Show Me, Don't Tell Me

There's also tiny, friendly Lydia Whitrock (Bonnie Allen), the pregnant wife of Captain Whitlock — a good Christian lady, or so you think at first. Allen does a good church mouse, just like Morris does a good captain, just like Kapil does a good careerist, and Solomon does a good weasel. But there's something a little rote about everything, a sense that these characters are not people at all, but tropes who will behave precisely as you expect them to. They fulfill this expectation, and grandly.

The true drama of the characters' lives is obscured by the playwright's desire to use them as sides in a mock dialectic, as are the good questions Goldberg means to ask. When the soldiers recount their lives in Iraq, the play does not drive home their anguish: what they saw and did is a closed case, something labeled "tragic story" and filed away for the next war-is-hell letters compilation from Michael Moore. The Hoffman character fares somewhat better, if only because Goldberg can probably relate to her struggle more than to those of the soldiers, but she still never surprises you. Goldberg's best idea was in showing how both the angry left and the angry right use ideology to mask their real motives — the military folk want to save face; the media folk want to make money and stay trendy — but since these characters never communicate as real people, their motivations seem no more authentic than they themselves do. And since all they do is chatter on in a mindlessly pedestrian way, their unreality can't even make the jump to good literature.

This is why Goldberg should go see Thom Paine and why she should watch closely. You can talk about even banal subject matter — subject matter far less exciting than war — and still connect meaningfully with an audience. But you've got to get weird with it. This is a question of rhythm and imagination, but mostly it's a question of drama. "Show us, don't tell us" should be the motto tattooed on every playwright's forehead at birth. Why Goldberg forgot is anyone's guess — maybe it's because she thought she had so much to say. Unfortunately, unless you create some drama, not many folks will listen.