Lisa Loomer鈥檚 Roe and Qui Nguyen鈥檚 Vietgone surmount a similar challenge: how to bring dramatic form to a sprawling, complicated decade of American History. The 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade legalized abortion and triggered resistance that reverberates to this day. The fall of Saigon in 1975 after over a decade of brutal conflict in Southeast Asia drove waves of refugees to the United States. To wrest the multiple, often contradictory human truths from these events, Loomer and Nguyen have developed sharply different approaches to time.
Premiering in the Bowmertheatre, the eighth commission in the OSF鈥檚 American Revolutions project, Roe, moves steadily forward through the first meeting of Norma McCorvey (Sara Bruner), a socially marginal, emotionally damaged young woman in search of an abortion, and Sarah Weddington (Sarah Jane Agnew), already visualizing a niche in history as the youngest attorney to argue a case before the Supreme Court. 鈥淭he law takes time,鈥� Weddington warns McCorvey, as the latter鈥檚 delivery date approaches, and the play鈥檚 structure traces the law鈥檚 chronology in often granular detail. Beyond the actual ruling, the shifts in political climate will later stage such counter-measures as Operation Rescue in 1990鈥檚 and Norma鈥檚 ultimate conversion to Christian fundamentalism.
Do not, however, brace for docudrama. Loomer is gifted with the ability to dig into the facts of a social issue and unearth the human comedy. Meanwhile, director Bill Rauch deploys his genius for colliding frames. History in Roe unfolds within a presentational world: characters comment on the action and quote from their own obituaries. Sarah has written a book about Roe; Norma, it turns out, has published two factually inconsistent memoirs. Frequent debates interrupt the record of the past as each tries retrospectively to control it. Anti-choice Rev. Flip Benham delivers an inspirational speech; Norma, on the sidelines, presses the mute on her remote, leaving him to flap his mouth soundlessly. Few facts in this story are left standing unqualified. The result is a riveting, poignant, quixotic panorama of human impulse and aspiration.
Bruner鈥檚 Norma is volatile, needy, skidding around in a story she鈥檚 making up and revising on the fly. Agnew鈥檚 Sarah is pitch-perfect in her opposition of aloof intellect to Norma鈥檚 survival instinct, her poise to Norma鈥檚 pathos. The remaining twenty-six characters are played with brilliant differentiation by ten actors, supported by designer Raquel Barreto鈥檚 gift for suiting costume to personality and decade.
Playwright Nguyen labels Vietgone a sex comedy about the meeting and courtship of Quang and Tong, his parents--a story about love, not war. Don鈥檛 believe him. The Thomas Theatre reverberates with the explosive, disruptive energy of the Vietnam War in every scene. Besides tearing the lives of Qui鈥檚 parents apart, thus launching the action, it shreds stylistic decorum and dislocates time. Mirroring, then, war鈥檚 disorienting effects, the play begins outside a camp in Arkansas for Vietnamese refugees, then lurches into the past, to shuttle among timeframes and locations before finally leaping forty years to resolve itself today.
Quang (James Ryen) and Tong (Jeena Yi) want to 鈥渕ake it home,鈥� but the same words can express opposite goals. For Quang, a helicopter pilot in the South Vietnamese army, 鈥渉ome鈥� is Saigon and the wife and children he was forced to leave behind. For proto-feminist Tong, 鈥渋t鈥� is the United States, where she鈥檚 intent on belonging. The emergency airlift offered her flight from an impending and oppressive Vietnamese marriage, even if she was stuck with bringing her nagging mother Huong (Amy Kim Waschke) along.
The Thomas Theatre reverberates with the explosive, disruptive energy of the Vietnam War in every scene.
Scene One finds Quang and his war buddy Nhan (Will Dao) on a motorcycle odyssey from Arkansas to California, where Quang plans to hop a flight back to Vietnam. Certain flashbacks introduce Quang鈥檚 worried wife, Tong鈥檚 clingy fianc茅, and her beloved kid brother, none of whom made it out of Saigon. Another catches Tong in the grips of a nightmare revealing her brother鈥檚 violent death. Afterward, to numb the pain, she heats up her casual flirtation with Quang and proposes sex. His enthusiastic acceptance ends the first act.
The tangled chronology of Act Two seems designed to undercut any promise in the union of Quang and Tong. Tong has attracted an American, Bobby, a sentimental romantic like her abandoned fianc茅. Though Quang defeats Bobby in a Battle of Boomboxes, a previous scene reminds us that Quang is careening down the road to California leaving Tong behind, determined like Odysseus, to reach home. It will take exquisite insights on the part of Nhan and Huong to reverse the lovers鈥� diverging trajectories in the nick of time.
A last, breath-taking chronological leap lands Vietgone in the 21st century, with the playwright-son interviewing an aged Quang, transformed from the grinning adventurer of the past to a waggish old man. The son鈥檚 inquiries focus on the Vietnam War; the father鈥檚 answers recall pleasure at the birth of his son. Dragged finally from the personal to the political, Quang flares into an angry monologue on the theme that鈥檚 been flickering throughout the play鈥攖he acute difference between the Vietnamese perspective on the war and those offered by American history. It was a civil war, Quang insists, not something 鈥渢o choose or not choose to be in.鈥� Nor can he ever regard it as a mistake.
Directed with in-your-face energy by May Adrales, Vietgone defies easy classification. Sex, and love, and friendship unfold against a rambunctious mash-up of song (rap) and dance (ninja fighting and disco). Meanwhile, war serves as a sort of antagonist for the survivors who have landed in the States. Dealing with the losses it has inflicted deepens the love and loyalty among them and pushes them to wisdom.
Molly Tinsley taught literature and creative writing at the U. S. Naval Academy for twenty years. Her latest book is a middle-grade fantasy adventure, Behind the Waterfall (www.fuzepublishing.com)
