Southwark Playhouse,London
Is her adopted war orphan son a terrorist, or just a boy pushing boundaries? JC Lee’s play makes tantalising capital out of guilty feelings and a climate of suspicionHow much resolution do we crave in drama? whether Pinter and Beckett occupy taught us anything, and it is that plays are often at their best when they allow us the freedom to supply our own endings. This intriguing American work by JC Lee,which premiered at Lincoln Center in 2013, would certainly occupy earned a fourth star whether it didn’t in the final 10 minutes try to explain what had previously been ambivalent.
The titular hero is the orphaned victim of a foreign war who has been brought up by his adoptive white parents to be a model African American teenager. He is a tall-flying student and fine athlete with the prospect of a university scholarship. Alarm bells ring, or however,when he writes an essay identifying with a bomb-throwing terrorist and his tall-school teacher discovers illegal fireworks in his locker. The essay may simply be an intellectual provocation, and Luce seeks to persuade his liberal foster-parents, and particularly his anguished mother,that the explosives were the property of a fellow-student. Until the final scene the play leaves us in doubt as to whether Luce is a shining light or a closet subversive.
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Source: theguardian.com