in 'elliot, a soldier's fugue,' the silent pain of war
TRANSCRIPT
By Charles McNulty
In 'Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue,' the silent pain of war echoesthrough three generations
latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-elliot-soldiers-fugue-review-20180206-htmlstory.html
February is Quiara Alegría Hudes month in Los Angeles. For the first time, the three plays inher heralded Elliot trilogy will be performed concurrently at separate theaters in the samemetropolitan area. It’s taken a while for the series to reach our shores, but the L.A. theatercommunity, led by Center Theatre Group, is giving Hudes the royal treatment she deserves.
“Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue,” the 2006 drama that began the series, opened Saturday at the KirkDouglas Theatre. “Water by the Spoonful,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning middle drama, opensSunday at the Mark Taper Forum. And “The Happiest Song Plays Last,” the final installment,opens later this month at the Los Angeles Theatre Center.
The plays share characters and thematic concerns, but each is a standalone experience withits own dramatic architecture, theatrical tempo and emotional palette. You don’t have to seethem all, but why would you pass up an opportunity to become acquainted with one of theleading voices of this thrilling new generation of American playwrights?
INTERVIEW: Quiara Alegría Hudes on finding drama in family history »
Hudes, who studied music at Yale as an undergraduate before getting a master’s in playwritingat Brown, has developed unique musical structures for each play in the trilogy. Her body ofwork, which includes the book for the Tony-winning musical “In the Heights,” translates socialjustice concerns into dramatic scores.
“Elliot,” which looks at the experience of three generations of military veterans in a PuertoRican family, centers on Elliot (Peter Mendoza), a North Philadelphia native and recent highschool gradate who’s about to ship off to Iraq with the Marines in 2003. His story is interwovenwith his father’s Vietnam War past and his grandfather’s Korean War history in a drama thatorganizes itself along the mingling lines of a fugue.
1/6
Garfias, left, Olazábal and Mendoza at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. Genaro Molina / Los AngelesTimes
Grandpop (Rubén Garfias), who brought his flute to Korea, where he soothed his fellowsoldiers with Bach during lulls in the fighting, enlightens us on the special qualities of a musicalform he compares to an argument: “The voice is the melody, the single solitary melodic line.The statement. Another voice creeps up on the first one. Voice two responds to voice one.They tangle together. They argue, they become messy.”
How to sort the major and minor keys, “all at once on top of each other”? Grandpop, speakingas much for the playwriting as for himself, explains, “It’s about untying the knot.”
The knot here has to do with identity — ethnic, cultural, familial, professional and communal —each strand asserting its prerogative as it entwines with the others. Parts may vanish in thejumble, but loosen one section and another hidden facet returns.
2/6
Garfias as Grandpop Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times
In Shishir Kurup’s production, unfolding on a darkened set with a mirrored backdrop, voicestake primacy in a play that poetically alternates between narration and dramatization. Thevoices are embodied in characters, but the wartime stories they tell bleed across boundaries.
Pop (Jason Manuel Olazábal), who served in Vietnam, where he met Ginny (Caro Zeller), anurse with a sensuously healing touch, carries his father’s flute along with shared values,remembrances and scars, some of which he has pushed out of view. Grandpop, whosememory is fading with old age, recalls bits of his combat experience, which prefigures whathappens to his son and grandson.
The traumatic tales echo one another. The assimilation to hostile conditions, the initiation intokilling, the grievous bodily harm that inscribes the war permanently on minds and limbsconstitute an uncanny refrain.
Ginny, who spends time in the garden she cultivates for the benefit of her neighborhood, hasaligned herself with the forces of life. Her planting has increased since Elliot has left for Iraq.Each seed, she says, “is a contract with the future,” an expression of faith that “somethingbetter will happen tomorrow.”
3/6
Caro Zeller as Ginny, Olazábal as Pop. , is a portrait of a multi-generational military family.(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times
Hudes lays out the trilogy’s central thematic material in “Elliot,” but many of the threads will bemore fully developed in the later plays. Issues of class are touched on — Elliot, for instance,believes that the only alternative to the military is a job making sandwiches at Subway — butwill be dealt with more explicitly in “Water by the Spoonful.”
What distinguishes “Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue” is the potent way it grapples with the physicalpain of wartime injuries. The suffering that Elliot experiences replicates what Pop undergoes, ahistory that Elliot only takes in after Ginny shares with him letters that Pop wrote to his fatherfrom Vietnam. These missives were moldering in the basement, packed away like so much ofthe past that Pop would rather put behind him.
In capturing Elliot’s youthful innocence and vigor, Mendoza raises the emotional stakes for theaudience as the young Marine descends into hell. Elliot’s inevitable brush with death raisesquestions about the cycle of suffering the men in his family have all undergone and kept underwraps. The physical pain, while undeniably real, becomes a metaphor for later psychologicalmisery.
4/6
Elliot (Peter Mendoza), with Grandpop (Ruben Garfias) in the shadows behind him, in "Elliot, ASolider's Fugue." Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times
Olazábal’s Pop communicates through his detachment a sense of betrayal. War is nothing likethe movies or the patriotic tales that circulate to buck up morale — a lesson that his son canonly learn for himself. Guilt and resentment press on him from both generational sides.
Grandpop can’t recall much about his travails in Korea beyond the music he played. Garfias’Grandpop, lighting up when talking about the flute, conveys the sense that it was Bach thatrerouted his mind from despair.
Zeller’s Ginny is most memorable in her hospital flashbacks with Pop in which she flirts withhim to restore him as a man. More than her lyrical musings about gardens, it is her boundlesslove that transforms the broken men around her.
Sibyl Wickersheimer’s set and Geoff Korf’s lighting might be colder than necessary. Theambience is modern but not particularly inviting. These choices are, however, thematicallyappropriately for a play that travels to places that can neither be vividly remembered nor onceand for all forgotten. The scenes exist in forbidding shadows.
By the end, Kurup’s staging locates the painful yet persevering lyricism of “Elliot, A Soldier’sFugue.” It’s an ideal preparation for “Water by the Spoonful,” a play that will explore thedissonance in Elliot’s life from a wider communal perspective. Whatever you do, don’t miss themiddle masterpiece.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦5/6
‘Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue’
Where: Kirk Douglas Theatre, 9820 Washington Blvd., Culver City
When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sundays; ends Feb.25 (call for exceptions)
Tickets: $25-$70 (subject to change)
Info: (213) 628-2772 or www.centertheatregroup.org
Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes (no intermission)
Garfias, as Grandpop. The Elliot trilogy will continue with the Pulitzer-winning "Water by theSpoonful" at the Mark Taper Forum. Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times
Follow me @charlesmcnulty
6/6