The digital magazine of New York indie theater
Loading

Warfield, USA: The Musical

nytheatre.com review by Matt Freeman
August 15, 2005

Jazz Hands Across America, a Chicago-based improv company, seem to stretch their strengths with Warfield USA: The Musical, their first full-length “scripted” piece. The musical itself is a broad satire on the current war culture and politics of the good old U.S. of A; and in places, of the musical form. I’ll sum up their success with this “apple pie” metaphor: They swing wild, make a few base hits, but can’t quite bring it home.The story is of a town whose former mayor has died, leaving his son in charge. The father, beloved in the unique culture of Warfield, was a man of war. The entire town’s identity and economy is based on their love of guns, blowin’ stuff up and killing their next door neighbors in Jonestown.The son, Gunner Livingston, has quite a literal issue with guns: he has no trigger (i.e., index) fingers. He’s a peacenik: a chai-drinking, Gandhi-quoting, falafel-loving one at that. He brings to Warfield and its colorful residents an enforced, Stalinist peace. Their only hopes are a strongly worded letter, “Sex”etery of State Fondleeza Twice, and an 11-year-old girl named Harmony Miner, inexplicably struck by Agent Orange-related illness, whose love, in both song and action, is the bomb.As you can see, the play is rife with comic names, overt gags and sick humor. The songs have some wonderfully wicked lines (a love song called "Revolting Love" with the line “You’re my Hitler/It’s all Reich!” was a particular favorite, that got guilty laughs); and there are certainly provocative moments.Unfortunately, these moments do not a coherent narrative or satire make. One of the smaller problems—assuredly an issue of taste, from the howls of laughter from those I was sitting next to—is that it is full of sketch comedy asides that don’t connect to the text. Jokes about Sam and Frodo from Lord of the Rings being gay, for example... what are they doing in a political satire? These are just plain gags, they aren’t integrated into the play, and they keep us at a distance from the story.The larger problem is that as satire, the play isn’t very politically astute. The largest misstep is in the central plot: that Gunner Livingston, our stand-in for George W. Bush, has been befriended by Rotten Bin Bottom and this unholy cabal has brought about a peace so intolerable that Livingston has to create a war in order to keep order.This made me scratch my head: Osama Bin, er, Rotten Bin Bottom here is using peace to bring about a communist state. Now, I totally understand the idea that Bush and Bin Laden have an existing relationship, but it’s never been my understanding that Bin Laden is one to push peace as a method of fundamental change. And the idea that Americans find peace so intolerable that they push their leaders into war is a thin one: haven’t most of the American voters been hoodwinked into supporting a war based on false assertions? And looking at Bush’s current poll numbers, it doesn’t seem they are still tolerating the war like they once did. It would be easy to call this a difference of opinion, but it’s hard for a satire to support humor that isn’t based on truths we quickly identify.Some may walk out of this show smiling, remembering the South Park-lite twists, and laughing at the foibles of American culture; it’s possible I’ve just got my head in the newspaper and not on the stage. There are plenty of capable and exciting performers here, including Erica Elam’s turn as young Harmony, Aaron Graham’s often affecting portrayal as Gunner, and Duncan Teater’s utter commitment to a variety of smaller roles. And there are several truly inspired songs and moments. If there are reasons that Warfield USA proves popular—beyond its penchant for giving the country an eight-person middle finger—it’s these.