Survived

In In the Valley of Elah, Tommy Lee Jones plays a father struggling to find a reason for the death of a son whose life has been tragically shattered by his service in Iraq. The story, though eerily undramatic in performance, was gut-wrenching.

Now Tom Burmester of the Los Angeles Theater Ensemble gives another view of a war death in Survived, part of his War Cycle, in which he explores  the dramatic effect of a soldier’s death on the family at home: how mother, father, brother, widow each  has a life distorted by the tragedy…or perhaps “tragedy” is not the right world. The boy volunteered, and this was war. Terrible loss, yes, but as a soldier in the service of his country.

This is the other side of the “war” coin. Death itself is the issue. The War Cycle is one of a series of plays exploring the death of soldiers in battle.  Here is the death of a young soldier fighting for his just cause, the pain of loss to each member of the family and a personal tragedy of the buddy-soldier who has come to visit the grieving family.

The story is told in 13 short scenes played on a starkly bare stage with a few pieces of furniture pushed on and off.  The effect of the short scenes is something like a shattered mirror, each chard reflecting a different piece of the whole story.

In her introductory notes, director Danika Sudik explains that she comes from a “war” family. She understands commitment to service, the war is real, the boy was a patriot doing his duty…so that the story rather concerns the effect of loss and the unique way that each of the survivors reacts to the loss and searches for a way to survive.

The play opens and closes with the same short scene — two soldiers with the assignment of breaking the terrible news to the family: one soldier keen on protocol, the other aware of the terrible wrench this news will bring to the family.

The father seems at first oddly untouched, simply using his time in building an addition to house his son’s widow, without acknowledging that the young widow wants to pull away and rebuild a life of her own. The deeply grieving brother is upset by the intrusion of a soldier who has come to bring condolences. This odd soldier was at the side of his buddy when he died, a sort of “competing brother.”

A young widow, only married a year, needs the physical comfort of love and makes a relationhip with a new guy…what a shock to the mother who wants her daughter-in-law to be “faithful.” The father’s grief takes the form of building another room to the house — his way of holding on to the memory of his lost son. And what is the real reason for the war buddy’s visit? Bit by bit, the  “keeping a grip on reality” slips away, and the cool surface becomes highly charged with the widow’s need to rebuild a life and the buddy’s deep guilt which brings him barging into a family grief to which he does not truly belong.

The Powerhouse Theater in Santa Monica was, in fact, an old powerhouse and makes a small and intimate theater — the audience drawn closely in to the dramatic action.

Survived played to an enthusiastic ending-on-its-feet audience.  Of special mention were the performances Jonathan Redding as the buddy-soldier, Albert Meijet as the widow’s boyfriend and Ariel Pappas as the brother.