September 23-29, 2004

theater

Last of the Boys

by Toby Zinman

Steven Dietz's new play, Last of the Boys, is passionate, funny, altogether a knockout; his script is in the hands of terrific actors who in turn are in the masterful hands of director Emily Mann.

Long story short: Don't miss it.

Long story long: Two beat-up guys, Ben and Jeeter, both Vietnam vets and old friends, meet at the beat-up mobile home where Ben lives in the beat-up middle of a toxic dump in California. Jeeter, unreconstructed since the '60s, still trafficking in 1961 Dylan stories, now teaches a college course in the most-theorized and reminisced-about decade of the 20th century. During the visit, Jeeter's new girlfriend will appear, completely covered in clothes to hide total-body tattoos, and then her heartbroken, alcoholic mother will chase her down, and several times a ghost of a young soldier will appear. Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War, will make various appearances when he is channeled by Ben, whose father, now dead, knew him back in the corporate days. The past haunts the present.

If Salyer (Jenny Bacon) has "gravitas," she also has a weakness for Vietnam vets, knowing that her father's name is on the Wall; as her mother says, "Tell my daughter a war story and her panties fall to the ground." Lorraine (the superb Deborah Hedwall) sees through everybody's self-delusion but her own. Ben, the torn-to-pieces son who will never win his own or his father's approval, is played with immense subtlety by Joseph Siravo (Johnny Soprano, besides major stage credits). As Jeeter, Tom Wopat (The Dukes of Hazzard and lots of Broadway) provides much of the major guy charm and much of the dramatic power.

It is a complex plot (which I'm being careful not to spoil) full of complex characters who are all damaged and all articulate. The indictment of the war in Vietnam (which McNamara knew was unwinnable during the last two years of his running it) is intense and deeply personal: This play is not a soapbox rant but an examination of the long-term harm done. Last of the Boys is about the way the past creates the present and the way the present repeats the past.

Jeeter carries a sign to all the Rolling Stones concerts (200 and counting) which reads "Just Stop." This acquires resonance as the play gathers contemporary relevance: Dietz clearly wants us to see a parallel between the war in Vietnam and the war in Iraq. "What's the plan?" echoes through the play and through the years. The final image of Ben ironing an American flag is wrenching, and definitively rescues the play from any cheap accusations of anti-Americanism. If only we could get the wrinkles out.

LAST OF THE BOYS Through Oct. 17, McCarter Theatre, 91 University Place, Princeton, N.J., 609-258-2787