Theater Reviews

Jul 17, 2004 - Anne Nelson's "The Guys" brings the humanity of the 9/11 tragedy to Reno

By Jack Neal

Playwright Anne Nelson's compelling "The Guys" documents a New York fire fighter captain's search for meaningful words to eulogize eight of his men lost in America's - and the world's - 9/11 tragedy.

"The Guys," a two-actor approximately seventy-five minute play, was presented as part of Reno's July Artown festival at the Truckee Meadows Community College's Nell J. Redfield Foundation Performing Arts Center Friday and Saturday nights (7/16 & 7/17/04).

Part therapy, part documentary, nearly always profound, sometimes funny the dramatic exchange between two good and enormously thoughtful people, Joan a writer, and Nick a fire fighter, engages viewers in a moment somewhat frozen in time, but still too close at hand to fathom many answers as to why such a holocaust took place.

"The Guys" isn't just about the fire-fighting guys who worked heroically in those dark days. Nelson's play centers on New York's fire fighters not just for their individual and collective heroics, but as symbols for all the heroes, victims and lives that were lost, touched and changed forever on September 11, 2001.

Those of us who attended the Friday evening performance were privileged to hear comments from the play's author about how "The Guys" was conceived and written. Anne Nelson is an exceptionally intelligent and perceptive scholar, thinker and writer. That she is also exceedingly poised and precisely spoken only made what she had to say that much more intellectually accessible.

What she said about how her play came to be, what her experiences as a journalist chronicling the human survival struggles in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua had been, and what suggestions she had for minimizing terrorism in today's world are tightly woven into the fabric of "The Guys'" dialogue. Yet the play isn't preachy. It's sensitive, thought provoking, theatrically solid, and terribly important as a way of beginning to find answers regarding the threat of terrorism on the planet we all share.

"The Guys" is heavily autobiographical. Anne Nelson was asked to write eulogies and did. Joan is Anne Nelson. Nick is the New York Fire Department captain who asked for help eulogizing his lost men. The stories are real. Only the names have been changed to protect the privacy of the families involved.

The presentation seen in Reno was produced by the Actor's Gang, a Los Angeles theater company. Robert Egan, who has an enviable list of credits for directing contemporary American plays, directed "The Guys" into a near riveting experience.

The splendid actor Adele Robbins plays Joan and brings an immediacy and intensity to Joan's character that draws a listener's attention with laser precision into whatever she says. Ms. Robbins has a razor-sharp command of language and emotion. Given such overwhelming and traumatic circumstances, the gifted P. Adam Walsh plays Nick and imbues him with the very human condition of not quite knowing what to say. Above all else Mr. Walsh's Nick brings a majesty to the common man that lets an audience experience that wonderful spark of realization that there are no common men or women - only very special ones.

Maybe it's a sign of the times? Maybe September 11, 2001, has so drained us that there are few tears left to be shed? But Anne Nelson's intellectually important play never quite invaded the inner part of my being that would have added that dimension beyond intellect that moves the spirit equally as much as the mind. I wanted to be much more emotionally touched by "The Guys" than I was.

Was the play lacking, or am I? Anne Nelson believes the right questions need to be asked, before the right answers can be found. Perhaps, just perhaps, asking the question of what is lacking here is partly, just partly, what Ms. Nelson is trying to achieve.