Lowcountry Stages

20 Queen St
Charleston SC 29401
843-722-4487

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A community theater
The southeasts oldest continually performing company

 Price range $10 - $15

April 3rd - 12th, 2008
This War Is Live
Reviewed by William Bryan

Rating:   (2/5)

Running time 2:20 - one intermission
A mess of a play about a mess of a war that ends up simply messy

Full frontal nudity, graphic sex, graphic language, graphic violence.

Latenight @ the Footlight. You just never know what you're going to get. Unfortunately this time it's a mess. A world premier play, This War is Live by Jeff Douglas Messer, was the winner out of ten submissions for new plays to be produced as a part of the Latenight series. Directed, as all Latenight shows this season, by JC Conway, this show lacks the humor he found in Matt & Ben and the entertainment he produced with the enjoyable Things You Shouldn't Say Past Midnight. This play is long, it's sloppy, and it is delivered with all the subtleness of being hit upside the head with a sledgehammer. This isn't the actors' fault, nor the director's, save for choosing this play. Rather this production suffers from leaving nothing to the imagination and not allowing the audience to think at all. Every scene is up front, bold and spelled out in mind-numbing caricatures and not so shocking dialogue. The show gets a two instead of a one simply because the acting wasn't bad.

Storyline:   A journalist is invited to be embedded with the troops at the start of the Iraq war. After upsetting the military and being told to go home, a mysterious Deep Throat type of mastermind gives him money and information to allow him to continue to reveal the truth. Ultimately betrayed and suffering from the loss of his cameraman and friend, he must return home and deal with the scars the war has left on his soul.

For those who support the war, or those, like this reviewer, who think that we should not have gone into Iraq in the first place, the play is so far to the left that it is the Bill O'Reilly of liberalism. Only one side of any issue is presented, and while that is the intent of some docudramas, it doesn't work here. Weighing in at over two hours, the play has the feeling of something that tries to cover every issue with the war the playwright could find from the comfort of his couch. Messer's biography lists 25 plays to his credit, but that level of experience is not found in this creation. The Post & Courier's preview piece mentions he started this effort as a screenplay, which then became a series of essays, which then evolved into a play. Unfortunately all of those mediums feel present as if in the end the script was cut and pasted from its original sources.

The nudity and sex in the show is simply gratuitous. This worked during Things You Shouldn't Say Past Midnight due to that show's sexual nature. Now, when actress Bettina Beard strips naked on stage, full frontal nudity, only to jump in the shower with actor Patrick Ryan behind a backlit screen, the only thing that comes to mind is, "Why?" There was no need for her to be fully nude on stage for that scene and the same applies during a sex scene between the two later in the second act. In contrast, when James Pillow appears nude on stage, though only his buttocks show, it makes sense as he is getting assaulted after being caught in the barracks with a gay soldier, played by David Barr. While Beard and Ryan are naked on stage having sex, Pillow and his lover are backlit behind a screen simulating sex but with so much space between their bodies that only their heads seem to be touching. There is no chemistry between Pillow and Barr and when they kiss on stage, even that seems to be in just for shock value.

The show is being promoted as a multimedia experience, and while it does have slide and video elements, much of that is extraneous as well. For instance, when Bill O'Reilly is mentioned, a slide of him is shown behind the actors. Again, why? Too much of this show leaves the audience asking that same question over and over. Why show us Fox journalists being right wing zealots? We know they are. Why reduce the impact of Abu Ghraib to a CIA spook scene? It was so much more. Why waste a talented cast, director, crew and excellent theater on a piece of work that wants to be edgy and shocking but ends up a laughable mess? There are too many better plays out there. Thank goodness Footlight has had other success this season and still has The Full Monty coming to leave us with a different memory than this poorly written show.

Written by Jeff Douglas Messer. Directed by JC Conway. Design: Carol Jones (Costume), Witt Lacy (Videographer). Cast: David Barr, Eric Collins, Christina Cummings, Chris Dowling, Mike Ferrer, Mark Gorman, Fred Hutter, Mandy Johnson, Nat Jones, Kelley Larrew, James Pillow, Patrick Ryan, Eddie Sturgeon.