As Tara Thornton in True Blood, Rutina Wesley has survived an abusive alcoholic fundamentalist mother, a murdered boyfriend, and a sadistic vampire. But Tara is scarcely worse off than the character Wesley is playing in Charles Fuller's new play, One Night, at the Cherry Lane. Wesley is now portraying Alicia, a military veteran.
Three decades ago, playwright Charles Fuller won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for his exploration of racism in the military, "A Soldier's Play," a murder mystery he adapted into one of Denzel Washington's first movies, "A Soldier's Story."
So when Fuller now turns his attention to sexism in the military, and veteran neglect, attention must be paid - even though the result is disappointing.
"One Night" takes place in a seedy motel room off a highway in the middle of nowhere, U.S.A. where Alicia is staying with Horace Lloyd (
Grantham Coleman), a fellow veteran of the Iraq War. Both suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Months earlier, Horace tracked down Alicia and offered his help in getting her life back together. The morning before the play begins, the homeless shelter where they were staying burned to the ground.
Fuller uses "One Night" to drive home the plight of the military veteran in America. "Why am I a hero if I die, and a nuisance if I live?" Alicia asks at one point, unable to obtain disability benefits, a full-time job, or a decent home.
But the playwright doesn't stop there. Alicia experiences frequent flashbacks, and, because of the scenes from her past that she is supposed to be hallucinating, we learn that while in Iraq, she was not just traumatized by the carnage of war. She was gang-raped by fellow soldiers; her commanding officer in effect blamed her for the crime (If women weren't allowed to serve in combat zones, "none of this could have happened"); the rapists went unpunished; and her husband left her because of her victimization, taking her son with him.
Her life, in other words, has become one big horror show, and when she says that, on her return stateside, her behavior was so erratic that her fundamentalist mother "thought I was possessed," it becomes almost comically hard to distinguish Wesley's Alicia from her Tara in "True Blood."
This is too bad, as is the largely un-engaging plot, which takes place, as the title promises, over one night at the motel, and alternates the hallucinated flashbacks and Horace's involvement with Alicia, leading to the revelation of his ulterior motives. Fuller deserves respect for tackling so many important issues confronting the people who serve in the military, but the thin frame of the story can't bear the weight of the pile-up of traumas.
One Night, a co-production with Rattlestick Theater, runs through December 15.
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