For an unusual show, I offer an unusual review...
Nine Theses on My Name is Rachel Corrie
1. While it is a collection of a non-playwright’s journals, My Name Is Rachel Corrie is very deliberately constructed as a play by its “co-editors” Alan Rickman and Katherine Viner. It even has two acts — even though they’re not demarcated in the script and the intermissionless 90 minutes would seem to tell the audience otherwise. The first act introduces us to the character of Rachel, seen in the bedroom of her childhood home, as a 20-something college student and budding activist in Olympia, Washington. She tells us about Olympia, about the photos on her wall, about her impatience with her parents. She is Everygirl. The state of Israel is barely mentioned at all in this first 20 pages of a 52-page monologue.
I imagine this is the most surprising aspect of the play to those coming to it with expectations fueled by the controversy. “What’s so controversial?” many find themselves asking — especially for the first 45 minutes.
2. As they have constantly stated, Rickman and Viner’s guiding principle for the play was to portray Rachel as a human being, not as a mouthpiece for a political position. But obviously her politics have defined her as a human being — both to the world and even to herself, it now seems. The interest the play takes in her, then, is as an idealist. I think what has made it both appealing and frustrating to all who encounter it — reading or seeing, London or New York — is the abstractness with which this idealism is presented for much of the evening.
This is also how the play skirts the more controversial elements of Rachel’s chosen cause. No passages are included, for instance, where Rachel explains, why Palestine as opposed to, say, Darfur? The play would have us believe Rachel only wanted to do good and help people, anywhere. Surely there must have been something that got her involved specifically in this issue, and in the International Solidarity Movement. But that is left out. She is presented as an accidental heroine, who might as well have spun a globe and stopped her finger on Gaza.
I also assume that if she self-identified as an international human rights activist, her diaries and emails must be virulently anti-Bush. Barely a trace of that makes it into the play. We know what side she’s on, obviously, but the character of Rachel comes off here as effectively nonpartisan. After all, that would make her less “universal,” wouldn’t it?
Article comments
1 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
"This is why I sincerely hope the producers â€" now confident enough to extend the play’s run through the end of the year â€" will see the wisdom of actively reaching out to Rachel’s ideal audience, the college students and young activists (especially young women) who are most likely to see something of themselves in her journey. Because of things like $65 tickets, our theatre so rarely addresses the young today. If this is a play for anyone it is for them, not the traditional subscribers, board members, and other gatekeepers of the current theatrical culture."
We really need another "why I hate Israel" play catering to college students and filling them with hatred of Israel and Israelis?
In my articles and comments to BC Magazine, I generally distinguish between an American government that pretends it is friendly to our nation but does everything it can behind the scenes to destroy it, and between the large majority of Americans who are somewhat sympathetic to our nation and our plight. After a few more years of "My Name is Rachel Corrie" brainwashing you into thinking that teenagers who side with terrorists are merely idealistic creatures deserving of empathy, I won't have to dixstinguish between an evil government and an equally evil and finally openly hostile populace.
Hopefully by then, my written Hebrew will have improved considerably - it won't be worth writing in English anymore.