Adapted by Stephen Lang from the book by Larry Smith
Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn
( 312 ) 443-3800
www.goodmantheatre.org
Runs through: Oct. 9
True war stories don't need embellishment or subtext. Stephen Lang's riveting, one-man piece Beyond Glory proves that beyond a doubt. Seven blunt, unvarnished, apolitical and extraordinary stories of survival and death blaze with immediacy and intensity from the Goodman's smaller Owen stage through Oct. 9.
Lang—who serves as his own director— moves through Korea, Viet Nam, Pearl Harbor, and Italy in recounting the events that earned seven Medal of Honor recipients the distinctive silver star.
War is hell; we all know that, and Beyond Glory depicts seven scenarios form that particular hell. But the piece's terrible beauty and horrifying relevance doesn't come from hammering on a cliché. Instead, Lang offers revelations in the form of stark truths. Channeling the personas of seven very different veterans, he simply tells what happened to them. There's no moralizing, no special effects, and no historical deconstruction. Beyond Glory tells what happened to seven men. No more. Yet within those seven stories, is a universe of knowledge, insight, and white-knuckle drama.
You don't need words like 'courage' when recounting how you wrapped tourniquets around hemorrhaging stumps where arms had just been during the thick of an ambush. Those words—valiance, glory, above-and-beyond-the-call—they only come in retrospect, Lang notes.
( 'I wasn't being courageous. I was just pissed off,' notes a Navy lieutenant who blasted into the skies during the attack on Pearl Harbor. )
Lang adapted Beyond Glory from Larry Smith's book of the same name. It's a fairly small slice of voices: There are no women in here, just seven straight men talking from fields where carnage grows like amber waves of grain.
The narrow perspective isn't a problem and certainly nothing to apologize for. Lang ( and Smith ) set out to tell specific stories. There were no women in combat in the battles Beyond Glory depicts from World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam conflict. Any attempt to make the piece more inclusive would dilute its brutal authenticity.
The voices that are included are made indelible. With a shift in posture, a shrug, and an eerie variety of voices, Lang creates the reality of seven very different soldiers.
We see Daniel Inouye ( now a U.S. Senator ) , his arm hanging onto his torso by a few bloody shreds, trying to pry a live grenade from his own frozen fingers.
There's Vernon J. Baker, told when he signed up for World War II that it was 'time for you black boys to go get killed.' ( He was awarded the Medal of Honor some 50 years after his service in the segregated armed forces of the second World War. )
James Stockdale's description of torture methods during his nearly eight years at the Hanoi Hilton ( more than three of them spent in solitary confinement ) become almost too vivid to contemplate. ( Since we never declared an official war in Vietnam, the rules of the Geneva Convention didn't apply. )
There are more, of course. No matter what your views on war and giving high honors to men trained to kill, the heart of the production is impossible to resist. Beyond Glory is a tribute to ordinary people who saved the lives of their brothers, friends and allies under extraordinary circumstances.
'It's not a good story, but that's consistent with war,' says one vet at the top of the show.
The stories here aren't good, to be sure, but they are told with amazing clarity and honesty by an actor of sublime skills.
