Sowelu Theater
Portland, OR
503.730.9066
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| David Poland and Ken Dembo |
Reviews: Streamers by David Rabe, 2007
The Oregonian says: "Streamers traps men in a tautly envisioned nightmare of another war.
Given the current war's unpopularity, it's not surprising that a Vietnam War play such as David Rabe's Streamers would find a place in today's theater. The third of a loosely connected trilogy of plays about that Southeast Asian war, this taut Army barracks drama, written in 1976 but set in the mid-1960s, is more than a commentary on that conflict. Presently receiving a solid, thoughtful production from Sowelu Theater, Streamers offers a vision of manhood in distress.
The play focuses on what happens to the delicately balanced relations of three diverse soldiers who bunk together when a fourth, troubled serviceman enters the picture. The interactions of the characters are played against a background defined by the United States' growing military involvement in Vietnam. All four soldiers are anxious about being shipped out to 'Nam, but it is each man's futile efforts to exercise control over his life that brings them to a tragic climax.
Appearing briefly in each act and functioning like a Greek chorus, two drunken sergeants translate the horrible sense of impotence into imagery.
These old warriors sing a darkly humorous song of paratroopers dropping through the sky with parachutes that are so twisted they can't open properly. Such malfunctioning chutes are ironically described as "beautiful streamers" -- like "big icicles" they rise above the sky-divers who fall helplessly to their deaths.
For this production, director Barry Hunt has assembled a competent cast. The bunk-mates -- Billy, Roger and Richie -- are capably played by Daniel Hill, Nasir Najieb and Aundre Barnes, respectively. Hill ably captures the clean-cut Midwesterner Billy's troubled efforts to maintain his faith in the norms he grew up with. Najieb skillfully reveals self-controlled ghetto refugee Roger's efforts to ignore unpleasant realities. In Barnes' hands, feminine urbanite Richie becomes an often flamboyant but generally sensitive Latino.
As Carlyle, the wild-card intruder, Garfield Wedderburn, may not initially seem as dangerous as he might, but he is very real.
David Poland and Kenneth Dembo are splendid as the inebriated sergeants -- their high-spirited, high-pitched voices and drunken, stumbling antics lend both humor and pathos. Dembo carries the last 10 minutes of the play. What could have been an unnecessary anticlimax of pointless storytelling becomes a haunting conclusion. Especially in his last moment, we are left with an image of the horror all the characters in this play experience -- they are all grasping and groping for ripcords that are not to be had."
—Richard Wattenberg
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