Necessary Targets

Posted by Martina Birk on Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Potentially searing subject matter rarely rises above room temperature in "Necessary Targets," Eve Ensler's play set in a refugee camp for Bosnian women in 1995. The play's limpness comes as an unpleasant surprise since Ensler drew on actual interviews with women for some strong segments in her much-produced "Vagina Monologues."

Potentially searing subject matter rarely rises above room temperature in “Necessary Targets,” Eve Ensler‘s play set in a refugee camp for Bosnian women in 1995. The play’s limpness comes as an unpleasant surprise, since Ensler drew on actual interviews with women like those represented here for some strong segments in her much-produced “Vagina Monologues.” But in “Necessary Targets” the emotional impact of the material is muted by the staginess and contrivance of too much of the writing.

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Shirley Knight is understandably a bit at sea in the central role of a Manhattan therapist named J.S., who apparently expects to be rendering psychological assistance to victims of the Balkan conflict from the comfort of a suite at a four-star hotel. She practically clutches her pearls at the discovery that she’ll be sleeping on a cot in a bombed-out building with no concierge in sight. Ensler may be aiming to show the harsh contrast between the coddled life of New Yorkers and the brutalities that are just a plane ride away, but she undermines the credibility of the play by overstating this character’s obtuseness.

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Nor does the credibility factor rise when J.S. and a younger American “trauma counselor” named Melissa begin interacting with the women they have come to help confront the psychological scars of wartime atrocities. Confidence in J.S.’ appropriateness to her task is not inspired by her comparison of eating disorders to war: “Well, trauma is trauma,” she says vaguely.

While J.S. presides primly over bitch sessions that don’t get much deeper than discussions of American culture and sex (“Give me my cows,” says the gruff, elderly Azra; “It is better than beef salami,” counters the lusty Jelena), Melissa flaps a tape recorder in the faces of the women, prodding them to offer up testimonials for her book on “traumatized war victims” the world over.

The play is awkwardly structured, chopped up into brief scenes that meander around and seem to end just when they should be beginning. Too much time is spent showing the women engaging in generic female bonding: dancing to a Madonna record, slapping on face cream, getting drunk on Bosnian moonshine. Ensler may be attempting to show the slow buildup of trust between the Bosnians, led by the cynical, mannish doctor Zlata (Diane Venora), and the American aid workers, but the result leaves us questioning — yet again — J.S.’ professional training, even as the dramatic potential of the play ebbs away.

Even when the revelations of suffering finally arrive, they are handled in a disappointingly facile manner, as when an encounter between the wary Zlata and J.S. ends with Zlata’s laughter turning to hysterical tears and a scripted-sounding monologue in which she admonishes J.S., “You want us to be different than you so you can convince yourselves it won’t happen there where you are — that’s why you turn us into stories, savages, communists…” The level of insight into the atrocities of the conflict never gets much more complex than Zlata’s belief that “it’s in all of us, this monster, waiting to be let out,” or J.S.’ “Men … Look what they’re doing everywhere. They’re making a big, stupid mess.”

Venora gives a nicely seething, edgy performance, and indeed director Michael Wilson elicits some good work from most of the actresses on hand, from Alyssa Bresnahan as the warm but wounded Jelena to Mirjana Jokovic as the most deeply disturbed of the refugees. But each of the women is apportioned just a few formulaic moments of revelation and self-examination, in scenes that drastically oversimplify the therapeutic process. The result is that all the characters come across as two-dimensional.

We come away with remarkably few insights into the horrors specific to the Balkan conflict and the scope of the suffering they caused. Ensler gives us a few brief snapshots of pain crammed uncomfortably into a trite dramatic structure. The intensely personal testimony that was such a significant part of the appeal of “Vagina Monologues” has somehow become homogenized into sadly generic drama here.

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Necessary Targets

Variety Arts Theater; 499 seats; $60

  • Production: A Harriet Newman Leve, Willa Shalit and Bob Boyett presentation, in association with Suze Orman, Melissa Howden, Dozoretz/Fonda/Mitchell and Berinstein/Teitelbaum, of the Hartford Stage production of a play in one act by Eve Ensler. Directed by Michael Wilson.
  • Crew: Set, Jeff Cowie; costumes, Susan Hilferty; lighting, Howell Binkley; music and sound, John Gromada; production stage manager, Pamela Eddington. Opened Feb. 28, 2002. Reviewed Feb. 24. Running time: 1 HOUR, 40 MIN.
  • Cast: J.S. - Shirley Knight Melissa - Catherine Kellner Jelena - Alyssa Bresnahan Zlata - Diane Venora Seada - Mirjana Jokovic Azra - Sally Parrish Nuna - Maria Thayer

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