Review: The Body of An American
By Toby Zinman
For the Inquirer
When, in 1993, the body of an American soldier was dragged, beaten and bloodied, through the streets of Mogadishu in Somalia, Paul Watson photographed the horror, winning the Pulitzer Prize for the picture. He believes that the dead soldier said to him, "If you do this, I will own you forever." That haunting has, apparently, endured to this day, recorded in Watson's memoir, Where War Lives and in Dan O'Brien's play, The Body of an American, at the Wilma Theater until February 1.
The play is about war and Watson's belief that war lives inside us, so, rather than indict the inhumanity of those who inflict misery, its documentary style becomes a kind of travelogue of suffering: Rawanda, Somalia, Iraq, Philippines, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Syria. As script, however, the play seems shapeless.
Watson refuses any labels like "courageous" or "altruistic," but suggests that photojournalists who specialize in battlefields are despair junkies. It's obvious that Watson's psyche is troubled, but this isn't fully revealed—perhaps due to the difference between a real person and a dramatic character. He is a tormented, talented man who is "just doing his job," and that job is to inform the world. He sees himself as suicidal, and by going to the world's most dangerous places he is "waiting for somebody else to do it."
The relationship between the two men is never sufficiently clarified, and Dan the character, created by Dan the playwright is neither likable nor admirable—an odd self-creation.
The acting is impressive, especially from Ian Merrill Peakes as Paul Watson. Harry Smith plays Dan O'Brien, and both actors play a variety of characters the two meet (lots of accents, although Smith's are often unidentifiable) and sometimes they switch roles in the middle of a sentence ("I feel like I'm standing beside myself"). They can generate enormous tension, just sitting side-by-side in wooden chairs.
The play lacks any consideration of the art of war photography—the paradox of a beautiful picture and the ugliness it captures, stopping time in its tracks. The fancy projections (designed by Jared Mezzocchi) are sometimes effective but often just distracting and hard to read. Michael John Garces directs, using the whole huge Wilma stage for a play that seems to need intense, claustrophobic intimacy. The lack of emotional focus may be biographically accurate but it isn't dramatic, and the huge political indictment—that the famous photograph empowered al Qaeda by showing the value of propaganda—is nearly lost in the fragmented account of the writing of the play we're watching.
Wilma Theater, Broad & Spruce Sts. Through Feb.1. Tickets $25. Information: 215-546-7824 or wilmatheater.org