The Milwaukee Chamber Theater is to be congratulated for running a play like The Guys during the December holiday season. The two-character play is certainly NOT your typical feel-good holiday entertainment. Instead, it's a grim reminder of how some families will get through the holidays - those families who lost loved ones in the tragic events of 9/11.
The play, a mainly autobiographical effort by New York playwright Anne Nelson, is a modest effort. Two characters, two chairs, a table. That's it. Written shortly after 9/11, it focuses on how the characters struggle to "make sense of it all." The play gives little more than the raw feeling of the moment. One of the characters, a fire chief, is faced with the daunting task of delivering eight eulogies in a space of several weeks. He doesn't know how to do it. Through a friend of a friend, he finds a writer who wants to help. He thinks she will "have the right words" to provide comfort to the families of the men who died. The play captures the confusion, the questions and the images of the times.
The piece begins with the writer posing a question directly to the audience: "Where were you on September 11?" As it turns out, the writer had not even turned on her TV set that morning. Her out-of-state parents call with the news. Later in the play, the writer asks, rhetorically, "When will we go back to normal?" With the benefit of hindsight, we now know that "normal" may not exist for a very long time (remember last summer's power outage?).
As Nick, the fire chief, Brian Robert Mani gives the performance of his career. He is quiet, soft-spoken, and just animated enough to hold our attention. To borrow a phrase from ex-president Bill Clinton, we "feel his pain." Mani gives a perfectly calibrated performance. He exudes the essence of a leader -- a leader who suffers from guilt (he was off-duty during the morning of 9/11). As Mani talks about his experiences on that fateful day, some audience members can be heard sniffling into their handkerchiefs. Mary MacDonald Kerr adopts a more steely presence onstage. She is angry, bewildered and feels powerless to help. Mani and MacDonald Kerr are a well-matched team, and director James Tasse hits all the right notes in bringing out the depth of their characters.
The Guys isn't a perfect play. It's more of an artist's sketch. However, it effectively translates the thoughts and feelings of those who experienced a most extraordinary day.
