Theatre in Review: One Night... (Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre/Cherry Lane Theatre)

	Rutina Wesley and K. K. Moggie. Photo: Sandra Coudert

The title, One Night..., might sound a little bland, but it signals a dark night of the soul for its two lead characters, and a grim, yet gripping, entertainment for the rest of us. The lights come up on a seedy motel room, realized down to the last water stain and worn fabric by the designer John McDermott. In come Horace and Alicia, a young couple who have been staying in a shelter for the homeless. The place burned down, however, and, in the middle of the night, they have been temporarily transferred to this dump where the TV doesn't work, the bathroom hasn't been cleaned, and through the thin walls, they can hear prostitutes arguing with their johns. Horace tells the too-chatty, too-friendly proprietor that he and Alicia are married. This is a lie, and it's only the first of many in a plot filled with cagey chess moves.

In truth, Horace and Alicia were stationed in Iraq together. Alicia, a staff sergeant, was brutally raped by a trio of men; denied full justice -- one loses his leg in combat, the other two pretty much get away with it -- her life spiraled downward. Her marriage was destroyed, she lost her son; more than a year later, she remains subject to devastating flashbacks. Back home, she has been eking out a living driving a pizza delivery van. For reasons that are not immediately clear, Horace has traveled across the country to help her out. When he finds her, she is living in her car; he gets her into the shelter and helps her with her disability claim.

The question is: Why? What is behind Horace's extraordinary devotion? He claims he's grateful to Alicia for saving his life, but the details of this event are hazy at best. There is an undercurrent of tension between them that can't be fully explained by Alicia's mental problems. (Horace, too, is prone to flashbacks.) He admits to a friend on the phone that he is deeply attracted to her, but she is far too traumatized to consider any kind of connection. There are other, more vexing, questions: What's in the letter Horace doesn't want Alicia to see? Why does he insist on telling small lies when the truth would do? And why do they have wildly varying accounts of the fire?

Both a strong social drama and a cat-and-and mouse thriller, One Night... creates two compelling characters whose motivations nevertheless keep you guessing. Alicia's rape is recreated to horrifying effect via Gil Sperling's video projections and Sean O'Halloran's sound design. Alicia's subsequent experience with a shockingly indifferent military bureaucracy is shown in unsparing detail, especially when she is told frankly that her search for justice is secondary to the need to preserve morale. "Why am I a hero if I die, and a nuisance if I live?" she asks. In one especially gasp-inducing moment, a major, who resents the presence of women in the military, tells her, "If you weren't there, none of this could have happened."

At the same time, the more we learn about Horace and Alicia, the more we come to understand the cycle of deception and dependence in which they dwell. She mistrusts him but breaks out in a cold sweat if he leaves the room. His devotion to her seems designed to keep her relying on him. From moment to moment, exactly who is manipulating whom is not always clear. Adding to the tension is Meny, the motel operator, who thinks that Alicia has the makings of a working girl, and a fire marshal who wants to know why the flames erupted just outside Horace and Alicia's door.

There's a lot going on in One Night..., and sometimes the clockwork nature of the play's structure, mixing comings and goings with carefully timed flashbacks and fortuitous phone calls, lends a contrived feeling to the action. It has been 30 years since the author, Charles Fuller, won the Pulitzer Prize for A Soldier's Play, and his style is a little old-fashioned. Then again, the dialogue crackles, the situation is continuously tense, and he keeps turning the dramatic screws to the point where you won't be able to look away.

And, under Clinton Turner Davis' taut direction, the two leads deliver stunning performances. Rutina Wesley's Alicia is a harrowing account of a woman reduced to a nearly feral state, with moments of quiet lucidity alternating with deep panics and savage rages. She is especially powerful when arguing her case to various medics, officers, and administrators, finding herself up against a blank wall of indifference. When she tells a female lieutenant, "They stripped my meaning from me, Ma'am - who I thought I am," you will have a visceral sense of the despair that follows from the violation of rape. Equally fine is Grantham Coleman as Horace, whose gently soothing manner can never be fully trusted; in one especially telling moment, he expresses his frustration by hurling a card table across the room. And in the latter scenes, Coleman will have you wondering if Horace isn't even more desperate than Alicia.

There are also fine contributions from Cortez Nance, Jr. as Meny, whose cool appraisal of Alicia's charms is deeply chilling; from K.K. Moggie as a variety of unhelpful military bureaucrats; and Matthew Montelongo as a state trooper who thinks Alicia is a whore and wants a freebie, and as that fire marshal, whose genial manner doesn't mask his very real suspicions. As mentioned earlier, McDermott's set is a fine study in naturalism, but it has hidden depths, and its walls, some of which are scrims, provide a solid surface for Sperling's projections. The sight of these rather dimly rendered war scenes, hovering behind Alicia and Horace, expresses in purely theatrical terms the torment that hounds them. Nicole Pearce's lighting subtly shifts the action from one time frame to another. Jessica Jahn's costumes are also well done.

Fuller's approach certainly skirts exploitation, but the power of the production keeps us firmly engrossed in his tale, and, really, how many playwrights have been willing to grapple with the terrible damage done to our soldiers in the wars of the last decade? As his story builds to a climax and some terrible truths are told, it becomes increasingly obvious that the horrors experienced in service are only the beginning for Alicia and Horace; for them, the war goes on and on and on. It's been a long time since we've had a new work from Charles Fuller; it's nice to see he hasn't lost his touch.--David Barbour