REVIEW: NECROPOLIS

Sex, love, power, hate, war, revenge... One of these themes could fill a two-hour long play and make it fly. Don Nigro tackles them all in a mere fifty minutes in his new play Necropolis, which opened last night at the tiny Pantheon theatre on West 42^nd Street.

Short and to the point, Necropolis examines a brief encounter between an American journalist and a mysterious young native woman in an unnamed "war-torn country." After a one-night stand, the woman bluntly reveals her profession: she is a sniper who kills anyone she feels might be an enemy of her people. What follows is an uncannily timely and rather powerful debate about war, hatred, revenge, and the right to play God.

It is rare that I wish for shows to be longer, but with such juicy meat to chew on, Nigro's script is a little too lean for its own good. He jumps right into the heart of the story, and the plunge into ice water is stunning, not necessarily in a good way. We don't know the characters at all before the revelation of the woman's profession, and the potential impact is reduced because of it. A few more moments of exposition might make the moment more involving, and shocking. Nigro also tries to create extra conflict by having the characters battle both their attraction and repulsion for each other. It adds dimension, but with the short timeframe of the script, the flip-flopping is too frequent and sudden. If the dramatic lines between beauty and cruelty, desire and fear, and power and vulnerability were a little more vague, the moments would be much more believable.

Necropolis tackles its harsh themes not with gusto, but with the solemn respect such issues deserve. If it is a overly simplistic at times, the script compensates by presenting the consequences of war with grim veracity, and the emotional performances of the stars bring a human aspect to the worldly themes. Jim Thalman plays the less-showy role of the journalist with a bruised naivete, letting the man be not ignorant, but willfully blind. As a man who has witnessed horror but can do nothing to prevent it, his innocence is not foolish, but a necessary key to survival. Conversely, Francesca Nina O'Keefe's young sniper is a powerhouse, a woman grown up and old too quickly, emotionally scarred but with many wounds still open. While Turkish-born O'Keefe is sometimes shrill, and her lines occasionally sound as though she learned them phonetically, her overall performance is very emotional, and her quieter moments are nothing short of heartbreaking. The sniper's vulnerability is a deep, dark secret buried within her rage, and O'Keefe walks the fine line between the emotions with admirable skill. Director John DiFusco seems to focus more on the conflicted emotions of the characters, and less on logical actions: while the emotional energy is often high, his staging equally often does not reflect the dialogue or the mood. Paula Garron Lopez's single-room set is bare but effective, complete with an empty-eyed Modigliani painting on a wall. The vacant stare of the painting's subject reflects O'Keefe's horrified eyes as she recounts the atrocities her character has witnessed. It is a very effective detail.

I saw Necropolis on the same day that a videotape was released of an American's beheading in Iraq, a murder in retaliation for the brutal treatment of Iraqi prisoners by Americans. The play became even more unsettling when juxtaposed with that very real violence: the characters in the play, as in life, make individual choices that effect the lives of others, for better or worse. Action or inaction can cause life or death, and the only certainty is that violence will breed more violence. For all its rough edges, Necropolis has moments of great power and emotion, and will hopefully inspire much debate and introspection.