The War Plays Strange Tree Group
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In mounting Emily Schwartz’s sketchy, cliche-ridden The War Plays, the Strange Tree Group goes one better and plays the Blitz incoherent and cute. This may be the biggest programming blunder since the now-defunct Remains Theater lost its shirt with John Guare’s execrable Moon Under Miami back in 1995.
The confusion begins when something called the Allied Orchestra assembles in the former bar at the Athenaeum Theatre, their brief musical set introduced as “the show before the show.” Given their period costumes, the Britishy accent of one of the singers, and the list of air raid safety rules printed in the program, it seems safe to assume we’re supposed to be in London during the Blitz. But the band’s second number is Johnny Mercer’s “G.I. Jive,” written in 1943—two years after the Blitz ended. It doesn’t help that the instrumentalists—a bizarre combo of cello, accordion, French horn, and poorly tuned guitar—play muddy, ragged, swing-free arrangements that all but drown out the singers.
The charitable thing would be to see The War Plays as an impressionistic take on love during wartime—space, time, and cogency warped in service of deeper truths about romance struggling amid the carnage. But the thinness of the material doesn’t justify such a massive suspension of disbelief.
