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Pioneer Press

Drama that lacerates the soul
THEATER PREVIEW | By Catey Sullivan
November 22, 2007

Actor Joseph Wycoff is having a year that transcends awards. In the spring, he simply vanished, slipped into the role of a pedophile child murderer for the Next Theatre's production of "Frozen," and emerged onstage as one of the most profoundly disturbing characters and horrifyingly memorable characters I've seen in (and the numbers here are offered just for context not self-aggrandizement) 20+ years of four-nights-a-week theater going.

It was the kind of performance that makes celebratory hardware superfluous. With John Patrick Shanley's " Defiance ," Wycoff accomplishes the same sort of alchemy. No shiny statuette can even begin to hint at the extraordinary work unfolding under Jason Loewith's direction. With 2007 in its 11th hour, Next has launched one of the best productions of year.

Within the taut 85 minutes of " Defiance ," a world of unremarkable suburban living rooms, bland hotel banquet halls and windowless and interchangeable offices explodes. The destruction is as complex, devastating, morally ambiguous and utterly irredeemable as the Viet Nam conflict, in progress as " Defiance " unfolds at the Marine Corps' Camp Lejeune during the spring of 1971.

The military setting is crucial to the story, but " Defiance " isn't a military drama. It's a universal one. Its impact is all the more stunning because of its deeply personal scale. " Defiance " is not a tragedy of epic, historical sweep although history-making moments, a scathing revelation late in the story makes clear, have irrevocably shaped the characters onstage. The era-defining national and global unrest of the time play out among five people, not millions, and is all the more lacerating because of it. It's the difference between reading "10,000 troops dead" and answering your phone to learn that a loved one has been killed.

Wycoff plays Chaplain White, the kind of smarmy, clueless racist twerp you think you have pegged 30 seconds after he opens his mouth. But like every one of the seven, exquisitely plotted scenes of " Defiance ," the chaplain's straightforward exterior is just that. Shanley lets the audience bask in smug superiority -- "Thank goodness we're not like that guy!" -- for only so long. In a 10-minute scene between two guys on a park bench, the world explodes. You don't see it coming. It's not just the perfectly -- yes, perfectly -- written and delivered dialogue that makes this scene between Chaplain White and Captain King ( Osiris Khepera ) so astounding. Tiny moments like the way White folds a napkin, takes a bite from his sandwich, screws the cap on his thermos -- are as revealing as a thousand-word monologue.

And while Wycoff gets the Season of the Year trophy (which, alas, exists in only in my mind), " Defiance " is no one man show. Loewith has assembled a superbly effective ensemble cast. Would that there was a page each to devote to each actor: the bone-authentic work by Steve Pickering as a career officer felled by an injured foot; Khepera as a ground-breaking African American officer; Laura T. Fisher, a subtle powerhouse as a woman too bright to thrive in her own life, and David Rispoli as a private tossed into a maelstrom he'll never escape.

But there aren't pages. So, three words: Don't miss it.