We are in a strange building in an unidentified city, and not even the country is clear. Davey and Jeff, the first an American soldier so blissfully uneducated that he thinks Barak Obana is a holiday resort, are confronted by a Palestinian terrorist in a suicide vest who threatens them with holy oblivion for their complacency and their ignorance and their refusal to defend what he sees as the only cause. All that needs for evil to flourish is for good men - or at least potentially good men - to stand by and do nothing. Good and evil, when it comes to terrorist causes, are interchangeable terms, depending on whose side you are on, and this short highly-watchable and highly charged play deals with the topic simply, a little too simply.But dont be put off - the performances are excellent. As a showcase for three acting talents, this is worth forty-five minutes of anybodys time. Carl Vorwerk as Davey and John Edon as Jeff are totally believable as the ordinary guys caught up in a moment of terror and a battle of ideals, in turn sprawling about on the tiny stage with a gun held to their heads and the threat of a pulled cord on a suicide jacket hanging over them. There were moments I really felt their agony. David Hutchinson is simply superb as Mo, the terrorist with a personality problem and a commitment deficiency who appears to suffer not only from the language barrier but a number of loose screws, not the least of which is the one in his bomb which fails to set the thing off. (Do bombs have screws? - I have no idea). You wont learn much about terrorism you didnt know before, but youll feel the heat. There is a nasty sequence where one of the hostages extracts a pin from Mos bloody arm, and it is all good visceral stuff when you are practically sitting on the actors. The play, well-written and ably directed by Robert Gilbert, needs more work and development, as do the characters, in order to pump home its intended message about shared guilt and responsibility for the injustices of the world. But as a short, sharp shock in what it is like to share a tiny room with a human bomb, it works a treat. See it for that and for the terrific performances by three superb young actors.
