Playwright: Victoria Brittain, Gillian Slovo
At: TimeLine ( sic ) Theatre Company
Phone: ( 773 ) 281-8463; $25
Runs through: March 26
By Jonathan Abarbanel
Historians point out that the 1950s anti-Communist witch hunt of demagogic senator Joseph McCarthy never uncovered a single Red in government, although it ruined the lives of those accused. America's detention of thousands of Islamists at our military base in Guantanamo, Cuba, appears to be no less just, far more expensive and equally unsuccessful at uncovering terrorists, but far better at destroying lives.
This British documentary drama uses first-person interviews, letters, speeches and official documents to make the case that America's detention policies willfully abrogate international civil law and even accepted standards of military law, in an arrogant ex cathedra operation that's treated non-combatants as non-persons denied any recognized legal status.
The play is told from the perspective of five British citizens or residents wrongly arrested, transferred to Guantanamo and held for up to five years. Two of them, for example, were prisoners of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, accused of being British spies. When the Taliban fell, American liberators accused the two of being Taliban spies! So goes this twisted tale of paranoia, disbelief, illogic and justice superceded by politics.
Guantanamo makes its case fact by fact, building slowly, never resorting to emotional tricks and rarely attacking America directly. It doesn't have to, because the sympathies of the play are clear. Besides, Guantanamo is equally concerned—perhaps more concerned—with British government complicity in American policy, in flagrant neglect of its own citizens' rights. The play's facts are personalized through the letters and statements of prisoners to/from family members. Thoughtful and caring as they may be, they are no more passionate or revealing than similar messages from prisoners of conscience or even of crime.
The play's intentional dryness is emphasized by director Nick Bowling's rather inert staging. The 12 actors rarely move from their fixed positions on the massive, multi-layered but inelegant set devised by Brian Sidney Bembridge, as those who are free—family, officials, audience—look down on the prisoners confined in a deep, rectangular well. It's a voice play, really, a radio play and not an active drama. Too long for the material it covers, and imbalanced—Act I is nearly 90 minutes and Act II under 30—Guantanamo lacks a passionate story-telling center to match its passionate politics.
The play's message, then, is more powerful—and certainly more important—than the play itself. The motto of the military task force at Guantanamo—honor-bound to defend freedom—serves as the play's subtitle and as a call and warning to all of us to re-engage in political action, as a spineless Congress and cowed public repeat—in spades—the errors of McCarthyism. Both in Britain and the United States, the basis of martial law and the legitimization of torture have been established, and Guantanamo is among their testing grounds.
