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Prisoners of War
by Steve Luber
Not Yet Diagnosed (Nervous) 1918 reviewed April 9, 2005
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| George Demas, Brian Barnhart, Ian Tooley |
| Photo Credit:Dixie Sheridan |
| "If the war was over then all the dead had been buried and all the prisoners had been released. Why shouldn't he be released too?" wonders the title character of Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun. While fighting for America in World War I, a shell blows off Johnny's arms, legs, and face, and robs him of his vision, hearing, smell, and taste. The novel takes place in his consciousness, blurring the line between dream and reality, as Johnny struggles to communicate with a world that has virtually forgotten him.
Trumbo's tragic figure could be considered a metaphor for the condition known as shell shock, where soldiers returning from battle at that time had immobilizing bouts of panic, hallucinations, or even complete catatonia. This is the strange and mysterious subject matter that the Axis Company explores in the brilliant Not Yet Diagnosed (Nervous) 1918. In it, a group of soldiers attempt to figure out where they are, why they're there, and how to return home or to the front. Despite a vague familiarity with one another and their setting, no one seems to know exactly how he arrived.
The impressively realistic set design immediately transports the audience to a WWI bunker, rife with gas masks, cameras, and primitive communication equipment, and accented with a number of tunnels that lead to nowhere in particular. The sound (by Steve Fontaine) is limited to paranoia-inducing whispers of people and places, leading us to believe that all we need to do to escape is open our eyes.
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| George Demas, Brian Barnhart, Ian Tooley |
| Photo Credit:Dixie Sheridan |
| The Axis Company members all put on strong performances as usual, with a particularly powerful showing by Margo Passalaqua, whose role is a not-quite-there presence. Passalaqua's androgyny not only makes her appear young enough to have fought in WWI but also lends her a haunting and innocent quality as she slips in and out of roles as a soldier and characters from lives once upon a time. No one else really recognizes her presence in the group, but she is almost constantly there, feeding the soldiers their lines (and sometimes completing them), which she does with a wonderful mixture of anger and melancholy.
Indeed, what makes Not Yet Diagnosed stand out from previous Axis productions is its arresting script. While it takes almost the exact same theme as last year's Hospital—with a Beckettian landscape from which a soldier simply wants to return home—the current production shows a great amount of sophistication and evolution. The confusion has now been heightened, not only for the characters but the audience as well. Is this one soldier's hallucinatory landscape? A collective receptacle for lost minds? Is it a real bunker, where affected soldiers have simply been left behind?
For the soldiers' part, they reveal some of the horrors wreaked upon them, most notably their dehumanization. The characters, though distinguishable by face, begin to confuse each other's names and where they've been, and even say the same lines simultaneously. They are interchangeable, lost in space and in collective identity.
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| Jim Sterling, Marc Palmieri, David Crabb, Margo Passalaqua |
| Photo Credit:Dixie Sheridan |
| Brian Barnhart's turn as the company's photographer makes a point of how WWI was the first truly documented war, but it also evokes thousands of images of anonymous soldiers left behind on the battlefield or unidentified upon their return. The performers try to mask their disorientation with determination, duty, and sometimes hope, but the confusion always lingers on their faces.
What is most heartbreaking, however, is the show's implications for how American society treats the soldiers who have been all but sacrificed in war. In WWI, it was shell shock; in Vietnam, mentally and physically disabled soldiers were tossed out on the streets; and we're still trying to figure out the current Gulf War Syndrome that cripples soldiers returning from the Middle East. We don't treat these men and women like heroes. We treat them like outcasts, as if they were too weak to handle the challenges they faced. We leave them alone, isolated, like the characters in this WWI bunker. We like to keep them there.
As Trumbo writes (in stream of consciousness style), "To fight that war they would need men and if men saw the future they wouldn't fight. So they were masking the future they were keeping the future a soft quiet deadly secret."
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Axis Theater
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Category: Experimental
Written by: Axis Company
Directed by: Randy Sharp
Produced by: Axis Company
Opened: March 31, 2005
Closed: May 21, 2005
Running Time: 50 minutes
Theater: Axis Theater
Address: 1 Sheridan Square
New York, NY 10014
Yahoo! Maps Directions
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Tickets: $20.00
$10 for Seniors/Students
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Creative Team
Conceived, written, and produced by: Axis Company
Executive Producer: Jeffrey Resnick
Directed by: Randy Sharp
Production Designer: Kate Aronsson-Brown
Lighting Designer: David Zeffren
Sound Designer: Steve Fontaine
Assistant Lighting Designer: Amy Harper
Film/DV by: Dan Hersey
Cast
Margo Passalaqua as Passalaqua
Ian Tooley as Tooley
George Demas as Demas
David Crabb as Crabb
Brian Barnhart as Barnhart
Marc Palmieri as Mark
Jim Sterling as Sterling
Laurie Kilmartin and David Balutanski in the film
Crew
Production Stage Manager: Jared Abramson
Assistant Stage Manager: Kate Aronsson-Brown
Assistant Camera: Chano Cabiya
Set Construction: John Widger, Josh Drew, Andy Smith, Brandon Taylor, Jason Grunwald, Evan Gregg
Welding: Chris Bundy
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