'Guantanamo' has had time to gain insight
By Chris Jones
Chicago Tribune arts critic

Chicago Tribune
February 13, 2006

Timeline Theater's terrific production of "Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom" is far more powerful than the London original. That's partly because this Chicago premiere contains superior acting — mostly from new or underexposed faces dripping in veracity. But it's mainly because the couple of years removed from the initial establishment of the infamous Cuban detention center has added to the weight and value of this political drama.

"Guantanamo" was rushed to the stage for political purposes. When Nicolas Kent of London's Tricycle Theatre had the idea of putting together a docudrama made up of interviews with prisoners, lawyers, family members and other stakeholders, he had specific goals: Highlight the experience of the British detainees, publicize the inherent immorality of indefinite incarceration, without adherence either to international judicial standards or the Geneva Convention, and get everyone back on British soil.

The resultant play, penned by Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo, took as its thesis the words of Lord Justice Steyn, the British legal scholar who delivered a stinging rebuke of the assumptions behind Guantanamo. After calling Guantanamo a stain on the U.S. judicial tradition, Steyn lectured that history proves even liberal democracies tended to overreact when faced with a threat, granting government and its security forces extraordinary powers out of proportion with the threat. "Often," Steyn remarked, "the loss of freedom is permanent."

"Guantanamo" was on a stage in London just weeks after Steyn delivered those actual remarks. It preached, of course, mainly to the choir. As the theatrical equivalent of an op-ed column, "Guantanamo" was successful, to a point. But to also function as an aesthetically rich piece of theater, it needed more time. Now, though the issues are still contentious, the themes and ideas resonate well beyond the immediate concern of the play. In other words, "Guantanamo" has passed from agitation-propaganda into the realm of rich political drama.

The most obvious manifestation of this is that the play seems as much about the current flap over presidentially authorized domestic surveillance. Steyn's argument is one side of that current fight. The other — which this play poorly represents — is that the U.S. faces a threat so severe that these worries are bogus. It's a debate worth pondering in the theater. Especially when realized by the director Nick Bowling in such sophisticated but honest fashion.

"Guantanamo" was first performed prior to the London bombings. That event — perpetrated mainly by British citizens on their own nation — now echoes through this material, undermining its surety in a way the authors didn't anticipate.

All of this makes "Guantanamo" a complex theatrical experience. It's not a flawless play — the second act stutters with repetition. But it's holding up to history well. To his great credit, Bowling uses some skillfully produced video segments to deftly link the actors to their real-life counterparts and the staged events to historical truth. That major enhancement wasn't on stage in London.

All of the actors are competent. Many —Clayton Smerican (full of vulnerability and uncertainty), Christian Castro, Hunter Stiebel, Robert Allan Smith and Don Blair (who does both Donald Rumsfeld and a British Lord with notable aplomb) go well beyond that. They make this a powerful chance to ponder problems of the moment — and moments well into the future.