“I’ll join the army,” says a young, enthusiastic yet naive recruit at the start of A Piece of My Heart. “I’ll save the world.” In this case, the new recruit is a female, and she and six other female volunteers are headed for Vietnam. By play’s end it will be enough if they can save themselves from what lies ahead of them all.
Shirely Lauro’s play is based on 26 real life stories from Keith Walker’s book about women who served in Vietnam. They were nurses, WACs, Red Cross and USO volunteers, among others.
Lauro has created six composite characters suggested by the book’s first person monologues. There’s Martha (Anna Figlesthaler), the no-nonsense by the book nurse; Sissy (Nicole Martin), whose soft exterior has to toughen up when she first sees blood; the half-Italian half-Hawaiiian Leann (Sheng Lor) who turns anti-war; Whitney (Emmaline Friedrichs) whose affluent background clashes with the realities of combat duty; Mary Jo (Ashley Retzlaff) the cute, perky USO performer scarred by the brutality of war; and Steele (Tina Nixon) the African-American officer whose search for truth gets in the way of the military’s “version” of “the facts.” Playing all of the male characters is Josh Decker.
The just under two-hour production is more a series of brief episodes, connected by the shared experience of war—and the horrors of being in the middle of it all. Director Abagail Stein uses a minimal set of a raised platform and black boxes to create defined spaces and chairs, tables. In a first of sorts, A Piece of My Heart is the first play ever performed in the War Memorial Center.
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And therein lies the challenge: it’s a perfect setting given the topic. But the large, boxy space makes it difficult to hear every piece of dialogue and monologue. And so, the audience must rely on the visuals of the actors’ emotions and the projections above the stage.
And the levels of acting experience varied. Standouts include Nixon’s tough yet vulnerable Steele, as we watch her learn to deal with what the truth really is, based on who’s telling it. Decker is adept at playing the various soldiers, military brass, etc. changing characters quickly just by a stance, a slouch, a voice inflection. Lor makes Leean quite believable in her transformation from scared nurse to committed anti war activist, and her quick change into a Vietnamese house servant is spot on.
As A Piece of My Heart reminds us, there are no winners in war. Just survivors—for those lucky enough to make it home. And then, another “war” begins...
Through April 29 at the Milwaukee County War Memorial Center, 750 N. Lincoln Memorial Drive, third floor. For more information, visit: www.cooperativeperformance.org
