Corps Values

Defiance�s Marines face tough choices

Comments (0) By Steven Mikulan Wednesday, Jan 31 2007

...continued from page 1

Director Andrew J. Robinson’s choices are safe but sound ones. Like Shanley, he seems aware of the delicate balance between audience interest in military affairs and antipathy to authority figures. His marching orders to the cast are straightforward — carve out as much individual stage territory as possible. Kevin Kilner is suitably winning as Colonel Littlefield, which is to say, we sympathize with the weakness of his flesh, leatherneck notwithstanding. Robert Manning Jr. at first seems too stiff to play anywhere outside of a body bag, but soon his cool demeanor and metronomic elocution make sense for a man trying to make it in the world without help from anyone.

Leo Marks’ chaplain, who spends his lunchtime alone on a bench eating his wife’s peanut-butter sandwiches, is a portrait of the banality of good. “All you hairy-chested men make me laugh,” he tells King, a tripwire line Shanley uses to signal us that the chaplain’s search for a higher justice is simply fanaticism under color of authority. Still, we’re never quite clear as to why this inside-out Sister Aloysius is so obsessed with bringing down Littlefield — because the colonel doesn’t go to church or speak of his draft-dodging son? Because one afternoon he resembled King David taking to bed a soldier’s wife?

Officers� mess: Robert Manning Jr. and Kevin Kilner (Photo by Ed Krieger)

More About

The show’s design is simple but effective. John Iacovelli’s set effortlessly transitions from the hangarlike emptiness of Quonset hut interiors to the forced hominess of the Littlefields’ wood-paneled base quarters. Paulie Jenkins’ lighting plot empathetically shades the characters’ darker personality corners while Austin Switser’s scene-transition videos of Marines rather needlessly remind us of the play’s time and place. Maggie Morgan’s costumes set an authentic period tone, though I’m not sure that Marines ever wore khaki trousers instead of their traditional olives. Then again, in a play where men are brought down for not keeping their pants on, this probably matters little.

DEFIANCE | By JOHN PATRICK SHANLEY | PASADENA PLAYHOUSE, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena | Through Feb. 18 | (626) 356-PLAY