THE WAR NOTEBOOKS
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Dark Ladder Ensemble’s world premiere production of The War Notebooks purports to give an overview of four wars through the letters of the soldiers and civilians of each period, which have been adapted for the stage by ensemble members Vic Flessas and Valerie Gorman. Representing the Civil War are three volunteers from Company K–Private Alex Chisholm, his brother Corporal Daniel Chisholm, and one Sergeant Samuel Clear. World War I is covered by three dissenters–the English philosopher Bertrand Russell; the Polish-born socialist Rosa Luxemburg, and Vera Brittain, a Frenchwoman who becomes a pacifist after the deaths of her brother and her fiance. Reporting on World War II is John Horn Burns, author of the autobiographical novel The Gallery, and his two comrades, identified only by their ranks of sergeant and private first class. The Vietnam-war quartet consists of Kid, a 17-year-old marine enlistee; Grad, an elitist ROTC trainee; Joker, now confined to a wheelchair; and Nurse, who joined the Army to add some excitement to her career. The script includes selections from Walt Whitman, T.E. Lawrence, Pablo Neruda, H.H. Munro, several uncredited poets published in W.D. Ehrhart’s anthology of Vietnam-war poetry Carrying the Darkness, and many other unidentified writers.
A century and a quarter is a lot of history to cover in one evening. The absence of antiwar protest–except in the last piece on the program, the three-hankie Vietnam-war weeper “A Mother’s Letter,” and in the World War I section, in which no voices are heard except those of dissent–tends to distort our perception of the worldwide response to the conflicts. The Our Town style of presentation, with the actors breaking character in full view of the audience (Joker blithely rises up from his wheelchair and strolls about the offstage area before resuming his paraplegic persona) compounds the identity confusion already engendered by the sprawl of the narrative and the multiple-role casting. The Stage Manager, who bridges the various segments with annotative commentary, is irritatingly unnecessary, contributing nothing that couldn’t be better accomplished by a few program notes. (More program notes would have been nice for another reason too–I would have liked to have learned the names of more of the people who are quoted in the play.)
