Review
Betrayed
Culture Project
February 24, 2008
Morgan Wycks
mwycks@nyconstage.org
George Packer's Betrayed is, despite its series of flashbacks and direct addresses, a well-made play that works very hard, and often succeeds, in portraying the life-threatening headaches that Iraqi citizens must endure on a minute-by-minute basis. And if you're an Iraqi citizen who believes in what the U.S. and its allies are trying to do, the headache is beyond endurable. Zeroing in on three such individuals, Packer allows us to identify with ordinary people just doing their jobs and struggling to survive, literally and figuratively, in the process. It's not the plot, or even the story, that's important here, although it is certainly substantial enough, but more the characters' discovery that they aren't even pawns, much less people, in a political juggernaut.
Pippin Parker carefully, perhaps too carefully, directs this work allowing the inherent fear and paranoia we bring to it to do their own work. It's a smart move in some respects because there's nothing forced or tricky about it - it's simply there. He also gets lovely and moving work from his cast especially his lead actor Waleed F. Zuaiter whose performance never asks for pity despite the character's pleas. Sevan Greene and Aadya Bedi as his colleagues nicely delineate who they were before the war with who they are now. Both Packer and Parker overstack the deck somewhat with regard to the indifferent, arrogant and bigoted Americans but frankly I'm not sure these depictions are far from the truth. They just don't get equal stage time.
The Culture Project's shoe-string budget and home base shuffling doesn't seem to get in the way of its ability to produce vitally relevant theatre. The surprising thing with Betrayed is how well the bare-bones values serve the work. Perhaps other companies could take a lesson how subject matter and actual writing of worth is the essence of theatre.
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