A Vietnam veteran and his brother have a frank conversation in this 1979 comic dramaRating
Excellent!
Vietnam veteran Roy (John Christopher Benson) has been back in his small Texas town for two years, but he still doesn’t feel back at home. Sitting out back of the local bar, he stares at the stars and tries to recapture a world, and some level of innocence, that is gone forever.
James McLure’s play, first staged in 1979, is, alarmingly, as potent today as it was then. One thing about humans: they’re going to hurt each other in the worst ways imaginable. As Roy recounts the horrors he saw in Vietnam, with an almost overly casual demeanour that hints at deeper scars, it’s hard not to be reminded of news reports today.
The play sways between comedy and cruelty, which the cast handle with care. The emotional hits at both ends of the spectrum work well, and the performances would not be dissuited to a stage far larger than the Etcetera Theatre’s, although the closeness of the space does lend a hand to illuminate the intimate conversations playing out.
The stage is sparse, scattered with the kind of detritus you’d expect to find out behind a bar: pieces of wood from old construction projects, a few tyres lying against a wall, the things that have nowhere else to be. Aside from serving as handy props, standing in for the Vietnam jungle or being used as impromptu weapons, it matches the characters’ own situations as they meander through conversations and wait for something to happen. The only point of distraction is the rumpled backdrop, which somewhat pulls the audience from a warm Texas evening and back into a North London theatre, but this is a quick fix.
As younger brother Ray, Patric Schwaab offers a simpler, small-town-boy foil to Benson’s highly-strung Roy. Ray looks up to his older brother, who tells stories of his youth as though they were raunchy adventure novels, but there’s a tension between the two – Roy went to war while Ray was given a medical exemption, something which gives the former slightly more status than his brother. McLure’s play riffs on this, the balance between the one who went and the one who was left behind and the impact the war has had on both of them.
While mostly a two-hander, Kyle Borg provides an excellent comic interlude as the nervous Cletis – despised by Roy and pitied by Ray. His fidgetiness brings a completely different energy to the small stage, and Borg is also able to showcase some great physical comedy skills as he bounces about the space.
Lone Star is an engaging show, with a story that extends beyond the horizons of its hour runtime. Well worth the watch.
Writer: James McLure
Director: Daniel Vickers
Producer: John Christopher Benson
Technician: Luke Dyer
Lone Star has now completed its run at the Etcetera Theatre.
