. That’s the setup.
What keeps the obvious contrivances of the story from irritating
is the way Cowhig sensitively examines the psychological comeuppance
of the initiating act of torture, teasing out its ramifications
further than you think they will go, for the perpetrator, the
victim, and also for both their families. The soldier’s
husband and adolescent daughter as well as the victim’s
grown daughter become essential players in surprising ways. There
are still moments of fleeting platitude when the ramifications
are a bit too bluntly explained, but Cowhig keeps such a firm
hand on the action’s emotional modulation that it nevertheless
flies along at a terrific clip. The five-member cast performs
all the juicy roles with great discernment and conviction, and
director Tea Alagic keeps the action gripping. Special kudos to
set designer Scott Bradley for the inspiration of that single
swath of out-of-the-way red paint on a plain, dirty white set.
