Playing With Fire

THE PRIEST STANDS at one end of the hall, the revolutionary at the other--white cassock and Bible against khaki fatigues and M-1 rifle. The symbols are the obvious ones, but through them A Time of Fire attempts to come to grips with the personal side of revolution in Central America.

Written by Leverett House senior Bernadette Ward, the play is set in Nicaragua during 1979, when Sandinista rebels struggled to overthrow the dictatorial Somoza regime. Ward tries to dramatize the revolution's impact on a single village and its stock characters: the boyish revolutionaries, the Catholic priest, the young lovers, the disgruntled town elders. But the Guardia National remains off-stage; the abuses and injustice that spawned the revolution appear only as a background for the exploration of the tension between the revolutionaries and the traditions of the church and village.

Ward's approach provokes thought, but too often her symbols become stereotypes removed from the realities of the society. The church seems too milk-white, beneficently bestowing its noble goodness on peasants and Guardia alike. The revolutionaries seem too selfish, petulant and shallow. The audience hears the superficial fire of the speeches, but too seldom can see the real fire in the minds of the faithful, whether churchgoers or revolutionaries.

By foregoing any depiction of the regime's oppression, Ward forces A Time of Fire to rely on second-hand reminiscences of terror, retellings too perfunctory to arouse anger or motivate her characters. The leader of the village insurrection, Rodrigo (William Sakas), is simply introduced as a revolutionary--and the audience learns only later of the seemingly de rigueur murder of his family that sparked his attack on the state. Rodrigo's pat revolutionary rhetoric seems to spring from nowhere, and Sakas lacks the driving intensity that could salvage his character and make it more vivid and commanding.

If Ward aimed to use Rodrigo merely as a symbol, such superficial characterization might suffice. But instead, the play tries to fathom his anguished jealousy of the village priest's power over the villagers, an emotion the audience cannot appreciate fully without understanding why this power means so much to Rodrigo. His apparently pointless anger at times even risks belittling the revolutionary cause and the very real tragedies behind it.

The beatific and even-handed charity of the Catholic Father Paz (David Johnson) persuades little better. The exclusive focus on the dutiful and kindly stereotype of the priest--a role Johnson plays with subdued control--shuts out any insights into the tension and passion of a man so close to the heart of the revolutionary upheaval. The unending saccharine sweetness manifests itself again in the angelic religious devotion of Rodrigo's brother Manuel (Phillip Windemuth), who delivers his lines with unwavering child-like idealism.

IN SHORT, THERE'S too much cardboard here, and not enough flesh and blood. A symbol only becomes significant in its power to move masses, but Ward's symbols are devoid of that power. Too often long speeches only rework cliches or lapse into sententiousness. Eager to stress the rift between the revolutionaries and the church, Ward sacrifices the richness of characters and motives to emphasize their polarization.

A Time of Fire works best when it starts to break away from such stereotyped roles and speeches to show the feelings of the people caught between the symbols. Through minor characters and incidental lines Ward manages to give her play some needed depth. The eagerness of a 12-year-old soldier (Stephen Keeler) complements the world-weary cynicism of an old man (played with nice touches of irony by Jeremy Rabinovitz) and the equally cynical pilfering of a surly revolutionary soldier (Brad Blumenthal).

But the sparks that best bring out the play's potential freshness are the performances of two young lovers, Esperanza (Cynthia McVay) and Moncho (Stephen Harrison), who manage to escape the symbols. McVay combines a casual beauty with an easy naturalness perfectly suited to her role as an unbridled woman caught up in the revolution. The vagabond spirit of Harrison's Moncho provides her worthy accompaniment. Whether strumming a love song or angrily debating with his leader Rodrigo, Moncho captures the excitement the play cries out for.

Harrison's music, though dubbed incidental by the program, provides many of the most stirring moments in the play. His four songs crystalize the revolutionary fire and religious fervor that the play all too often lacks. At times the music also reveals the exuberance of the cast, playing up the vitality that is the show's strongest asset.

This enthusiasm helps compensate for the production's predictably rough edges: a missed line, a mishandled prop. a conversation shouted instead of projected. Unfortunately, Saka's direction sometimes isn't up to the challenges of performing theatre-in-the-round, as when he lets actors huddle around a dying man, muffling lines and shutting off visual expression.

And predictably for a first-time effort, the structure of A Time of Fire presents some problems of its own: the opening scenes are a little rushed and confusing in their intensity, the final scenes too drawn out and uncertain, leaving the audience unfulfilled.

WARD HAS OBVIOUSLY TRIED to highlight the relations and motivations of a people acting within a framework of terror and bloodshed without concentrating on that terror itself. However the absence of vivid oppression not only devalues the pivotal motives of the revolutionaries, but also perhaps overemphasizes their conflict with the church and obscures the injustices which drove them into opposition. With the Guardia to catalyse and focus the people's anger it is hard to appreciate the bonds between the people and the revolutionaries they support.

And in emphasizing dichotomy between the church and the revolution, the play simplifies and even misinterprets other factors in the peasants' struggle against oppression. In particular, the image of the purity and impartiality of the church seems to grossly misrepresent the past or present realities of life in Central America. The real debates today in El Salvador or Guatemala are not over the Church's role as a counter-revolutionary force, but over its emerging position as an active supporter of violent change.

Yet one should not view the play as a definitive version of events; that's not what it claims to be. What it does represent is one student's perspective on a revolutionary transformation--an earnest and heartfelt attempt to establish an empathy with the atmosphere, emotion, and motivation of the time. It falls short in capturing these personal dimensions.

But it is an honest show, one presented simply without the trappings of make-up, costumes, or set, opting to stand or fall on the strength of its portrayals. Though it fights the good fight, it comes up a bit short--but perhaps A Time of Fire will spark equally ambitious attempts to escape the playhouses of Broadway for the streets of the real world.