Playwright: John Patrick Shanley. At: Next Theatre at the Noyes Cultural Arts Center, 927 Noyes St. in Evanston
Phone: 847-475-1875; $23-$38. Runs through: Dec. 23
A hit play taking top honors always puts extra pressure on its author, whose next play must then match his own record despite a considerably shorter gestation period. The influence of his multiple-award winner, Doubt, is apparent in John Patrick Shanley's likewise laconically-titled Defiance. Once again we find ourselves in a parochial subculture—not religious this time, but martial—whose isolation is threatened by social issues outside its cloistered world.
The place is Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, in 1971, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Morgan Littlefield. In the first scene, he and his steel-magnolia spouse entertain two visitors--Captain King of the Judge Advocate General's office ( the legal department, to civilians ) , an officer so strack that he moves in parade-drill formation even when unnecessary, and Chaplain White, a born-again Bible-hugger from Alabama. The Colonel enlists the aid of the former in his efforts to reduce racial tensions on base--King is, after all, African-American, a product of the ghettos--while rejecting the latter's rosy-eyed passivity. But King ( are you paying attention to these names, by the way? ) is wary of assuming too much individual responsibility.
The judges who praised Doubt apparently demand conflict-with-a-capital-C, however, so we get a distraught private who claims that Littlefield has made sexual overtures to his wife--an infraction not without precedent in military units since antiquity. The cautious King proceeds to consult White, hitherto presented as a platitude-quoting cracker, for a debate over military vs. moral values, both men adopting an emotional tone wholly at odds with their characters as previously established. Mrs. Littlefield eventually joins in to further muddy the scope of the argument at hand, until it falls to the Colonel himself to review the options engendered by his lapse of discipline and take appropriate action.
No, he does NOT retire to his office and shoot himself, though in this Next Theatre production, such a melodramatic ending wouldn't surprise us at all. It's unclear whether this inexplicable breach of dramatic unity is due to Shanley relying on narrative short-cuts, director Jason Loewith's mistrust of audiences bereft of obvious road-signs, or actor Joseph Wycoff's choices for the role of Chaplain White. But the results are that only Steve Pickering's Littlefield displays behavior consistent with a single personality throughout Shanley's befuddled polemical skirmishes--an accomplishment worthy of recognition, if not by the Colonel's superiors, then by playgoers looking for guidance in uncertain times.