Tim Robbins' Embedded is the sort of play the founders must have had in mind when they wrote the Bill of Rights. It's sharply critical of the war in Iraq, makes the Bush administration look like a gaggle of cackling witches and shows how the Fourth Estate — the journalists who are supposed to keep our government honest — has been used by politicians to send erroneous messages.
As presented by Jobsite Theater, the play is harsh, unrelenting, at times grotesque and exceedingly refreshing. In a more perfect universe, every city would have a theater troupe that performed plays like Embedded every time there was a national crisis — plays that would question the headlines, counter-spin the spinmeisters and force each voting citizen to reassess the conventional wisdom.
Is the play fair? Not a bit. Is the play balanced? Absolutely not. Embedded is as one-sided and partisan as the news out of the White House, and so it's just what we need. See it before the Constitution goes the way of the Geneva Conventions.
The play looks at the war in Iraq from several perspectives: soldiers', journalists' and government officials'. It begins in 2002, months before the war began, and takes us as far as the rescue of Jessica Lynch (called "Jen" here) from an Iraqi hospital and the beginning of the insurgency against the occupying American forces. And it quickly makes us aware of a central conflict: On one side, likable American soldiers missing their loved ones and hoping to stay unharmed, and on the other a six-member coven including vicious, viperous Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Condoleezza Rice, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz.
This latter group, all wearing brilliantly designed masks by Richard Henzel, is the real star of the show. Chanting praises to neoconservative guru Leo Strauss, sexually stimulating each other with evil meditations on starting a war, telling perverse jokes (Question: Why can't we win the War on Poverty? Answer: Because there's no money in it!) and generally acting like nightmare figures out of a Bosch painting, the Wicked Six are Robbins' explanation of a conflict in which he sees not a hint of honesty or good sense. But he has other targets too, especially the journalists who allow themselves to be censored by the Army and who do their job so well that even Lynch's parents can't believe it when she insists she wasn't tortured.
Robbins also introduces us to a frightened, peace-loving soldier named Monk — whose innocence is an argument against every war, not just the one in Iraq — and hard-as-nails Colonel Hardchannel, who can't tell the difference between a life-and-death conflict and a hit Broadway musical. And while the action proceeds on the bare stage at the Shimberg Playhouse, photos and quotes are projected on an overhead screen: photos of American forces in Afghanistan, of a sandstorm, of Strauss; quotes from New York papers, from Strauss on democracy and truth. Finally, the various scenes are punctuated by loud, grating rock music, harsh and booming and as apocalyptic as possible (including recordings by Lorna Bracewell and Joe Popp's band The Hornrims).
If the show ends rather abruptly, well, the war's not over yet. Not being able to give us closure, Robbins finishes more or less as he started, with tender communications from soldiers to their families. That's the reality: humans with hearts, thinking of their loved ones. That's who's fighting for the would-be philosopher kings in Washington.
The 11-member cast, most of whom play multiple roles, is consistently top-notch. Josh Goff is impeccable as the showtune-addled martinet Colonel Hardchannel (he's also very funny as the Condoleezza Rice stand-in "Gondola"). Chris Holcom gives one of his best performances ever as a journalist submitting to the Army's careful training. As the Jessica Lynch figure Jen, Betty-Jane Parks is wonderfully sympathetic: Repeatedly she insists that her Iraqi doctor shielded her from harm, and repeatedly the people she confesses to won't believe her.
Roz Potenza is frightening as the Wolfowitz character "Woof," and Chris Rutherford is surprisingly human as the Sarge trying to deal with the frightened Monk, played outstandingly by Kyle Porter. The always-splendid Steve Garland is persuasive as a reporter who finds out too late that he can't un-embed himself (and he's also super-nasty as "Rum-Rum" Rumsfeld), and Curtis Belz is touching as the doctor who wants to help the captured "Jen" because he and his brother have been victims of Saddam Hussein's tyranny.
The other players — Amy E. Gray, Meg Heimstead and Alvin Jenkins — turn in comparably admirable work. There's not a wrong note in the whole cast, which works like a carefully constructed but noisy truth machine. Directors David Jenkins and Shawn Paonessa stage the pageant so that it goes to extremes, pulls back to tender humanity, then rushes forward on amphetamines and loud music moments later. Katrina Stevenson costumes the Weird Six in black gowns as if they were all judges in an alternative Supreme Court; Brian Smallheer's set is mostly a bare stage surrounded on three sides by dressing areas for the actors.
"If we don't get this war started soon," says the Karl Rove character in Embedded, "we will be competing with NBA playoffs!" This ridiculous line is characteristic of Robbins' play, suggesting that the Iraq war was planned independent of a real provocation and that the war-runners are more concerned about appearances than realities.
Can anyone genuinely doubt these things at this point? If Embedded is a caricature, it's the one we deserve — we who, as voters and citizens, let this adventure proceed. If you don't believe that the live theater can be a potent political instrument, see this play and change your mind. It's just the sort of thing you should find in a democracy. It's a wonder that we haven't seen it more often.
This article appears in Aug 20-26, 2008.