BWW Reviews: EAST AND WEST OF THE WAR Three Songs of Melancholic Wonder

Only rarely does a collection become unified in ways that over-exceed the medium. Such collective works are typically lacking the transitory nature to cohesively attach a theme or body to it, which plague jukebox musicals and monologue works. As the second of three works in the Playwright's Forum and Master Class Series of Nilo Cruz' works, Louis Tyrrell brings East and West of the War, a collection of three monologues, to life. Two of the performers have worked the pieces since Cruz' first beginnings, and the third is fresh-faced while playing in two Cruz productions in this same day, but the music and wonder of the pieces come bursting louder than any symphony.

The three pieces, individually titled Melisma, The Journey of the Shadow, and Farhad or the Secret of Being, all highlight aspects of the cruel life and existence in Afghanistan trailing from a young Kabul girl to a soldier's son waiting on a letter in America. Each piece builds the drama, builds the tension, and builds the tragedy Tyrrell showcases in the stripped-down reading. In Theatre Lab's black-box, Cruz' words spike through, punctuating each horrible reality and hopeful longing in such spectacular scope that it becomes hard to withstand.

The first piece, Melisma, stars Armando Acevedo as Lolo, an injured soldier trapped in village ruins. As he prays and hopes to be rescued, he allows memory to overwhelm him, lost love and virtuous remembrance washing over him. Acevedo, new to the piece, is visually broken as his desperation continues, his hands trembling as the pain and confusion destroys his sanity. Watching Acevedo in his throngs, as he remembers his days as an actor before the war and returning to simple stage directions and props in the comforting past, is a tragedy playing out in reverse.

Following the trailing dust of Acevedo's despair is The Journey of the Shadow, by the comedically detailed Andy Barbosa. Playing a young Marcelo Miguel, Barbosa flits in and out of a repertoire of characters that punch each joke and development. The story is introduced as "a story for children, and for those adults who take delight in the remnants of innocence," and allows Marcelo to tell an imaginative tale as he avoids the harsh reality of war. The young Marcelo writes a letter to his father, a soldier lost in Afghanistan, and his shadow leaps into his letter's footing- Marcelo narrates the magical realism of the furtive shadow, as it collapses the postal system, frustrates a cabal of postal workers, and all the many deliveries he disrupts. From character to voice to physicality to new character, Barbosa flits as though he is this shadow, but as the cracks begin, Barbosa's tears flow and his cries become the only truth.

Cruz' final monologue of the series, Farhad or the Secret of Being tells perhaps the most wrenching short, as Andrea Ferro's Farhad is told it is her final day to be a boy. Ferro sings proudly, a crying bird as her wings are clipped, and tells of her final quest for freedom as though she is walking to her gallows. The beauty of her voice sparkles in her eyes, the beauty of Cruz' script falling from her trembling lip, and the audience shuffles in pain as the world settles around them. Ferro is unbelievable, a tortured beauty in chains that she cannot break, singing her acapella dirges and praises to each of the ninety-nine Allahs who will not answer. Portraying this Kabul life, when blending is no longer an option to a girl who wants only to be able to work in a factory, is a shortcoming in that the arias of Ferro are clipped short as Farhad's life will be. If Cruz ever develops a full musical of this pain, it will erupt through the ceiling as the sketching of realism in feminine imprisonment.

The pieces individually are poems, whispering of pains and universalities, but when combined, East and West of the War is an hour spent lost in the worlds unknown. Tyrrell's cast and close-cuffed work is powerful in the way only intimate theatre can accomplish, and certainly a tearful second act to the Playwright's Forum and Master Class Series. As tears are wiped away, his final spectacle of the first reading of Alice N. approaches.