The Warriors
Wing & Groove Theatre
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The stereotype of the overly earnest French intellectual, for instance. It’s been observed that French theatrical tradition maintains a fastidious distinction between tragedy and comedy, Racine and Moliere, Cocteau and Jerry Lewis. Where English-speaking theater had the example of Shakespeare’s wise and popular recognition that the truth is anything but pure–that it consists, more often than not, of messy negotiations between the profound and the ridiculous (think how funny Hamlet is as he hurtles toward not-being, how deeply Caliban aches)–the French got hung up on classical austerities that rendered their high dramatic literature Grimly Philosophical.
The Warriors is a case in point. Although described as a dark comedy, this 1991 script by Philippe Minyana comes across more like a morbid allegorical riddle in which we guess which of four war-damaged individuals will–what? Survive? That seems like too optimistic a term under the circumstances. Will not get to die would be more accurate. Will it be Mole, the trench digger who’s lost his balls? Or Wolf, the would-be lover who’s lost his hand? Noel, the corrupt soldier whose moral heart’s gone missing in action? Or Constance, the young woman whose home and family have been carried off by the winds of war? In a way, The Warriors can be seen as a nihilist Wizard of Oz without a Wizard or an Oz. No help, hope, or destination, in other words–just four souls missing parts.
The situation is reversed in the Wing & Groove Theatre Company’s festival entry, How to Explain the History of Communism to Mental Patients. Matei Visniec’s play about a writer in residence at a mental hospital in Stalin’s Soviet Union is every bit as polemical as The Warriors but 100 times more fun, more entertaining, more human–maybe because Visniec’s not a native Frenchman but a French-speaking Romanian, like another playwright who was able to bring some profound humor to Racine’s stage, Eugene Ionesco.
When: Through 10/30: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM.
How to Explain the History of Communism to Mental Patients
