Theatre in Review: The Road to Damascus (The Directors Company/59E59)

	Larisa Polonsky, Rufus Collins. Photo: Carol Rosegg

Tom Dulack's play begins with a terrorist bomb exploding near Rockefeller Center, a discomfiting thought for audiences at nearby 59E59. Nearly a decade and a half after 9/11, the idea of such events is still chilling, but everyone can relax. The Road to Damascus is a nutty-as-a-fruitcake thriller that becomes more and more fanciful with each new scene.

The action of The Road to Damascus is set in the "not-so-distant future," which is typical playwright's shorthand for saying the world is even more hell-bound than it is today. Bashar al-Assad has long been removed from the presidency of Syria, a development that has caused no improvement in the embattled Middle East: The country is a sectarian war zone and a prime incubator of terrorism. The US president -- the first ever from a third party -- is using the New York and Miami bombings as a pretext for an Operation Desert Storm-type invasion -- but, unlike George Bush, who talked the talk about bringing democracy to Iraq, his successor seems intent on bombing the place to perdition. Already, 50,000 US troops are installed in Israel, an act that is surely sending up red flags (and red alerts) around the region.

Opposition, however, pops up in an unexpected place: Augustine, the first African pope, sends a message through back channels to the White House: If the president sends US planes to Syria, he will be on the ground, acting as a human shield. Dulack uses Augustine's audacious plan to draw together a gallery of characters that includes a dissipated low-level American diplomat, a glamorous journalist for an Al-Jazeera-style channel, a Catholic cardinal with a hotline to the US, and a grimly determined NSA officer of the sort who eats liberals for breakfast.

The stage is set for an elaborate game of geopolitical cat and mouse, but the preponderance of contrivances, combined with the author's frustrating vagueness about certain key details, keeps The Road to Damascus in Cloud Cuckoo Land. For example, Dexter Hobhouse, the diplomat, is chosen to deliver Augustine's message because he is the old school friend of Cardinal Roberto Guzman, one of the pope's confidants. But Dexter and Guzman haven't seen each other in decades; Augustine is new to the Chair of Peter, but surely he has other lines of communication to the world's only superpower. Also, Augustine has selected the journalist Nadia Kirilenko to deliver the interview that will share his intentions with the world. The blonde, glamorous Nadia is a Chechen Muslim (lapsed), who improbably clawed her way out of poverty and wartime devastation; even more improbably, she and Augustine are old friends from Africa; most improbably of all, she is Dexter's lover. Augustine doesn't know about their relationship. Neither Nadia nor Dexter is aware of each other's involvement in Augustine's plans. Life sure is funny, isn't it?

There's plenty more where that came from. Dexter is ordered by the US to play for time with Augustine, keeping him busy while the Syrian invasion is allowed to take place. But Dexter, after ten minutes with the pope, experiences a total change of heart and goes rogue, resigning from the diplomatic service and dedicating himself to fulfilling the papal mission. The combined security agencies of the US can't track him down, but Nadia finds him right away, hanging out in a Roman bar. Guzman produces hard evidence -- we are never told what it is -- that the New York and Miami bombings are the fault of another Middle East malefactor. (Dubai? Really?) He adds that the US must have the same evidence and is ignoring it, because it needs a pretext to invade Syria.

I'm sure we're all agreed that invading Syria, no matter what the reason, is a terrible idea, but the doomsday scenario conjured here is the sort of thing that Allen Drury used to peddle in some of his crazier political thrillers. (One wonders if Dulack has drawn inspiration from The Shoes of the Fisherman, Morris L. West's 1963 best-selling novel about a pope who mixes into Cold War politics.) Augustine says, "I was informed earlier this evening in a private audience with a representative of the President of Pakistan that if the Americans attack Damascus, Pakistan reserves the right to exercise its own nuclear options in retaliation. Israel will also try to take advantage of the situation and strike at Iran. And the president of Russia through private channels has spelled out in great detail to me that Russia will not sit idly by while Israel destroys Iran's nuclear capability." In other words, it's the infamous carriage in Sarajevo, all over again.

Despite the hysterical plot, most of The Road to Damascus consists of talk. And Dulack sometimes has a way with a line, most of them given to Augustine. Before meeting Dexter, he comments, "I would rather deal with an African warlord dripping in blood than an educated man with a college degree who is a weakling." Defending his actions, he says, "I've prayed long and hard over this. But I keep thinking about the president and his advisors also praying. They begin their cabinet meetings with readings from the Bible. And, of course, they're praying in Damascus as well. The Israelis are praying in Jerusalem. All to the same God, all at cross-purposes. To some extent, all this praying cancels itself out, does it not?"

But, too much of the time, Dulack has failed at the critical business of abstracting today's news into tomorrow's reality, no more so than in the climax, when Augustine's mission has an unintended consequence that anyone with any grasp of the Syrian situation should have seen coming, and which exposes Augustine not as an idealist to inspire others but as a dangerously naïve meddler.

Still The Road to Damascus remains watchable, if only to see what the author is coming up with next, and under Michael Parva's fast-paced direction, several cast members do well, including Rufus Collins as the caught-in-the-middle Dexter; Larisa Polonsky, who adds a welcome dose of reality to the glossy role of Nadia; and Mel Johnson, Jr., who handles Augustine's arguments with elan.

Brittany Vasta's unit set, combined with Joshua Paul Johnson's video effects, works well enough as a variety of locations, including a Manhattan hotel, the steps of the National Cathedral in Washington, an office in the Vatican, and the interior of a plane. Quentin Chiappetta has provided some appropriately propulsive original music and a broad variety of sound effects that includes traffic, planes flying overhead, and a humdinger of an explosion. Graham Kindred's lighting and Lux Haac's costumes are perfectly fine.

Given the disastrous history of the US in the Middle East, Dulack's play is certainly on the side of the angels. He never really wrestles with the fact that the neoconservative movement, led by John McCain and others, is currently out of favor, even among Republicans, which may be why he invents a president (who is never seen, by the way) who belongs to neither of the two major parties. (It is strongly implied that he is merely a tool for warmongers in the NSA.) In any case, the world is in enough trouble without having to pay attention to his unconvincing jeremiad.--David Barbour