If American soldiers aren't depicted bravely fighting against the enemy ? la Tom Hanks in "Saving Private Ryan" (1998), they're usually shown as a bunch of good ol' boys bonding in the face of danger. Rarely does the media address the darker, dejected side of the army.
The Huntington Theatre Company's latest production, "Streamers," explores the relationships between recruits before they're shipped off to war. The play is merciless in its harsh representation of boot camp and doesn't shy away from savage violence, coarse language and rampant alcoholism.
The story begins with soldier Martin (played by Charlie Hewson) holding a bloody towel to his wrist after attempting suicide. Richie (Hale Appleman) cleans Martin's wounds with peroxide, but refuses to listen to Martin's pitiful explanations. Martin incessantly tells anyone nearby that he slit his own wrist, and Richie in return tells Martin to shut up. This is one of the more cheerful moments of the show.
The three main characters, Richie, Billy (Brad Fleischer) and Roger (J.D. Williams), are roommates living in a Virginian army barracks in 1965. Billy is a talkative college graduate from Wisconsin, Roger is black and supremely likeable, and Richie from Manhattan is suspected of being gay. The three roommates come from extremely different backgrounds, but all dread the prospect of being sent to Vietnam.
The whole show, which lasts about two hours, is set in the three soldiers' spotless, sparse room. After the first half, their bunks, their footlockers and even their posters of naked women begin to communicate a sense of claustrophobia.
The room is like purgatory for souls waiting to be sent to hell. The soldiers have no escape, nowhere to go and even their room isn't a safe refuge. Their already complicated relationships are further strained by the frequent intrusions of two permanently drunk sergeants and the unsettling Carlyle (played by Ato Essandoh).
Sergeant Cokes (Larry Clark) and Sergeant Rooney (John Sharian) like to drink, tell stories and harass recruits. They reminisce about basic training, when they learned to parachute out of planes. They sing a song called "Beautiful Streamer," which, according to them, soldiers who discover their parachutes are faulty mid-air sing as they fall to their deaths.
The morbid song encapsulates the play. The soldiers are falling without parachutes and the dialogue is the song they're singing on the way down. Each one is hopeless and desperate.
As Richie's homosexuality is slowly confirmed, tension between the characters culminates in a physically and verbally brutal confrontation.
The disconcerting Carlyle ultimately causes the bloody climax of "Streamers." Violence is one thing the show does right: Copious amounts of blood are spit, spewed, pooled and smeared onstage. The result is pretty horrific and very effective.
The bloodshed obviously traumatizes the characters and the audience is left to wonder how they (or anyone) could withstand one day on the battlefront.
Despite the show's graphic violence, the most chilling aspect of the story is that much of it was drawn from real-life experience. Playwright David Rabe based "Streamers" on his experience as soldier in boot camp after being drafted for the Vietnam War. If the harassment, language and violence are anywhere near realistic, then actual war might come as a relief after a soldier's experience in boot camp.
The show's strong point is its acting. The three roommates are engaging, and their conversations are some of the highlights. The characters develop a sort of brotherly camaraderie, giving the audience a little comic relief, but unfortunately their friendship only makes the conclusion more unsettling. No matter how many jokes the soldiers crack, it's impossible to escape the story's darker themes.
"Streamers" is a vivid exploration of a world only a brave few have the chance to see clearly. One wonders, however, if in this situation ignorance is bliss. The acting is fantastic and the characters are captivating, but the story is emotional masochism. Afterwards, the audience despairs of the army as an institution, and maybe that's the point.
