Theater review: 'Body of an American' is sometimes powerful, mostly shapeless

When, in 1993, the body of an American soldier was dragged, beaten and bloodied, through the streets of Mogadishu in Somalia, Paul Watson photographed the horror, winning the Pulitzer Prize for the picture. He believes the dead soldier said to him, "If you do this, I will own you forever."

That haunting has, apparently, endured to this day, recorded in Watson's memoir, Where War Lives, and in Dan O'Brien's play The Body of an American, at the Wilma Theater until Feb. 1.

The play concerns war and Watson's belief that war lives inside us. So rather than indict the inhumanity of those who inflict the misery, the play's documentary style becomes a kind of travelogue of suffering: Rwanda, Somalia, Iraq, Philippines, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Syria. As a script, however, the play seems shapeless.

Watson refuses any labels, like courageous or altruistic, but he suggests photojournalists who specialize in battlefields are despair junkies. That Watson's psyche is troubled is obvious yet isn't fully revealed, due, perhaps, to the difference between a real person and a dramatic character. He is a tormented, talented man who is "just doing his job," and that job is to inform the world. He sees himself as suicidal, and by going to the world's most dangerous places, he is "waiting for somebody else to do it."

The relationship between the two men is never sufficiently clarified, and Dan the character, created by Dan the playwright, is neither likable nor admirable - an odd self-creation.

The acting is impressive, especially from Ian Merrill Peakes as Paul Watson. Harry Smith plays Dan O'Brien, and both actors play a variety of characters the two meet (lots of accents, although Smith's are often unidentifiable), and sometimes they switch roles in the middle of a sentence ("I feel like I'm standing beside myself"). They can generate enormous tension just sitting side by side in wooden chairs.

The play lacks any consideration of the art of war photography - the paradox of a beautiful picture and the ugliness it captures, stopping time in its tracks. The fancy projections (designed by Jared Mezzocchi) are sometimes effective but often just distracting and hard to read. Michael John Garces directs, using the whole huge Wilma stage for a play that seems to need intense, claustrophobic intimacy. The lack of emotional focus may be biographically accurate but isn't dramatic, and the huge political indictment - that the famous photograph empowered al-Qaeda by showing the value of propaganda - is nearly lost in the fragmented account of the writing of the play we're watching.

By Dan O'Brien. Directed by Michael John Garces. With Ian Merrill Peakes and Harry Smith. Through Feb 1. Wilma Theater, Broad & Spruce Sts. Tickets: $25. Information: 215-546-7824, wilmatheater.org.

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