The second worthwhile scene is a roadside campfire where Jeremy Bobb plays a sort of countrified Everyman who gets to ask all the questions that the audience has been wondering about for 90 minutes. And the third and final one is the scene in which the two men meet their Commander-In-Chief, G.W. (Sir! Do you know how many people would like to be alone with you in a room, sir?) The meeting becomes a glorious twisted event, a sort of Molotov cocktail with equal parts blind devotion, madness, and reverse logic.
These three scenes demonstrate what this play could have been if Weller had let these two messed-up vets tell their own, normal, heroic, horrible story. The stories of returning vets stand on their own. It is war that is ghoulish. Soldiers deserve something more than being trapped behind war’s cloak. They deserve to be heard, not caricatured.
Beast by Michael Weller; directed by Jo Bonney.
WITH: Raul Aranas (Mr. Aziz/Victor Leung), Jeremy Bobb (Schtyn/Smalldon/J. T.), Dan Butler (Captain Adler/G W), Lisa Joyce (Liesl/Sherine/Bonnie Ann Voychevsky), Logan Marshall-Green (Jimmy Cato), Eileen Rivera (Lt. Mariana Sanchez/Camilla) and Corey Stoll (Benjamin Voychevsky).
Sets by Eugene Lee; costumes by Colleen Werthmann; lighting by David Lander; makeup and effects by Nathan Johnson; puppets by Bob Flanagan; fight director, Thomas Schall; dialect coach, Deborah Hecht; production stage manager, Linda Marvel; assistant stage manager, Sarah Bierenbaum. Presented by the New York Theater Workshop, James C. Nicola, artistic director; William Russo, managing director. At the New York Theater Workshop, 79 East Fourth Street, NYC; (212) 239-6200. Through Oct. 12. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes.
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