Playwright: David Edgar
At: Theatre Mir at
Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark
Phone: 312-458-9855; $25
Runs through: June 22
BY JONATHAN ABARBANEL
David Edgar is Britain's most political playwright, even more so than the better-known Sir David Hare. Edgar also is more academic, which perhaps is why Hare has been knighted and Edgar has not. For the last 20 years, Edgar specifically has addressed the shaping of New Europe following the fall of Communism. From the security of his Western Europe home, Edgar has written about the convulsions, cultural chaos, murderous civil wars and ethnic cleansings of Eastern Europe, acutely aware of the divide within Europe itself as well as between Eastern Europe's multiple ethnic nationalities. Without taking sides he explores the complexities of religious and political tribalism ( my word, not Edgar's ) that impact the great issue of war and the greater issue of peace.
The Prisoner's Dilemma explores the fragile nature of diplomacy, which Edgar knows never succeeds until there is a collective will for it to succeed. Such a will too often only arises from the exhaustion of prolonged, mutual bloodshed. So it is in Edgar's fictional former Soviet Republic of Kavkhazia, within which an Islamic minority—the Drozhdanians—have raised rebellion. When a political settlement achieved through the efforts of a Finnish diplomat falls apart, a vicious civil war is triggered before all agree to a final solution none want: a separate Drozhdanian state that will be economically dependent upon Kavkhazia.
As the play progresses, we see a professor become a military leader and a rebel leader become a negotiator; we see international aid workers caught in bureaucratic and political tangles identical to recent ones in Myanmar; and we see hardliners and cynicism and the almost ridiculous difference a word can make in a treaty. Do the Drozhdanians 'reject' violence or 'relinquish' it? Do the Kavkhazians work in 'friendship' or 'amity?'
The Prisoner's Dilemma is supremely intelligent, but every character is an idea or a perspective rather than a real person. We learn little about them ( not nothing, but little ) outside the political context of the play, and there's no character development outside that context. Characterization, then, pretty much depends on the personality of the actors, the passion with which they deliver sometimes-didactic dialogue and the subtext they develop. The cast is large—14—and uneven, but this Theatre Mir ( Russian for peace ) debut production fortunately boasts skillful young off-Loop veterans in the key roles, among them Yosh Hayashi, Danica Ivancevic, Julian Martinez, Sean Sinitski and Mira Vasiljevic.
Staged with energy and speed by Rob Chambers, The Prisoner's Dilemma requires attention and astute listening due to its content and its array of reasonably authentic European accents not always easy to understand. It challenges audiences to become intellectually engaged more than emotionally invested. This is theater—both the play and Mir—with a head on its shoulders.
