Playwright Ginger Lazarus writes with an eye
trained on burning contemporary issues. This time out she visits whistle
blowing and military injustice. You can’t watch the nightly news without
hearing references to information leaks from Assange or Manning or Snowden… and
just as often you hear horrifying stories about high rates of suicide among
returning vets… or the culture of violence in the military, especially against
women. Congress, if it gets its act together about the fiscal cliff, has vowed
to hold hearings about the prevalence of rape in the military and the commanders
who would rather punish the victims and not the perpetrators.
What makes BURNING (at the Boston
Playwrights’ Theatre through Oct. 20th) unique is what Lazarus hangs
her “burning” issues on, namely Rostand’s classic tale of unrequited,
sublimated, substituted love, Cyrano de Bergerac. The present day “Cy”
(Mal Malme), having been booted out of the army for violating “don’t ask/don’t
tell,” now runs a little café/general store near the base where she spars with
the military, reporting misdeeds on her blog. As you might imagine, this really
ticks off her former superiors.
It burns her that she had to give up a
successful career. The other burning matter is the flame she carries for a
waitress/painter (Jessica Webb) who has just disclosed to the ex-sergeant that
she has fallen for a young soldier (Ian Michaels). Before you can say “Mon
Dieu,” the inarticulate fellow shows up at the café (David Miller’s clever,
long stretch of a set) and begs Cy for help in wooing fair lady, just as he
does in the original. Cy then substitutes her feelings for his in emails which
create “the most human connection” Rose has ever felt.
Lazarus continues the parallels with
Rostand’s story but she has an uphill battle to convince us that Rose isn’t hip
enough to see what’s going on. Letters, we can accept, but the rest is
difficult to swallow if we’re to believe what a smart, charismatic woman Cy
tells us she is. (Loyalty-or the lack thereof becomes a problem, too, later on
in a confrontation between the soldier and Cy.)
Lazarus has a lovely, humorous touch, even
when the story becomes deadly serious. Director Steven Bogart and company
handle the balance with aplomb. Lazarus gives a minor character (Zachary
Clarence) a major dilemma when he is beaten up by gay-bashing soldiers. He has
to decide whether or not to press charges or whether even to stay in town,
making all the characters’ choices part of the whole.
The villain of the piece is Cy’s former
executive officer, who has now become commandant of the base, partly because Cy
publicized his predecessor’s indiscretions. Life imitated art in the matter of
substitutions at the BPT when Alexander Cook stepped in for Steven Barkhimer,
who was hospitalized hours earlier. Cook not only mastered the lines at a
moment’s notice, he presented a fully rounded, fully frightening nemesis for
Cy, a character we could hang Lazarus’ disturbing ending on.
