James R. Cannon’s elegantly titled new play leaves no doubt exactly what’s in store. “A Folded Flag” means a soldier dies.
Little else unfolds predictably in this competently staged and surprisingly compelling foray into Arthur Miller territory.
One of the rare joys in theater is watching an untested script, despite its few, fixable flaws, come tantalizingly close to being fully realized in its first staging. Director Christopher Leo’s staging is one of those joys.
The time is 1991. Ben Grigson (Paul Page) is a 50ish stuffed-shirt tax man whose octogenarian mother is dying but not yet at peace. She’s never forgiven herself for goading older son Jimmy into serving in World War II against his will. News of his death has set this family into a cataclysmic cycle of sorrow.
The action moves fluidly between 1942 and ’91 as dying matriarch Abbey Grigson (Patty Mintz Figel) drifts in and out of consciousness. This shifting between “the last great war” and the ongoing Gulf quagmire shows starkly just how much America’s attitudes have changed about sending our boys off to fight and die.
Young Abbey and blue-collar husband Jack (Will Brown) are eager to ship Jimmy (a great Travis Goodman) off to avenge Pearl Harbor. There is no greater honor; serving is a sign of character and strength. They respect their president without question. Their pride is only partly diminished when the draft makes Jimmy’s decision for him. Sixty years ago? Might as well be a thousand.
Cannon’s play is best as a 1942 domestic, Miller-like drama. His imagery is evocative (“I didn’t know ghosts grew older”) and his characters well-drawn, particularly the insecure and self-destructive Jack, whose relationships with his son and German neighbors deteriorate along with world events.
Three of Leo’s fine actors play dual characters effectively, notably Theresa Reid as Irish nurse Erin and Jimmy’s teen gal Sarah. But the weight is squarely on Figel, who tackles the enormous challenge of Abbey with aplomb. She shifts from a self-assured young mom to an abrasive wretch consumed by guilt and dementia. She’s slowly drifting out to sea, and Leo’s sound design never lets us miss the correlation to how Jimmy died in battle.
Brian Miller’s set on the John Hand Theatre’s tiny stage somehow accommodates several playing areas, and Leo’s terrific soundtrack includes everything from Iron & Wine to covers of Leonard Cohen and even “Fanfare for the Common Man.”
How to make “A Folded Flag” better? Ditch its lofty, poetic tangents. Tone down a perky nurse named Nancy. A flirtation between Ben and Erin doesn’t yet ring true.
The biggest problem is that the play hasn’t figured out how to begin or end. After a devastating, if inevitable, final scene (or what should be the play’s final scene), Cannon goes a bit haywire. A regrettably soapy surprise revealed in an eye-rolling epilogue negates almost all the great work preceding it.
A family secret is revealed, and it’s not just a question of whether this leap is fair or plausible (it is neither). When our secret-keeper is asked why he has waited until now to let it out, and he responds, “What good would have come from it?” I wanted to raise my hand and offer several possibilities. How about to ease Abbey’s unnecessary torment?
Worse, this secret instantly transforms our presumed hero into a selfish jerk – and I don’t think that’s the playwright’s intent. But those are the undeniable, messy consequences. Two people, presumably loved ones, have died in unspeakable, avoidable sorrow, 50 years apart. It’s a cowardly twist that serves no overall good.
The same cannot be said of a genuinely moving new play that is just one more draft from being raised to full staff.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
“A Folded Flag”
DRAMA|Presented by Night Hawk Productions|Written by James R. Cannon|Starring Patty Mintz Figel, Will Brown, Travis Goodman, Paul Page and Theresa Reid|John Hand Theatre, 7653 E. 1st Pl.|THROUGH JULY 8|8 Thursdays-Saturdays|1 hour, 55 minutes|$16|303-562-3232
