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Nice Things
Reviewed by Neal Weaver
Rogue Machine at Theatre/Theater
Through Nov. 23
RECOMMENDED:
Vince Melocchi’s provocative, long one-act hinges on the death in Afghanistan of a young recruit named Danny, who’s from a small Pennsylvania town. His fiancée Amy (Connor Kelly-Eiding), who works in a local donut shop, is trying to cope with her grief over his loss, but she’s also angry on several counts. She’s resentful that military red tape is delaying the payment of his death benefits, and the arcane rules that may make him ineligible to receive them. And she’s especially resentful toward recruiting officer Staff Sgt. Bobbie Joe Gunning (Rebekah Tripp), who, she believes, assured him that he wouldn’t be sent overseas. Amy feels that Gunning took advantage of the shrinking local economy to lure him accepting the enlistment bonus and the educational opportunities, and then sent him off to his death.
Amy’s attempts to confront Gunning produce no positive results, and she’s bent on revenge. She takes up with Danny’s former best friend Justin (Michael Hanson), in order to enlist his aid in proving the guilt of Gunning. After a brief sexual encounter with him, she persuades him to visit Gunning at the recruiting office and pretend to want to enlist. He attempts to get Gunning to promise him that he won’t be sent to the war zone, but she is scrupulous in avoiding any promises that can’t be kept. When Amy fanatically insists that he try again to trap Gunning into making false promises, he begins to suspect that her involvement with him was merely a ploy to inveigle him into furthering her revenge on Gunning. And that her obsessive interest is a mask for her own feelings of guilt at having urged him to enlist in order to get the “nice things” his enlistment bonus might provide.
Meanwhile, Gunning has problems of her own. She’s a lesbian who’s currently involved with Sandy (understudy Amy K. Harmon) in a stormy, troubled love affair. Gunning has also served in Afghanistan, and while there she encountered a traumatic experience, which she can’t bring herself to talk about, but has left her damaged, and incapable of a healthy relationship.
Playwright Melocchi has a lot of things on his mind, including the lack of opportunities that consigns young people to dead-end lives, and leaves them susceptible to the blandishments of recruiting officers; sexual harassment and/or assault in the military; and a host of other problems. In voice-overs between scenes, he tackles issues that he can’t incorporate into his narrative, like growing suicide rates among recruitment personnel.
The play seems at first like an exposé of military recruitment policies, and later seems to be shifting the blame to ulterior motives, like Amy’s longing for nice things. But Melocchi is not really interested in pointing fingers and playing the blame game. He suggests that all his characters are victims of circumstance —and the human condition. And his multiplicity of concerns makes it impossible to create a tidy narrative. But he can at least hint at the many woes that currently bedevil us.
Director Elina de Santos has cast the piece well, and explores the complex issues with sensitivity and tact, despite the fact that the two parallel plot lines never quite converge. Kelly-Eiding powerfully captures Amy’s paralyzing anger and resentment, and Tripp persuasively suggests the latent violence that sabotages relations with her lover. Hanson makes the most of an essentially reactive role, as a young man whose loyalty to his dead friend makes him susceptible to Amy’s manipulations.
Rogue Machine at Theatre/Theater, 5041 West Pico Boulevard, Los Angeles. Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m.; through Nov. 23. (855) 585-5185, https://www.roguemachinetheatre.com.
