Sunday, September 14, 2008

Theater review: Footlights' Biloxi Blues

Posted by John Stoehr on Sun, Sep 14, 2008 at 6:11 PM

Moving Forward, Looking Back

Solid performance, familiar story in Biloxi Blues

By Kevin Murphy

The Footlight Players kicked off their 77th season Friday with a production of Biloxi Blues, Neil Simon’s coming-of-age comedy about a young man from Brooklyn who spends 10 weeks of Army boot camp in Biloxi, Miss.

The season opening attracted a considerable audience that spilled out of the theater’s Queen Street lobby and into the quiet streets, where the late summer’s sticky air and the flickering gas lamps set the tone for this nostalgic play.

The audience was largely comprised of two demographics: older couples decked out in their Friday night best, and younger couples, many of which were Citadel students, crisp in their uniforms with pretty girls hanging from their arms.

It seems these two groups reflect the different attractions to a play about American soldiers training for World War II. The older group looks back and smiles. The younger couples see themselves in the characters, laughing at the awkwardness of adolescence, and feel proud of their decision to serve their country.

But once the performance begins, Biloxi Blues unites us all. The play’s funny, endearing story, its fine cast, and its elaborate, orchestrated set — which over the course of the production switches from the interior of a train into a brothel, from an Army barracks into a USO dance hall — keeps the audience entertained and pleasantly removed from its present-day worries.

Eugene Jerome (played by Alex Hoffman) is a timid, curious New Yorker searching for life experiences and a little bit of adventure. When he enlists in the Army, he is stationed in Biloxi for boot camp. We first meet him and his fellow soldiers on a train headed there. The interior of the train car provides ample exposure to his new platoon members. Each is young, naïve, and trapped in a world that is quickly changing before their eyes.

Boot camp thrusts them from their personal worlds into a volatile and uncomfortable environment. Their sergeant is a dictator of obedience. He instills the Army’s philosophy of camaraderie and sacrifice. This doesn’t sit well with some, especially Arnold Epstein (played by Patrick Ryan), who is reluctant to subscribe to Army doctrine. Epstein is an intellectually motivated Jewish New Yorker. His is a penchant for undermining others with an aloof and superior attitude. In the end, his dissent is the catalyst for the play’s largest lessons and humor. But it is only after he overcomes significant obstacles that Epstein’s influence is understood.

As the play moves along, Eugene discusses the four things he wants most out of his wartime experience: lose his virginity, fall in love, become a writer, and survive the war. These desires, of course, are the stuff of adolescence. Jerome suffers false starts and spends most of his time writing his "memoirs," an endeavor that causes him equal distress and satisfaction.

The play spreads out like a paean to America’s "Greatest Generation." For contemporary audiences, the drama and humor is insufficient, leaning on nostalgia and recognition rather than stimulating conflict and narrative.

Biloxi Blues is either a snore or an amusing account of what life used to be like. It just depends on who is watching.

But it's a lighthearted comedy that's also a classic adolescent story, populated by two-dimensional characters whose problems and fears still hold true for most of us today. The play, too, no matter how conveniently it ends, is supported by solid performances.

Patrick Ryan’s portrayal of Epstein is especially rich. Epstein’s physically vulnerable yet mentally strong disposition marks him as a direct contrast to Alex Hoffman’s Eugene Jerome, who survives by not exposing himself too much.

Both of these young performers, along with the rest of the cast, do Biloxi Blues a service: they pump new blood into old characters and make us consider America’s past as much as we think about its future.

Topics: Theater
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