Playwright: Matei Visniec. At: Trap Door Theatre, 1655 W. Cortland Ave. Tickets: 773-384-0494; www.trapdoortheatre.com; $20-$25. Runs through: Jan. 21
Playwright Matei Visniec and director Istvan Szabo K (sic) are from Romania, but neither has a Romanian name. Such personal histories are common in Europe, especially as you move south and east. When you reach the Balkans, the rich stew of nationalities and ethnicities too-often has boiled over into horrendous violence and genocide, essentially along tribal lines. In the softly forested killing fields of Serbia, Kosovo and Bosnia lie bones not only from the recent, savage ethnic wars but also of Germans, Turks, Bulgarians, Albanians, Italians and more, going back to Roman legionnaires and Philip the Great's Macedonians.
Visniec's play is a generic eulogy to the Balkans dead of many ages, populated with ghosts and survivors, but never specific about where we are or who was on which side. We know only that Mother and Father are grieving for a son killed in the vast forest, and are seeking any trace of him that might provide closure. They have returned to a ruined home with a poisoned well, both literally and figuratively, and with neighborsperhaps recently on the opposite sidecheerfully offering help for a price. A coterie of prostitutes, some transvestite, provides counterpoint in a juxtaposition I didn't fully comprehend, except in the ethnic insults of their scabrous badinage. The sweetest one sings a haunting, mournful song in an Eastern European language I didn't recognize. It would have helped to understand the song (Ovidiu Iloc, composer), or at least know its language.
As usual, Trap Door offers a first-rate production in its tiny space. The absorbing design concept (Mike Mroch, scenic, Richard Norwood, lighting, and costumes by Bisa Dimitrova and Tonette Navarro) uses a square of white sand upon the black stage to define a forest. Two dozen wires rise as trees, each wire hooked to a metal war remnant such as a pot, lantern or (mostly) land mine. As Father searches for his son's remains, his costume uniquely intertwines with the scenery. The beautifully physicalized performances often pay homage to the European clown tradition at its most solemn and profound, especially Wladyslaw Byrdy and Beata Pilch as Father and Mother.
Still, I didn't see anything intellectually new despite this production's theatrical and emotional qualities. Every conflict produces a body of novels, plays and films authored from national perspectives. Ireland produced an outpouring of literature in response to "The Troubles" of the 1970s-1990s. Eventually, the next generation of Irish writers, such as Martin McDonagh, Conor McPherson and Enda Walsh, put the conflict to bed and moved on. It may be a bit too early for that to happen in the Balkans, buthaving seen at least a dozen plays inspired by the Balkan WarsI'm ready for it.