Theatre in Review: Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, America, Kuwait (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater)

Daniel Talbott's new play, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, America, Kuwait, begins in darkness, with a Serbian woman describing, in both English and Serbian, how she was raped by a group of soldiers -- and, after that, it really gets depressing. She vanishes and the lights come up on a concrete bunker somewhere in a desert. It is populated by two young American soldiers, Smith and Leadem. They appear to be on their own, inhabiting an outpost for weeks without making contact with their base; even more strangely, they have been told not to make contact except in case of extreme emergency. Whatever their mission, it would seem to exist only in the author's imagination; as almost any news report will tell you, in Iraq and Afghanistan, safety in numbers is the rule and the army travels only in packs.

With little or nothing to do, Smith and Leadem are slowly going crazy from the heat. Their radio has died, their supply of nutrition bars is running out, and water supplies are low. (They do have a boom box that plays, among other things, Taylor Swift singing "Shake It Off," but that isn't going to keep them alive.) Leadem, who appears to be clinically depressed, is haunted by the specter of his younger brother, who accuses him of taking part in a gang rape. The Serbian woman appears, too, asking him to kill her and free her from the shame of being defiled. Leadem's, adopting a consoling tone, says, "What you did for her was a kindness."

Meanwhile, Smith, the more extroverted of the two ("I want to rape the whole f---ing desert!" he screams early on) has a series of full-blown sexual fantasies about....Leadem's mother, whom he cannot have ever met. Well, they start out as sexual fantasies, but they turn into confessions of her angst and sadness, as well as her conviction that she will never again see her son. It's not clear how Smith, who goes on at length about the proper way to have sexual congress with a piece of fruit, is also sensitive enough to imagine every worry passing through Leadem's mother's mind.

The men are joined by Miller, another soldier, who wanders in from...well, he's not sure. He somehow got separated from his supply mission -- no, they weren't coming to replenish Leadem and Smith's stores -- and his escape is especially odd because, as he notes, "We're surrounded by our own tanks, in case we get restless." Leadem, who is from the Golden State, asks Miller, "I hear California is gone. Do you think it's true?"

So maybe we're in Iraq, or North Africa, or New Jersey, in the wake of global war or ecological disaster. And somewhere along the way Leadem and a bunch of soldiers ran into a Serbian woman and brutalized her. And now, for reasons that are unclear, all three men have been left to waste away in the scorching heat, especially after Leadem, who doesn't care if he lives or dies, has his way with their dwindling water reserves. As if things weren't gloomy enough, a pair of soldiers, who have no faces, appears from time to time, living symbols of dehumanization. Other key bits: Miller has a monologue in which he marvels about an indoor mall in the Mideast that contains, among other things, a ski jump. (This really does exist, and the ironies of bringing it up are too obvious to mention.) Smith talks about lighting a mother and her baby on fire. Later, Miller, his hopes of survival fading, says to one of the others, "I want you to burn me."

As should be clear by now Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, America, Kuwait, is the feel-bad play of the summer, an all-purpose chamber of horrors that suffers from a maddening vagueness. Talbott is apparently as intent on torturing the audience as he is his characters, using a format that allows audience members to assume it is an attack on capitalism, American warmongering, or unchecked male aggression -- take your pick. Any one of the horrors portrayed might be powerful; the sheer proliferation of suffering quickly becomes alienating, even faintly ridiculous.

Under the author's direction, the actors struggle to make their thinly written characters come alive. An unrecognizable Seth Numrich is Smith, hollering and swaggering and dropping to the ground to do pushups in such a wild-eyed manner that you suspect he has been running a copy of Apocalypse Now through his DVR. In contrast, Brian Miskell's Leadem is totally withdrawn, wandering around like a zombie and all but muttering his lines. Chris Stack lends his outsized presence to Miller, but the role is little more than a plot device; the same is true of Jim Stanton, who, as Leadem's brother, exists to be a walking, talking conscience. Jelena Stupljanin does a little better as the Serbian Woman. Kathryn Erbe is touching as Leadem's mother, who knows her best days are behind her.

The production design has an unsettling specificity that the script so fatally lacks. Raul Abrego's set, a concrete bunker surrounded by sand, is a powerful image of desolation. A series of white panels, placed overhead and upstage, receive David Tennent's evocative projections of night skies and gathering storms. Joel Moritz's lighting practically makes you feel the desert heat. John Zalewski's sound design combines the howling wind with various pop music selections. All four designers create a sense of being lost in a hostile environment from which there is no return.

Unfortunately, Talbott has nothing pertinent to say about the political and military disasters that have been so much a part of this young century's history. The title is the biggest tell: Each of the four countries has, in its own way, been affected by violent warfare, but the devil is always, always in the details. Lumping them together is an easy way of seeming to make an important statement without really doing so. In Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, America, Kuwait, Talbott wants us to feel very, very guilty. It would be better if he tried to make us think. -- David Barbour