Written by Gus Krieger
Directed by Drina Durazo
Whatever your particular political affiliations, you’d be hard pressed these days to find someone, anyone, who thought that the Iraq ‘war’ was a good idea.
The Armadillo Necktie is set in somewhere in Iraq and sometime well after the invasion, although time seems to have a mind of its own here, minutes becoming hours and hours years. We follow the story of a journalist and her photographer trying their best to interview Colonel Ulysses Simpson Armadillo for the New York Times. A man who arrived in Iraq with his men, his wife and a set of orders decades earlier, lost everything and stayed, determined to avenge that loss, however long it took and whether or not the US Army wanted him to.
His current Sergeant, Buckley, has clearly been cooped up for far too long and captures the photographer Walker, ties him to a chair blindfolded and hooks him up to a car battery…just for laughs.
The journalist Madeline Sainz manages to convince the Sergeant that Walker, isn’t CIA, or special ops and eventually calms things down and gains an interview with Armadillo.
All this would seem fairly standard thriller fayre if not for the brutally intense and unrelenting humor, the speeches bordering on the soliloquy and the outrageous, unhinged and thoroughly compelling Colonel Armadillo.
Add to this a desperate local Iraqi women in search of assistance in the rescue of her kidnapped brother, more than a bit of sexual tension between Ms Sainz and the colonel and the fact that Walker is in fact special ops and has been sent to end the colonel’s long-standing occupation, one way or another, and you have a pretty dark and deep comedy about a history of errors. Errors of war, errors of trust and deep, deep errors of perception and judgement.
It’s easy to blame our present situations on anything and everything beyond our control, but in the end we all have to take some responsibility. Even for wars that we don’t want, didn’t start and have no idea how to end. I think this play, with its maniacal lyricism and poignant, heartfelt outpourings from the colonel (and he’s supposed to be the crazy one) is a pretty clear mirror to our own plentiful shortfalls.
Yes, the colonel is loopy, the sergeant takes himself far too seriously, as does the over achieving and more than a little sleazy Walker. Ms Sainz breaks her “holier than thou” mode once she and the colonel “bond” and the naive local, Aminah comes cloaked in more than mystery, but they are all displaying little pieces of all of us and our many rabid fears and prejudices.
Mr Kreiger writes beautifully and sometimes viciously and often hilariously, but he is also directing our lazy gazes at the consequences of our country's misdirected, clumsy and misplaced warfare. He reminds us that pretending it's all over is childish and ultimately ridiculously stupid of us. Like pretending that the monster under the bed or in our closets isn't really real when we all know full well that it is and ignoring its existence only intensifies the fear and escalates the imminent and endless destruction.
The Armadillo Necktie, and I will leave the poetic explanation of this term for you to discover during the course of the play, is an absolutely brilliant piece of work. Unusual, vivid, unrelenting and incredibly human, the performances are strong and brave and mesmerizing. I was particularly in awe of Bert Emmett as The Colonel. What could have been a comic character was instead touching and gentle and funny and weird. He becomes heroic in fact, in an odd and unfamiliar way…just a wonderful layered performance.
Every other actor was also brilliant. It’s a tough play, lots and lots of words and a huge range of emotions, all taking place in one small space. But they all bounce off each other effortlessly and hold the tension and convince the audience that what they experience is real and important and worthy of our time.
The set is fantastic too. It plays such a big role in fact, and feels so right for the time and place that the stage itself seems to vanish and we were all in that room with them. I would also add that this level of theatrical accomplishment bares no small debt to the director, of course, who must have a ball with this play. A perfect blend of purposeful words, wonderful actors and earnest characters with stories to match, Drina Durazo, the director, and the cast and crew have all accomplished something truly magical.
I thoroughly and most highly recommend The Armadillo Necktie at the Group Rep at the Lonny Chapman Theatre, 10900 Burbank Blvd., North Hollywood, 91601
The play runs June 17th through July 31st Friday & Saturday at 8PM; Sunday Matinees at 2PM.
http://www.thegrouprep.com
The Group Rep cast features the talents of Bert Emmett, Morgan Lauff Jennifer Laks , Matt Calloway, Shanti Ashanti and Larry Eisenberg (U/S).
The design team includes Chris Winfield and J. Kent Inasy (Set Design), Angela M. Eads (Costume Design), J. Kent Inasy (Lighting Design), Todd Ball and Hisato Masuyama (Prop Design), Joe Chang (Illustration Design), and Doug Haverty (Graphic Design).
Photo credit: Doug Engalla.