Sunday, August 19, 2012

High Ground

On Saturday, I attended the play Terre Haute by Ecce Homo Theatre at the Lower Ossington Theatre. Written by American playwright Edmund White, the play imagines that, instead of just corresponding with Timothy McVeigh as in real-life, Gore Vidal visited the Oklahoma City Bomber 5 days before his execution. Over the course of 75 minutes, the two men would reveal hidden truths about their lives.

 The setting was stark: a wheel-chair for the elderly Vidal (named James in Terre Haute), a metal chair for McVeigh (Harrison), and a barrier to demarcate the glass partition separating the two men. The time limit of 20-minute for a prisoner's visit also divided up the acts: first with Harrison facing the audience, then the set rotated 90 degrees so that both men faced each other, finally we were "inside" with Harrison looking on at James. In the final scene both men faced the audience as they had their last chat. In between, James would stand, crutching his cane, addressing the audience with his thoughts and insights about the last visit.

This set-up allowed for a natural focus on the character looking out, delving more deeply into his motivations and emotions while the face-to-face 2nd act was more confrontational, more about the intellectual duel as well as the budding camaraderie (whether genuine or calculated) between the two men. Terence Bryant was excellent as James, inhabiting the role of an avuncular, jaded intellectual who was still capable of both indignant bombast and feeling. Todd Michael Sandomirsky played Harrison well, although he was partly hampered by the cipher nature of the terrorist. Furthermore, the writing of Harrison was sometimes too "artsy"; hard to believe an ex-military survivalist would express himself in such a mannered way.

I didn't buy the psycho-sexual homoerotic bond that developed between them. But given the monologues that James gave between interviews, I chose to believe that we were not watching them "live" but rather reconstructed imaginings. As such, memory can be fickle, as well as wishful thinking.

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