Fallujah

W. Colin McKay's play is set in Iraq following America's second assault on an already destroyed city. As the playwright points out in his program notes, the "details surrounding the theatrical action are true and well documented." The mysterious death of two GIs is the focal point, as two sometimes antagonistic, sometimes romantic adversaries investigate; one is a journalist and one is a civilian hired by the Department of Defense (Lisa Robins and Roman Ruiz, respectively). What unfolds is punctuated by scattered unrelated monologues from officers, medics, and rank-and-file soldiers with one thing in common: the sense that the immorality of this war is as devastating to our troops as it is to Iraq.

Director David Laird Scott's contribution seems surprisingly uninspired, however, especially working on Leif E. Gantvoort's versatile and most evocative set. Nor is this cast uniformly up to the task of finding the pain decimating these characters—the clear exception being a heart-rending performance by Gantvoort as one of the war-twisted, murdered GIs. But in everyone's defense, McKay's tale, with its Equus-like quality of overlapping scenes as events are related and then relived, couldn't be easy to interpret, especially considering its troubling focus on the rampant sexual disintegration of nearly every character depicted. "Half the women over here will screw anything that moves," we're told in the narrative, and the play is dominated in equally disturbing measure by talk of rough sex, rape, suicide, and murder. Not even the reporter is immune to moral decay, leading one to wonder if all this abhorrent sexuality is as overwhelmingly a part of the writer's research as it is pivotal in his final product. Either way, we get it: War is hell and our current one is destroying us all in some way, no matter how distant we are from the action.



Presented by W. Colin McKay at Theatre East at the Lex, 6760 Lexington Ave., Hollywood. Thu.-Sat. 8 p.m. Jan. 26-Mar. 3. (323) 960-7822. www.theatreeast.com.