Small cast dives deep into war crimes in Afghanistan
On my way to City Theatre’s world premiere of Stephen Belber’s “We Are Among Us,” I just wasn’t in an anticipatory mood. As if the daily front page of the Times isn’t bad enough, a play about war crimes in Afghanistan? So, right off I was breaking one of the main tenets of theater criticism — to arrive at the play with an open mind, eager to let it show you what it has to show.
But given this initial resistance, it’s remarkable how this seemingly predictable small play becomes big and how quickly it forced me to invest in its three central characters. This is even though (which is at the heart of the play’s power) it’s a zerosum story where what we wish for each character complicates what we can wish for the others.
No, make that a negative-sum story in which each revelation further contracts the options. We’re forced into a pattern of tightening choices, just as the people the play dramatizes. Presumably this is how real events in Afghanistan must have developed. Rather than sensationally ripped from the headlines, the play’s dilemmas grow organically. And then there’s a strong post-play half-life, leaving you debating your emotional allegiances.
The play begins with an appealing young Afghani woman describing the sounds, images and memories of Kabul, but it soon centers on an American mother and son. Bit
by bit we learn their story, but never as much of it as we think, until finally we do.
Laura (Lisa Velten Smith) is a former Army contractor, that is, someone employed by a private firm employed by the Army to do what the Army used to do for itself. Posted to a base in the Afghanistan backcountry, she’s not exactly a soldier, but just about. Something happened during that time, now eight years ago, which the play gradually excavates.
Now, Laura has a teenage son, from whom she’s hiding what happened as much as she’s hiding it from herself. But the walls of avoidance start to crack under assault by a persistent journalist (Jo Mei) and then fall in the presence of the young Afghani, Khadija (Nilanjana Bose). The scene that galvanizes the play is a confrontation of Khadija, Laura and her son, Beau (Eric Wiegand).
It’s not that other scenes don’t have power, especially as the stakes get higher. The fifth character, Taylor (Kyle Haden), is no fifth wheel but adds a point of view intrinsic to both the story and our emotional ambivalence.
Prime credit for melting any resistance goes to the fine acting, fluid directing by Adrienne Campbell-Holt and Belber’s cannily constructed series of revelations. But there is also the physical production, starting with Narelle Sissons’ spare set, like an enigmatic modernist painting: a crisp orange circular platform backed by a tilted rectangle that takes on different colors and moods under the influence of Andrew David Ostrowski’s lighting. Add Sarita Fellows’ costumes and Zachary Beattie-Brown’s sound, and you know you’re in the good hands of City Theatre’s pros.
Smith’s Laura will further astonish you if you recall her fine Nora in Pittsburgh Public Theater’s recent “A Doll’s House, Part 2.” Bose’s wary Afghani is especially admirable in her physical realization of conflicting emotions. That applies to Wiegand, as well, although you may be appalled by the carnage his naivete wreaks — not a bad metaphor for the unintended consequences of U.S. policies.
Although figuring out what happened provides the machinery of the plot, “We Are Among Us” isn’t exactly a mystery. It’s more about figuring out its people, including the “us” of the title. Its half-life is vivid, like that of war, where figuring out the facts can’t remotely relieve the pain.