attempting to save a people who do not need saving
by Douglas Messerli
Cailin
Maureen Harrison Defenders / directed
by Reena Dutt at The Broadwater Black Box / the performance I attended was on
December 8, 2019
Cailin Maureen Harrison’s play Defenders,
directed by Reena Dutt at The Broadwater Black Box in Hollywood, although based
on fact, is nearly an absurdist work, revealing perhaps just how absurd things
can become in war.
Fearful that Iceland would come attack of the Nazis, the American military ordered soldiers into that island country. The three figures of this play— Lieutenant Marcus Jansen (Bryan Porter), Sergeant Frank McKinley (Tavis Doucette), and Private Fred LaFleur (Spencer Martin)—are ordered to the island’s northern coast.
Although Geir speaks English, his beautiful daughter speaks mostly
Icelandic spiced with an occasional English word (the actress is an Icelander).
On top of that LaFleur, obviously from the backwaters of Louisiana, speaks a
mix of heavily accented English and Creole. While his seniors pretend to be
rational beings, the Private is almost a kind of young mystic, intertwining
biblical verses with the Icelandic Eddas, a collection of which has been left
behind in the church. It is almost inevitable that he and Vigdis shyly fall in
love.
In
short, if this play of meaningless acts did not end so tragically, it might
almost be described as a comedy of errors.
Yet
a kind of madness ultimately takes over the mind of Jansen, while a mix of
magic and myth spills over from the Icelanders coloring, LaFleur’s already
overwrought imagination.
Iceland, and particularly this small offshore island, has a history of
different sets of invaders and pirates, and the stories of the Edda call forth
the harsh weather they daily suffer as a kind of protection. Accordingly, they
are almost as fearful of the recently arrived American soldiers as the three
intruders are of the Nazis, whom they seem imagine behind every rock.
The small company which presented this arresting play, Pandelia’s Canary
Yellow Company, has created a truly admirable production, with all the actors
performing quite brilliantly, and with an arresting set by David Goldstein,
appropriate costumes by Shon LeBlank, and excellent sound design by Jesse
Mandapat. One might wish that all such small theater Los
Angeles companies were so wonderfully professional.
If
Defenders is not precisely a major work of theater drama, it’s certainly
a fascinating one, searching out through these long-ago events to balance the
impossible-to-believe with a heart-felt spirituality—a need to believe. Every
war throughout history has seen such bizarre encounters that only fiction and
theater—the representations of our myths—can tell.
Los Angeles, December 9, 2019
Reprinted from USTheater, Opera, and Performance (December
2019).
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