Friday, April 11, 2003 - OC Register
'Liberation' shows war's internal toll

Rude Guerrilla's staging about the war in Bosnia hits disturbingly close to home.

By ERIC MARCHESE

With war so prevalent in the news in recent months, Rude Guerrilla Theater Company's staging of "Liberation" couldn't be more timely. Even though the 1998 drama deals not with Iraq but with the brutal horrors of ethnic
cleansing in the Balkans throughout the 1990s, it has enough elements to show us that, though military actions may have seemingly clear-cut winners and losers, the aftermath is a dicey and complicated matter, always with
shattered lives - often of civilians.

It's also a feather in Rude Guerrilla's cap that its staging at the Empire Theater in downtown Santa Ana is only "Liberation's" second full production. It isn't the first time (nor will it be the last) that the folks at Rude G
have gone out on a limb with an Orange County, regional, West Coast or U.S. premiere of a play dealing with life's harsher issues. It's been more than five years since the troupe set up shop, and it has lived up to its mission
of providing alternative, "in your face" theater worthy of serious debate, by playwrights such as Mark Ravenhill, Sarah Kane, Ronald Harwood, Ping Chong, Terence McNally, Wendy Mac Leod, Ted Talley and Brad Fraser.

Add Steve Patterson to that list. As artistic director and resident playwright of Pavement Productions in Portland (Ore.), Patterson has written more than 30 over the past decade. "Liberation" follows the publisher, editors and staff of a newspaper office in Sarajevo that has covered the war in Bosnia from its inception. A reporter uncovers Tuna, a Serbian soldier who deserted out of disgust over the rapes and massacres of civilians ordered by his superiors. Petar has brought Tuna and his sister, Lana, to the office and offered them sanctuary and safe passage out of Bosnia in exchange for an exclusive interview in which he will condemn Serbia's military command and testify to the atrocities he has witnessed.

The Serbian military, though, has discovered Tuna's presence and cut off the newspaper building's heat, electricity and telephones in an attempt to get the journalists to give him up. Tuna, meantime, refuses to grant the interview until he and his sister's safety is guaranteed by the paper's publisher, Zlatko, creating an agonizing game of "chicken" wherein Zlatko and Tuna square off, each full of mistrust, each waiting for the other to blink.

Patterson wrings incredible tension out of this high-stakes scenario. All along, the staff and editors have been at loggerheads over how to cover the war. It's wintertime, and without heat the office's occupants are nearly frozen. When the army fires shells at the building's windows, newspaper employees are cut by broken glass, and a young Croatian reporter is left alive but in agony as fragments of glass lodge in and infect her eyes.

Though the Bosnian war's horrors were shocking and easily grasped, the details of the conflict, which involved Serbs, Muslims and Croats, were not. Wisely, Patterson doesn't try to explain these complexities. He has merely to
show a handful of loosely sketched characters getting sucked into a dark vortex to make the point that war is a surreal experience that warps all understanding. When Zlatko and others detail the stomach-churning nature of
ethnic cleansing, we're reminded of Hitler and his "final solution," while the many references to U.N. observers and peacekeepers prompts the question, as the Iraqi conflict has done, of the role of the United Nations in world
affairs. Decades and even centuries may pass, Patterson states, but human nature is unchanging. His characters are mature professionals trying to keep level heads amid an escalating crisis. By the play's end, nearly all have
been shattered by violent events that are realistically grim and more than a little disturbing.

All this and more come through in Jody J. Reeves' powerful staging, which is well-directed and, almost without exception, skillfully acted. Justin L. Waggle is explosive as the fiery Tuna, his dialect and vocal inflections
capturing this cynical soldier's bitterness and contempt. As wholly credible is Kristian Capalik, a native of Bosnia, who plays hotheaded young reporter Petar. Luz Violeta Govill is affecting as Milana, the young, elegant Croatian
blinded by shards of glass. Andrew Nienaber delivers a memorable portrait as Dado, the jaded press room chief itching to use physical force to coerce Tuna into delivering the promised interview. Solid supporting work is given by
Craig Johnson and Melita Ann Sagar as employees caught in the crossfire, and by Jami McCoy, as Tuna's equally blameless sister.

As Zlatko, David Rusiecki is miscast - he's far younger than the role demands and lacks the gravitas and acting chops to pull it off. But as his wife, Vedrana, Deborah Conroy is simply superb. The story's moral center and
humanistic heart, Conroy's Vedrana is palpably anxious even while trying to maintain her cool. And as this tale nears its violent conclusion, it's all Vedrana can do to choke back tears - a reaction many an audience member may
share.