Revival of David Rabe’s 'Sticks and Bones'

Sticks and Bones, in a devastating revival, merits Brooks’s description of “theater of cruelty,” a genre that uses extreme measures to communicate its message. And though David Rabe’s rabid 1971 drama about the return of a Vietnam veteran was written as a black comedy, this overpowering production assaults its audience with a frightening ferocity.

From the minute that the soldier (also named David) reenters his family’s home, you can see that he’s pursued by the Furies. He’s been deposited on the living room floor by an impatient sergeant, who explains that he has truckloads of other Vietnam vets to deliver to their families, although not in the condition in which they left. If they haven’t been blinded in battle, like David, they’re missing limbs or are otherwise maimed beyond repair, psychologically as well as physically.

But David’s family is blind, too — in complete, self-imposed denial as to what has happened to their son. David (played by Ben Schnetzer) is possessed by the demons of war. Ravaged by trauma, disorientation, guilt, and rage, he doesn’t recognize his family. Instead, he assaults them with his walking stick, talks in gibberish, refuses to eat, and stays in bed for days. His one comfort — and his only reason for living — is the specter of a young Vietnamese girl named Zung, who follows him around the house and cradles him in bed at night. Zung (an ethereal Nadia Gan) is invisible to the other family members, and yet she’s very much alive to David and to audience members, who look on in a mixture of disbelief, fascination, and fear.

At home with Ozzie and Harriet

Meanwhile, David’s doting parents, Ozzie and Harriet, pursue the illusion of the “normal, happy American family” with a vengeance. Their false cheer and oblivion borders on the absurd in Act One, but by Act Two the black comedic tone of the play settles in, and it’s a deeply disturbing one. Harriet (played as a cartoonish Mom by Holly Hunter) spends her time carrying around trays of food and drink, changing aprons, and vacuuming. Ricky, David’s younger brother (played with relish by Raviv Ullman), chirps “Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad!” as he dashes around the house, leaping over his dazed family members. He subsists on fudge and soda pop and persists in playing the guitar while his family falls apart.

Father Donovan (a dapper Richard Chamberlain) consoles the family with vapid blessings laced with racial slurs. (Everyone suspects that David has fallen in love with one of the “yellow people.”) Once in a while, there’s a flash of coherence. “Don’t let it hurt you — all the things you saw,” murmurs Mom to the deranged David, but her words fall on deaf ears. “Murderers don’t know that murder happens,” responds David, before lapsing into ravings about the war atrocities that he witnessed.

David’s homecoming sets off a chain reaction, causing cracks in the brittle surfaces of bright America. Soon, the family is in meltdown mode. Bill Pullman’s vulnerable performance as Ozzie, David’s father, is almost too painful to watch. “Something’s going on around here. I want to know what it is.” But he never finds out. In a downward spiral that parallels David’s, Ozzie becomes less and less coherent as he confronts his own meaningless existence.

A timely revival

This timely revival pours salt in open wounds, as we welcome scores of soldiers home from the recent Iraqi and Afghanistan Wars and then find, to our incomprehension, that they are suffering from PTSD. Are we as blind to their suffering as David’s family is to his? Rabe knows whereof he writes. He spent 11 months in Vietnam and returned to become the dramatic voice of that tragic involvement (writing two other plays, The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and Streamers, on the topic).

With this disturbing revival, Rabe and his director Scott Elliott have brought the tragedy of these senseless wars — past and present — to alarming life. Their anguished message is “in our face”; we can’t turn away from it.

But if, after witnessing its horrific conclusion, this play doesn’t hit home, then what will?