Playwright Nicholas Kazan loosely bases his new drama, “A
Good Soldier,” on both Sophocles’
“Antigone” and on contemporary events in Iraq. But in
the program notes, Kazan also warns his audience that “no
attempt has been made to be faithful to either.”
Kazan accurately assesses his work. Though “A Good
Soldier” depicts a few powerful moments, its weaknesses
mainly lie in arbitrary portrayals of its subjects that deviate too
far from reality to remain potent to the audience.
“A Good Soldier” held its world premiere at the
Odyssey Theatre in West Los Angeles and will run every weekend
through Aug. 7. It focuses on the experience of a soldier named
Annie, who witnesses an unspeakable brutality within the military
and tries to compensate for it by secretly aiding an Iraqi
family.
Initially, Kazan focuses on an intriguing question, which
correlates with the basic premise of “Antigone”: Is our
duty to our country greater or less than our duty to ourselves?
Unfortunately, Kazan expresses a biased view of the situation in
Iraq, which is his prerogative as a playwright, but which also
hinders the work from examining the full range of the issue’s
complexities.
In Kazan’s world, soldiers talk back to their superiors,
engaging in full-scale riots against military orders, and authority
figures promote corruption and secrecy over honesty and integrity.
It is puzzling to try and comprehend why some of these soldiers
ever decided to serve their country in the first place.
Annie, performed by Kaitlin Doubleday, seems poised to be the
play’s Antigone figure, but she lacks the strength of
Antigone’s character. Initially, Annie comes across as
confused, misguided and fragile only to morph a scene later into a
belligerent, combative idealist. While the powerful strength of
Antigone immediately captures the sympathy of her audience,
Annie’s jarring inconsistencies leave us confused, not
knowing whether to take her seriously or, in the words of General
Creedon, to recognize her as “fanatical” and
“high on her own ideas.”
Throughout the play, Annie’s adversary, General Creedon,
demonstrates his sexist attitudes, arguing that men are the logical
sex and women are more moral. Yet instead of proving him wrong,
Annie frequently allows herself to succumb to those very
stereotypes.
The rest of the cast fares better. Michael Anderson Brown
portrays Annie’s fiance Hammond sympathetically, even though
he seems out of place in the military. But it is Clancy
Brown’s performance as General Creedon that truly takes the
play to a higher level. He takes his one-note character and makes
him far more complex and nuanced than Kazan may have originally
intended. With his extensive theater and film experience, Brown
brings weight and authority to “A Good Soldier.”
“A Good Soldier” showcases some significant
ingenuity. Set designer Victoria Profitt’s use of a video
screen to project images that Annie snaps with her digital camera
is very clever and unique. The intimacy of the roughly 100-seat
Odyssey Theatre tremendously aids the drama’s immediacy.
Though Kazan’s final question to the audience ““ who
is the enemy? ““ has become cliche, it does reflect the fact
that our world’s issues can no longer be seen as black and
white. They are difficult to resolve and far more complex than many
people realize. Ultimately, they’re more complex than what
appears onstage in “A Good Soldier.”
-Natalie Tate