EMBEDDED. To 23 October.

London

EMBEDDED
by Tim Robbins

Riverside Studios (Studio 2) To 23 October 2004
Tue-Fri 7.45pm Sat 6pm & 8.45pm Sun 6pm Mat Thu 3.30pm
Runs 1hr 35min No interval

TICKETS: 020 8237 1111
www.riversidestudios.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 12 September

Attack on the War is strongest when evoking sympathy for individuals.Its lurid flyer (a wild politician, hands in ears, looking down at little soldiers) suggests political satire, but it's the realistic individuals who give life to Tim Robbins' play about Americans in Iraq, beginning at the quiet opening where three military personnel say goodbye to partners or family. The posse of masked and caricatured politicos seen recurrently thereafter contrast these people whose stories thread through the action.

Then there are the embedded' journalists, travelling with the army but subject to intimidation and censorship. Whether or not the US press crops.' finest actually had to shout out Sir, I'm a maggot journalist, sir' to an army officer, it makes the point. As does a momentary view of the reporters' internal hierarchy.

Once embedded, no journo's allowed a moral reveille. This point reaches back to the play's main exposee. Many movers in the Iraq invasion were students of mid-century Chicago academic Leo Strauss. Behind Orwell's back, Strauss apparently taught a non-Marxist Newspeak, allowing elites to mislead an ignorant populace.

The political cabal, coming to unanimous sexual climax while invoking Strauss (feeble satire of a power elite who defy exaggeration), also provide less interest than the combination of war moves with film footage of earlier military action and innocent whirling energy; American youth dancing through the century.

And, showing The Actors' Gang at their best on Richard Hoover's bare stage, there's the lightly anonymised Private Jen Jen Ryan, wounded then saved from death by a courageous Iraqui doctor (the only non-American seen - briefly in low-intensity lighting). Literally embedded, rescued by US soldiers blasting through unlocked hospital doors, she sticks to her story of the doctor's courage as the media poison public opinion against him.

It's the tragedy too of her parents, played with quiet authority, who cannot accept their daughter's account. I was there she insists but the father who started out apologising he didn't earn enough to send her to university and avoid enlistment ends up in disbelief.

That, and the trauma of a soldier who killed innocent citizens and won't be calmed by official approval, give Embedded its sharp edges.

Sarge/Cove: Brian Finney
Maryanne/Woof/Gwen: Adele Robbins
June/Kitten/Kattan/Journalist: Toni Torres
Monk/Journalist: Ben Cain
Jen's Dad/Dick/Buford T/Journalist: Steven M Porter
Jen's Mom/Amy Constant/Woof: Lolly Ward
Jen Jen Ryan/journalist: Kaili Hollister
Announcer/Colonel Hardchannel: V J Foster
Gondola/journalist: Riki Lindhomme
RumRum/Chip Webb: Brent Hinkley
Pearly White/Stringer/Doctor: Andrew Wheeler
Ramon/Camera Kid: Jay R Martinez
Protestor/Lieutenant/journalist: Nathan Kornelis

Director: Tim Robbins
Designer: Richard Hoover
Lighting: Adam H Greene
Projections design: Elaine J McCarthy
Costume: Yasuko Takahara
Masks: Erhard Stiefel
Assistant director: Samantha Jane Robson

2004-09-14 10:10:02