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[Theater reviews]

History channeled
A Girl’s War is well fought

BY CAROLYN CLAY

A Girl’s War
By Joyce Van Dyke. Directed by Michael Hammond. Set design by Richard Chambers. Costumes by Kristin Loeffler. Lighting by Marc Olivere. Sound by Haddon Kime. With Melinda Lopez, Will Lyman, Robert Najarian, Bobbie Steinbach, and Anthony Estrella. At Boston Playwrights’ Theatre through December 16.

Joyce Van Dyke’s John Gassner Award–winning A Girl’s War is pertinent and powerful; it just isn’t always plausible. New York–based fashion model Anna is ambushed at the end of a stormy shoot by the news that her younger brother, Seryozha, has been killed in the continuing conflict between Christian Armenians and Muslim Azerbaijanis in her native Karabakh. Fed up with the model biz, she heads back to the village she hasn’t visited in 15 years — not even for the funeral of her other brother, who was killed earlier in the fighting. Three months later, she can be found scrubbing the floors of a ruined house with her mother, a militant Christian and Armenian who walks the town at night with a rifle. When a handsome young Azerbaijani she knew as a child, who may or may not be a deserter from the Azeri army, happens by while she’s buck-naked in a metal bathtub, sexual sparks fly. Anna, who has disassociated herself from the war, now finds herself with a foot in both camps.

According to the program notes, Karabakh, though inhabited primarily by Armenians, was under the Soviets an " autonomous region " within Azerbaijan. When in 1988 its parliament called for unification with Armenia, a civil war broke out that lasted until 1994; the situation remains unresolved. As in Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia, ethnic hatred runs deep. Apparently, one way to escape it is to have the sort of face and torso that gets you out of the village and onto magazine covers before the folks who used to be your friends and neighbors start shooting one another.

If some of A Girl’s War strains credulity, well, so does half of what’s in the headlines lately. So perhaps what seem the play’s inconsistencies make sense in parts of the world where longstanding animosity wars with personal connection. In any event, the charged situation and emotions of the work are compelling. And when a couple of New York fashionistas appear in the ravaged town where Anna grew up, it drives home how clueless and incredulous most Americans are (or were) when it comes to war as part of the everyday landscape.

Anna, you see, is in the throes of her quickie romance with ex-playmate Hussein when these New York compatriots turn up. It seems photographer Stephen and assistant Tito got into trouble in Turkey when they documented what turned out to be a bit of ethic cleansing that the perpetrators didn’t want turned into a Kodak moment. They arrive at Anna’s Karabakh door, where watching a glowering Hussein react to the air kisses is a show in itself. But it’s nothing to what ensues when Anna’s gun-toting mom, Arshaluis, comes home. The woman, whose younger son was not only murdered but decapitated, is beyond bitter. She earlier sneered at Anna’s assertion that Seryozha and his Muslim pal Hussein had been " like Jonathan and David. " Yet when she realizes who Hussein is, she brings out the party food. Would she turn so sentimental? Would Hussein trust her not to turn him in? And what’s a fashion photographer doing running around Turkey snapping soldiers’ faces?

But if Van Dyke’s plot takes unlikely turns, Anna’s personal crisis, after years of denial, is gripping. And the play could not be unveiled at a more apt time, as we Americans come to realize that we can no longer bury our heads in the sands that line our borders. How would Arshaluis fix things? " Change history, and give us plenty of money. " The former, alas, is a taller order than the latter.

But how gratifying it is to see a new play so well turned out. Too often, small-theater premieres don’t make the best cases for the works they introduce. Boston Playwrights’ Theatre — which some years ago presented Van Dyke’s Love in the Gulf — offers a full Equity cast under the direction of Shakespeare & Company’s Michael Hammond, on a set by Richard Chambers that suggests the collision of modernity and ruin. Melinda Lopez, tall and willowy enough to be credible as a model, creates a passionate, Americanized Anna at whom Third World roots palpably tug. Bobbie Steinbach is an adamant, sometimes amusingly bull-headed Arshaluis. Will Lyman is all edge and confidence as photographer Stephen. Robert Najarian’s Tito subtly conveys the terror of an American gofer thrust into danger. And Anthony Estrella brings a disarming combination of innocence and stealth to Hussein.

Lest you think A Girl’s War is all tangled politics and painful personal choice, I should mention that there is also male nudity. This prompted one older woman at the performance I attended, after expressing audible shock, to remark she would be coming back the following evening.

Issue Date: December 6-13, 2001

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