Review of: Hostage Song

For the recent Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) Conference, the Horse Trade Theater Group is reviving two of Clay McLeod Chapman's most recent works. One is the recently reviewed knockout The Pumpkin Pie Show: Commencement. The other is last year's equally harrowing and compelling Hostage Song. With Dixon Place workshopping his latest piece (he is artist-in-residence), Chapman is quickly becoming one of downtown's artistic dynamos. Taking a hostage situation in a nameless war-torn country and turning it into an indie-rock musical, Clay McLeod Chapman's ferocious talent seems to know no boundaries.

Hostage Song opens in a dank unfurnished basement with a young man and a woman both blindfolded are playing the childhood game of "I Spy". As they slowly get their bearings (simultaneously we do too), they realize they are being held hostage in a terrorist negotiation arrangement with America (that the country of terror is never named seems perversely appropriate). Jennifer (the uber-talented Hanna Cheek of the recent Commencement) is a journalist who was kidnapped at a random checkpoint (her native interpreter was shot) and Paul (an excellent Paul Thureen) a private contractor working through the Pentagon (Blackwell?). The term 'sitting ducks' seems hugely applicable here. That they will become another terrorist hostage story on this evening's CNN we have been conditioned to except. What is totally unexpected and eventually totally moving is that Jennifer and Paul will sing about their situation.

Despite the initial bafflement (and somewhat queasiness) of this endeavor, we soon settle into the frank framework of the show. Each character uses song to defuse the tension of the situation and also to take stock of their lives. It becomes a rather gruesome "This Is Your Life" as told through song. The musical numbers are out of sequence as the duo flash back to their pasts and then are suddenly jolted into the present. Jennifer recalls her father's fear and displeasure at her career choice. Paul is guilty over his lack of parental supervision as we see his son drift towards Internet porn while his wife slowly forgets what he looks like. The jarring time frame keeps us as much off-balance as Paul and Jennifer. As they overhear snippets of the televised demands of their captors, the couple become emotionally closer and has a terrific duet "Never Say Die" that can only be perversely described as a love song. As reality becomes nebulous, the music becomes louder and more dissonant (there is a four piece band upstage enclosed in a jail like box), we realize (as do Paul and Jennifer) that they will not be liberated. Their "fifteen minutes of fame" will be their televised deaths.

Under the direction of Oliver Butler, the tension is allowed to grow until it practically sucks the air out of the room. And exactly at those moments, Paul or Jennifer will break into song. The songs, with their heavy rock motifs are composed by the exceptional Kyle Jarrow (of the A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant fame). All songs expose the emotional neediness of the two main characters and to a lesser extent of the two other actors (Abe Goldfarb and Hannah Bos) who play their various family members. At times, the driving energy of the music (I caught myself tapping my foot) can take away from the high drama of the situation; I'm not quite sure if that's good or bad. In either case, it makes for riveting theater. The closing number with the couple's orange jumpsuits glistening in the half-light asks us to imagine who we want to be. Having removed their blindfolds (in a heart rendering touch)they stand before us as a mirror to ourselves and our society.

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