Rosalie Tenseth, Kelly Ann Moore, Dionne Audain,
Sarah Saunders, And Lisa Velten Smith Photo by Jim Baldassare
In 1975, a Marine Corps jet fighter crashed during a night training exercise of an American aircraft carrier off the Carolina coast. Six pilots engaged in the exercise were reported missing. Six wives came to their regular waiting space, the ready room at operations in Beaufort, at 2 a.m. All they knew was that one of their husbands had died but the Corps offered no further information until all pilots remaining had returned. Most of the women, all officers’ wives, had been through this unique torture before, their special kind of waiting achingly familiar. Not Miranda, the youngest of them, newly out of college, where she’d been caught in her own unique torture: being shot at by American soldiers. The college was Kent.
All the older wives are soberly, neatly dressed, here in the middle of the night. Miranda has thrown on well worn hippie garb and is castigated for it, on more than one level. Today, we hardly know what they’re fussing about. 1975 seems a million years away.
Silent Heroes, a classically crafted, “well made” play, expertly fashioned and focused on an alternate view of an area of the American experience we have deemed especially American: the iconic, exalted role of the dedicated U.S. Marine whose code, Duty, Honor, Country, immutable, unchanging, unquestionable, is the bedrock of belief and behavior not only for the men in the Service but inevitably, their wives. That was 1975.
Playwright Linda Escalera Baggs means to demonstrate how deeply that code has burned into the women who wait. They also serve. And in her continually absorbing play she has unintentionally, inadvertently jolted this reviewer into thinking the unthinkable: Duty? Yes. Honor? Yes. Both comprehensible. Country? Country? It is out of context. It is a construct of totally different material. It is, in fact, material, whereas duty and honor, implanted, ingrained philosophies call for behaviors in which men die. In 1975. In 2009, both men and women die for the code and die still for country. But it is clear that for these women in 1975, these men are their countries, their imperfect, obsessed men whose own loyalties are not to duty, honor, country first but to the inexpressible joy of the freedom and danger and beauty of flying. They break the bounds of earth, they fly in body, mind, spirit. Nothing compares. And their women know it. And live with it.
Their women. Their wives. Not their spouses, not their partners. Today, we still don’t know of any gay pilots, men or women. In 1975, Women’s Lib was burgeoning. Not gay lib. The code was restricted, unyielding. These women were part of it. And during the long night of waiting for someone’s sorrow, they bind together again in spite of their mundane, hidden lives of abuse and infidelity. They bear the common bond of second place.
Not Miranda. She’s half their age, she’s a flower child still not wilted. She and her pilot husband are going to get out of this and live! If her husband has not already traded his life for the ineffable: flying is the ultimate in living, better than duty, better than honor and country, better than sex. And the women know it. Despite all, the waiting and the unintended revelations bind them to each other, to the Corps, to their perfect, imperfect men in spite of doubt, in spite of fear, in spite of pain – and waiting. It’s their duty, their honor, and these men, their country. Playwright Baggs has unintentionally raised bigger questions. Or is it intentional? What is the code? And why? And what for? Who is really served? The questions compound. The play elevates discussion in the most vital of ways: it relates to our mores, our lives.
Director Rosemary Andress has cast her company – for they are a company; it is essential to the telling of the play – so acutely it’s hard to imagine other actors in these roles. They are all astonishingly good, astonishing because director Andress has led them into strict adherence of the playwright’s cadences and yet they all convey their differing humanities beautifully in spite of being so controlled. There is no latitude for spontaneity yet we do not miss it; we are in a controlled environment of thought, of emotion. Break outs aren’t allowed. Of course, they happen; this is a splendidly calculated production. I admired all the participants, Dionne Audain, Kelly Ann Moore, Julie Jesneck, Sarah Saunders, Rosalie Tenseth, Lisa Velten Smith. I admired Kevin Hucke’s costumes, Jonathan Sanborn’s music and sound design, Nick Francone’s scenics. And I’ll think about these new thoughts for a long, long time.
Shetler Theater 54, 244 West 54th Street. Tickets, $18. Charge: 1-800-838-3006. Reserve:212-696-6699. Wed-Sat 9 pm. Mats Sat, Sun 3 pm.