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PRESS Chicago Tribune Newcity Chicago's #1 New Play of 2003
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""Witnessing
uncensored examinations of how these men suffered may make even
staunch war-mongers consider the circumstances leading to those
soldiers' agony, and to think about the anguish of today's soldiers
coming back from Iraq."
By
Jen Ellison and Dave Stinton LET THERE BE LIGHT..! received its World Premiere
February
24 through March 26, 2005 CAST For information concerning rights or remote performances, please
contact producer Don Hall - hall@wneptheater.org.
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The NYC Experience |
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(Top
to Bottom): The cast onstage at the fringeNYC venue; at the
bar; immediately following a performance of "Andru's Head";
out and about in the Big Apple |
Based
upon the 1946 documentary by John Huston, co-writers Jen
Ellison and Dave
Stinton have created a documentary
for the stage that follows four young veterans, just after
the Allied victories overseas,
as they grapple with the debilitating symptoms of battle fatigue.
CRITIC'S
CHOICE
Chicago Reader, March 3, 2005
In 2003 adapters Dave Stinton and Jen Ellison turned John Huston's 1946 documentary
about shell-shocked WWII vets in a military hospital into a play for WNEP Theater.
No easy task, considering that most of the film's drama is in the soldiers' heads
and that the "miracles" Huston documents--many of them achieved through
hypnosis or talking cures--look naive today.
Ellison (who also directed) and Stinton managed to turn this cinematic curiosity
into an elegant, intelligent, riveting evening of theater without employing a
shred of camp, the usual choice for theatricalizing a cult film. Together they
and a cast of energetic, committed actors vividly revealed the quiet and not-so-quiet
desperation of young soldiers traumatized by war: one stutters incessantly, another
has lost the use of his legs for no apparent reason, and a third has forgotten
everything except his name; even a memory of his mother turns out to be a half-remembered
picture from a magazine.
After an extended run at WNEP's old space on Halsted, the show had a triumphant
stint at the 2004 New York International Fringe Festival, and as performed by
the original cast in this remount it's only become tighter
and more intense,
delivered with added confidence and authority. Sadly, how soldiers cope--or fail
to cope--with postwar wounds is even more relevant today than it was 18 months
ago. --Jack Helbig
WNEP
Theater Foundation, Inc.
An Illinois Non-Profit 501(c)(3) Corporation
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