Review: At Hartford Stage, Friendship Forged Through Somalia War

Saturday, January 23, 2016

Michael Cumpsty and Michael Crane play the photographer Paul Watson and the playwright Dan O’Brien in “The Body of an American.”

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The current Hartford Stage production depicts two men — one of them representing the playwright — talking mostly by email, with some bare-bones dramatization of a few of their stories.

If you think that sounds dry, think again. Please. The show, Dan O’Brien’s emotionally gripping, psychologically astute “The Body of an American,” is an electric immersion in the nature of isolation and connection that, under Jo Boney’s fast-paced direction, flouts stage tradition with intelligence and challenging intricacy. Funny in spots, Brechtian in style, honestly searching in purpose, this is a bracing and absorbing piece of theater.

First, some context: The “body” of the title is that of Staff Sgt. William David Cleveland Jr., whose corpse was dragged by a mob through the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993. The journalist Paul Watson was there and took photographs of the event, one of which won the Pulitzer Prize for spot news photography.

Mr. Watson was interviewed by NPR about that experience, describing himself as haunted by words he believed he heard from Sergeant Cleveland as he shot the picture: “If you do this, I will own you forever.”
Mr. O’Brien heard that interview and was intrigued. As he has himself say in the play, “I felt like I knew you. Or I was you in some alternate reality.”

Most of us would consider such a thought and maybe even dwell on it awhile, then move on. Mr. O’Brien, however, sought out Mr. Watson’s email address and wrote to him. Improbably, Mr. Watson wrote back. And thus, according to the play, begins the improbable friendship depicted in “The Body of an American.”

As much as the journalist Paul — I’m speaking of the character now — is haunted by that voice of Sergeant Cleveland, Dan, too, is haunted. In fact, he’s writing a play about ghosts when the cyberchats begin. Their dialogue is guarded and confessional in turns, each man seeming to sniff out some vague something they have in common. Depression, comfort with solitude, troubled relations with fathers — those are at least part of the connection.

Is there more? A final sequence of scenes has the two finally meeting in the Arctic, where Paul has been reassigned. There’s some talk about their work on the play we’re seeing, but this is no game of metadrama; the stakes, in their own muted way, are as urgent and frustrating as war.

Mr. O’Brien’s rhythmic and often poetic writing lifts the audience to a heightened state of awareness, a demand made in the first scene. In Hartford, that scene has the actors Michael Cumpsty and Michael Crane (more serendipitous similarity in those first names and last initials) take turns with Paul’s lines and those of other characters as the tale of the Pulitzer photograph is related. It takes concentration to follow, but the reward is edge-of-your-seat engagement.

The subject matter is rich, taking on war, death, life, guilt, survival, manhood, journalism and trauma, without reducing any to a simplistic lesson. What do these men need from each other, and do they get it?

Mr. Crane and Mr. Cumpsty have become a precision unit working wholly in service to the play. While sometimes they drop into inhabiting their primary characters, other times — as the script requires — they stay above all of that, as storytellers who merely suggest the men. It’s a challenge to shift between the two modes, and it’s a gift to the audience that they handle it seamlessly.

Mr. Cumpsty, who has a talent for subtly expressing the lonely souls of strong characters, finds the wounds and damaged masculinity that live inside Paul’s walls of certitude, decorum and distance. Mr. Crane deftly manages many incidental characters (I loved his South African psychiatrist treating Paul) and has a quiet stunner of a monologue as Dan when he unfurls his complicated personal history. It’s brave writing, beautifully performed.

Theirs is not the only winning ensemble. Richard Hoover’s spare set and Lap Chi Chu’s lighting, working in a space perhaps too large for this show (it moves to Manhattan next month, courtesy of the co-producer, Primary Stages), make for a calmly fluid and kinetic design, with Alex Basco Koch’s projections and Darron L. West’s sound design.

Ms. Bonney’s direction creatively coordinates the work of the actors and designers without splashing showmanship in the audience’s face. It’s as if everyone concerned worked with the trust that they had a theatrical jewel in their hands. They do.

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