By Carol Davis
SAN DIEGO–Two men play twenty-one characters in Amlin Gray’s How I Got That Story. No easy fete this. But war is hell and sometimes the absurdities of war need to be funneled into this type of environment where everything is turned upside down and the only way to relive it is through comedy; black comedy that is. At least that’s what this playwright did.
Brian Bielawski is a young reporter and Greg Watanabe is the Historical Event. Watanabe takes on the identity of all 21 characters (and sound effects). While Watanabe is somewhat of a fast change/personality artist, The Reporter Bielawski stays in character, but that character goes through a major metamorphosis before play’s end.
Both men gave bravura performances in Mo’olelo’s Yellow Face by David Henry Wang in 2010 and both men lend the same energy to this piece. Not coincidentally, artistic director, Seema Sueko has her expert hands in both productions.
The setting of our story is, well…the war torn land of Am-bo Land. (Read Vietnam) and the young reporter is reporting for his new job there working for TransPanGlobal Wire Service. This is definitely not the safest place to be right now, and recent events have shown us that war zones take no prisoners and as insulated as some look on TV (now) they are still in grave danger.
And yet, as sure as there is war, there are reporters dying to cover it. For our Reporter the western part of East Dubuque is where he has been for the last two years. If you add it all up right, and a lot goes on there, then you’ve got western East Dubuque, “but if you add up Am-bo Land, it’s everyplace”. “It’s it. It’s what the world is like”.
In 2005 Mo’olelo Performing Arts Company produced Shirley Lauro’s A Piece of My Heart”, another war story, of sorts. This story however, is told through the eyes of the brave women who served in the Vietnam War; an Army nurse, a Red Cross workers, an African-American career officer and a folk singer to name a few. Their war stories played out like a violin and, and as I recall, much was gleaned from their little known participation in this long and costly war that lasted over ten years (we had soldiers there from 1959 to 1973) and according to many, never solved a thing while thousands lost their lives.
In “Story”, it takes the Reporter a lifetime to move through his paces as he begins his trek from the office of the obnoxious Deputy Coordinator (Watanabe) to get his Press Pass and into the world of the war to ‘see’ for himself what war is really like. Along the way he encounters a monk setting himself on fire, drug crazed GI’s, guerilla fighters, women fighters, bar girls, and an assortment of all the characters one would expect to encounter in the landscape of a war-torn country.
I would like to say the play shed new light on my perspective of this war and that in some perverse way I found it to be that black comedy it promised, but frankly I did not. I saw too much of this played out on my TV over the years to be surprised by anything it had to say. Even though it zeroed in more toward comedy than tragedy, and as hard as it tried to be brutally funny, it was déjà vu all over again. Yet, while I was not enamored by “The Story” itself, I cannot say enough about the production values and two men who fearlessly brought it to us.
Greg Watanabe, while not a master of disguises is certainly a master of versatility and character impersonations. From Madame Ing to a street urchin to a Guerilla to an American photographer, to a civilian flight announcer to an Air Force pilot, to a nun and the list goes on, he’s Johnny on the spot, oft times changing characters by changing costume; putting on a hat, a wig, a dress, a pair of shoes or not, faster than the Reporter can move across the stage.
Bielawski, a brilliant actor in his own right adds his own bit of enthusiasm and energy to the part of Reporter as he arcs from the naïve perspective that he will be an impartial eye simply reporting on the war to one who is part of the cover up to the atrocities of war to one who abandons his job and tries to go native even going so far as to offer a proposal of marriage to a peasant girl to adopting a native child.
His journey continues as he meets up with every conceivable character (Watanabe) and over the course of time becoming the story itself, which takes him to the depths of despair, never seeing the forest for the trees. He is left with nothing to say and nowhere to go losing his soul, his sanity and his country. Pretty chilling, even in this world of absurdities. Bielawski works very hard to pull this off and does it well.
David E. Weiner’s set has a multilayered camouflaged curtain look with openings and wings for entrances and exits. On the front of the set a collage of newspaper headlines is plastered along the front skirt as well as in the upper part of the back stage walls that gets hit with a spotlight (Stephen Terry) when the scene is about to change. George Yé’s sound design works fine with Watanabe’s voice and sounds.
And finally, in a gripping scene toward the end of the play when the Reporter, now a prisoner of war at some outpost is ready to be released to TransGlobal after a rebel guerrilla informs him they are willing to pay a ransom of $10,000.00, the Reporter asks how soon he will know when the money has arrived. (G) “Soon. Ten days”. (R) “That’s not soon”. (G)“This war has lasted all my life. Ten days is soon”.
See you at the theatre.
Dates: Through March 18th
Organization: Mo’Olelo at The 10th Avenue Theatre
Phone: 619-342-7395
Production Type: Satire
Where: 930 10th Ave. Downtown, San Diego
Ticket Prices: $22.00-$30.00
Web: moolelo.net
Venue: 10th Avenue Theatre
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Davis is a San Diego-based theatre critic. She may be contacted at carol.davis@sdjewishworld.com