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‘Goldstar, Ohio’ a potent docudrama about coping with loss
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Reviewed by FRAN HELLER
Contributing Writer
Listening to the roll call of 22 Ohio servicemen killed in the line of duty in Iraq brings the war close to home in Michael Tisdale’s sobering docudrama “Goldstar, Ohio.”
A true story of love, loss and shared grief, the play filters the tragedy through the oral histories of four of these families, whose sons lost their lives in the deadly fighting for Anbar province in 2005.
It’s enough to make you weep.
The world première is at Cleveland Public Theatre through Nov. 8.
Tisdale is a Lakewood native who lives and works in New York as a writer and actor. The death of his own father in 2005, coupled with the grim local headlines of the mounting death toll from Ohio, became the springboard for a drama about coping with loss.
Tisdale wrote his play based on live interviews with some of the surviving family members. Without the playwright’s altering a word, the original transcripts became the core of the drama.
The journalistic format of “Goldstar, Ohio” reminded me of Moisés Kaufman’s 2002 drama The Laramie Project, in which a writer interviews the local townsfolk after the brutal death of a gay man in Laramie, Wyo. Andy Paris, who directs “Goldstar, Ohio” and worked with Kaufman on The Laramie Project, uses the same technique here, in which a journalist interviews the surviving family members of the four slain Marines.
The approach is extremely effective in the first act of the preview I attended but loses its punch in the overly long and unfocused second act.
Written with affection, poignancy and humor, the play is a loving tribute to the four officers who come to life in the stories told about them. They are LCpl. Daniel “Nathan” Deyarmin Jr., Sgt. Bradley Harper, Sgt. Justin Hoffman, and Sgt. Nate Rock.
The colloquial speech patterns, studded with “ers,” “huhs” and “you knows,” and the overlapping dialogue, in which family members interrupt each other’s conversations in mid-sentence, makes their characterizations seem even more real.
Whereas the riveting first act moves swiftly toward the shattering climax, the anti-climactic second act needs judicious pruning. The rambling discourse turns into bereavement therapy in which each family member describes his or her personal ordeal of coping to numbingly repetitious effect.
The cast is first-rate.
Jill Levin pierces the heart as the angry, grief-stricken mother Edie Deyarmin, whose fury at President Bush and the military’s ineptitude is punctuated by her memories, both poignant and funny, of a close relationship with her deceased son.
Levin and Dana Hart double as parents Adriana and Tim Rock, for whom dealing with their son’s death gets harder as time goes by. Sarah Marcus and Casey Spindler are the confused and angry younger siblings, Tara and Jared Rock. Jared turns to drinking and sleeping pills to escape the pain of grief over an older brother he idolized.
Anne McEvoy and Bob Goddard, as mother and stepfather Carole and Chuck Hoffman, poignantly illustrate how a death in the family can poison even the best of marriages.
McEvoy teams up with Hart as Janet and Steve Harper, whose one remaining son, Cpl. Daniel Harper (Justin Tatum) faces possible deployment in Iraq. When a tearful Janet says, “I can’t go through this again,” it breaks your heart.
Marcus personifies the young widow Kendra Harper, torn between mourning for a husband and desire to start a new life.
Goddard’s portrait of Chief Jeff “Goob” Garver delivers the dramatic knockout punch. As the town’s police chief, Garver must accompany the military’s “messengers of death” to one of the families. His voice breaking with emotion, Garver describes how he will never forget “the noises coming out of that house.” The audience never hears these grief-stricken noises, making their imagined impact even more devastating.
Chuck Tisdale, the playwright’s brother, plays The Interviewer with the appropriate understatement.
These collective tales of grief never become maudlin in the hands of the actors, whose muted sorrow magnifies their characters’ personal tragedies.
A play that is structured as a series of interviews could easily grow stale. That it doesn’t is owing to director Paris’s fluid direction and Trad A Burns’s imaginative set, which features a quartet of mobile doors as metaphors for domicile, disintegration and the rebuilding of shattered lives. It is one of the most arresting conceptualizations I have ever seen on stage.
The piercing sounds of warfare, the ominous knock on the door, and the drone of church bells summon the horror of war with graphic detail in Richard H. Ingraham’s sound design. Alison Garrigan’s drab costumes underscore the everyday garb of ordinary folk.
The title derives from the name of the support group for families who have lost loved ones in the war. A flag with a blue star connotes a family member currently serving in the military; a flag with a gold star means someone has died in the war effort.
“Goldstar, Ohio” is an important play, whose timeliness trumps its artistic shortcomings. Credit Raymond Bobgan, artistic head of Cleveland Public Theatre, for recognizing its worth and daring to take the risk.
WHAT: “Goldstar, Ohio”
WHERE: Cleveland Public Theatre’s Gordon Square Theatre, 6415 Detroit Ave.
WHEN: Through Nov. 8
TICKETS & INFO: 216-631-2727 or www.cptonline.org
Contributing Writer
Listening to the roll call of 22 Ohio servicemen killed in the line of duty in Iraq brings the war close to home in Michael Tisdale’s sobering docudrama “Goldstar, Ohio.”
A true story of love, loss and shared grief, the play filters the tragedy through the oral histories of four of these families, whose sons lost their lives in the deadly fighting for Anbar province in 2005.
It’s enough to make you weep.
The world première is at Cleveland Public Theatre through Nov. 8.
Tisdale is a Lakewood native who lives and works in New York as a writer and actor. The death of his own father in 2005, coupled with the grim local headlines of the mounting death toll from Ohio, became the springboard for a drama about coping with loss.
Tisdale wrote his play based on live interviews with some of the surviving family members. Without the playwright’s altering a word, the original transcripts became the core of the drama.
The journalistic format of “Goldstar, Ohio” reminded me of Moisés Kaufman’s 2002 drama The Laramie Project, in which a writer interviews the local townsfolk after the brutal death of a gay man in Laramie, Wyo. Andy Paris, who directs “Goldstar, Ohio” and worked with Kaufman on The Laramie Project, uses the same technique here, in which a journalist interviews the surviving family members of the four slain Marines.
The approach is extremely effective in the first act of the preview I attended but loses its punch in the overly long and unfocused second act.
Written with affection, poignancy and humor, the play is a loving tribute to the four officers who come to life in the stories told about them. They are LCpl. Daniel “Nathan” Deyarmin Jr., Sgt. Bradley Harper, Sgt. Justin Hoffman, and Sgt. Nate Rock.
Written with affection, poignancy and humor.
While the shifting of roles can be confusing, it also underscores the universality of grief. These characters could be from anyone’s family who has ever suffered a loss.The colloquial speech patterns, studded with “ers,” “huhs” and “you knows,” and the overlapping dialogue, in which family members interrupt each other’s conversations in mid-sentence, makes their characterizations seem even more real.
Whereas the riveting first act moves swiftly toward the shattering climax, the anti-climactic second act needs judicious pruning. The rambling discourse turns into bereavement therapy in which each family member describes his or her personal ordeal of coping to numbingly repetitious effect.
The cast is first-rate.
Jill Levin pierces the heart as the angry, grief-stricken mother Edie Deyarmin, whose fury at President Bush and the military’s ineptitude is punctuated by her memories, both poignant and funny, of a close relationship with her deceased son.
Levin and Dana Hart double as parents Adriana and Tim Rock, for whom dealing with their son’s death gets harder as time goes by. Sarah Marcus and Casey Spindler are the confused and angry younger siblings, Tara and Jared Rock. Jared turns to drinking and sleeping pills to escape the pain of grief over an older brother he idolized.
Anne McEvoy and Bob Goddard, as mother and stepfather Carole and Chuck Hoffman, poignantly illustrate how a death in the family can poison even the best of marriages.
McEvoy teams up with Hart as Janet and Steve Harper, whose one remaining son, Cpl. Daniel Harper (Justin Tatum) faces possible deployment in Iraq. When a tearful Janet says, “I can’t go through this again,” it breaks your heart.
Marcus personifies the young widow Kendra Harper, torn between mourning for a husband and desire to start a new life.
Goddard’s portrait of Chief Jeff “Goob” Garver delivers the dramatic knockout punch. As the town’s police chief, Garver must accompany the military’s “messengers of death” to one of the families. His voice breaking with emotion, Garver describes how he will never forget “the noises coming out of that house.” The audience never hears these grief-stricken noises, making their imagined impact even more devastating.
Chuck Tisdale, the playwright’s brother, plays The Interviewer with the appropriate understatement.
These collective tales of grief never become maudlin in the hands of the actors, whose muted sorrow magnifies their characters’ personal tragedies.
A play that is structured as a series of interviews could easily grow stale. That it doesn’t is owing to director Paris’s fluid direction and Trad A Burns’s imaginative set, which features a quartet of mobile doors as metaphors for domicile, disintegration and the rebuilding of shattered lives. It is one of the most arresting conceptualizations I have ever seen on stage.
The piercing sounds of warfare, the ominous knock on the door, and the drone of church bells summon the horror of war with graphic detail in Richard H. Ingraham’s sound design. Alison Garrigan’s drab costumes underscore the everyday garb of ordinary folk.
The title derives from the name of the support group for families who have lost loved ones in the war. A flag with a blue star connotes a family member currently serving in the military; a flag with a gold star means someone has died in the war effort.
“Goldstar, Ohio” is an important play, whose timeliness trumps its artistic shortcomings. Credit Raymond Bobgan, artistic head of Cleveland Public Theatre, for recognizing its worth and daring to take the risk.
WHAT: “Goldstar, Ohio”
WHERE: Cleveland Public Theatre’s Gordon Square Theatre, 6415 Detroit Ave.
WHEN: Through Nov. 8
TICKETS & INFO: 216-631-2727 or www.cptonline.org
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