All that's certain about the death of Rachel Corrie in 2003 is that the young woman from Olympia, Wash., was traveling in the Middle East under the auspices of the International Solidarity Movement. That in the course of a protest demonstration in the city of Rafah, she deliberately placed herself in front of an advancing bulldozer. And that she was buried in the avalanche of soil dislodged by the vehicle, subsequently perishing of injuries sustained thereby.
The publicity for the one-woman play fashioned by Alan Rickman and Katherine Viner from Corrie's journals and correspondence asks whether she was a true crusader or a mere pawn, the victim of an accident, suicide or cold-blooded murder. Unfortunately, the arguments are largely relegated to the theater lobby (or doorway, where dissenters passed out leaflets on opening night).
Any skepticism over the circumstances of her untimely end - did the "ism" have a reputation for engaging in hazardous tactics under the guise of peaceful demonstration? Do photogenic blonde American girls in war zones make for media coverage? Is 23 years old - Corrie's age at her fatal hour - a bit too grown-up for the Anne Frank treatment? These questions have been excised from Rickman and Viner's text or, at best, briefly mentioned and swiftly refuted.
This leaves only Corrie's own convictions and, yes, personality to persuade us of the holiness of her mission. But despite the obvious editing of her memoirs, Corrie emerges as no more sensitive, sentimental or self-centered than any post-adolescent of her environment and upbringing. To be sure, her descriptions of her family - intensely 'involved' mother, high-achieving siblings - hint at a competitive dynamic that might spur a daughter to extreme stances, while her parents' relentless relativism may have inadvertently backlashed into Corrie's wholesale acceptance of a simplistic good vs. bad ideology.
The answers may be forever a mystery. (Hey, the book was closed on Joan of Arc in 1920, but gainsayers grumble to this day.) Ultimately, the failure of My Name Is Rachel Corrie, even as propaganda, does not lie in whether we agree with our heroine that one faction represents "pure evil" while another practices "Ghandian non-violent resistance" exclusively, but that we doubt the character's ability to distinguish truth from fiction. And to those seeking facts, a sermon that preaches only to its own faithful congregation cannot help but emerge as dramatically disappointing.
