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Generations of war haunt heroic 'Elliot' 8 p.m.
Tuesdays-Saturdays; 7:30 Sundays (also 2:30 Saturdays-Sundays). Through
Oct. 1. $25-$30. Alliance Theatre, Hertz Stage, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E.,
Midtown. 404-733-5000; alliancetheatre.org The verdict: A
profoundly moving meditation on the cost of war. Quiara Alegria
Hudes' "Elliot, a Soldier's Fugue" is a lush and evocative
tone poem about the way the landscape of the soul is transformed by war.
Suggesting that patriotism and patrimony are tied up together in the
same blood knot, the play describes the miracle of a heart that's
wounded and healed at the same time. Naturally, it's
about love and family. Directed by Kent
Gash on the Alliance Theatre's intimate Hertz Stage, "Elliot"
tells the interlocking stories of the Ortiz clan: three generations of
Puerto Rican-Americans who serve in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. Hopscotching between
time and place, we see how Elliot's Grandpop (Gilbert Cruz) found
respite in Korea by playing Bach on his silver flute. Elliot's father
(Matthew Montelongo) fell in love with Army nurse Ginny (Mary Lynn Owen)
while in Vietnam. Elliot (Ivan Quintanilla) ends up joining the Marines,
and going off to Iraq at 17, because he wants to be like Pop —- which
is kind of heartbreaking, once he realizes how the war messed up his
dad. At the beginning,
Hudes' pastiche-like storytelling style feels a little precious and
slightly out of focus. But as soon as the monologues kick in —- Ginny
talking about how her Philadelphia garden is a sexy patch of Puerto
Rico; Elliot in Iraq, fantasizing about what he would order at Denny's
—- the images become clear and uncluttered. There's a certain
fugue-like math to the way the stories argue with themselves, the way
motifs dance through the text like notes on sheet music. Though the
language can elicit a visceral sting, it's just as often a celebration
of the sensuality of memory. The most haunting
moments have a hallucinogenic quality. The injured Elliot floats off
into oblivion by remembering the time he was happiest —- safe in the
cradle of his parents' love. Back home from war in his mother's garden,
she tends to his wounds like Christ anointing the sick. The idea that a
nurse can be both ministering angel and object of desire flickers
through the text, as when Ginny seduces her future husband a la "A
Farewell to Arms." Refreshingly, Hudes
explodes all notions that war dramas must make statements about politics
and social status. Or that they must be cliched accounts of drug
addiction and psychotic flashbacks. Happily, there's no gratuitous
violence or bloodletting. Softly bathed in
William H. Grant III's light, Emily Jean Beck's set is a simple
rectangular box painted in luxurious greens —- suggesting that the
distance between the Garden of Eden and Vietnamese jungle isn't so vast. While the acting is
uniformly good, Quintanilla gives one of the year's most extraordinary
performances. At a very young age, Elliot discovers how passion and war
grind together to make heroes —- and what a sad, necessary and
ennobling thing it is to be a soldier. |
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