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‘In Darfur’ @ Horizon Theatre
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B-
An issue-weighted drama that sheds light on the genocide in Sudan, “In Darfur” is both fueled and burdened by a journalist’s get-that-story approach.
At times you’re transported by the short monologues at the heart of all this darkness — those of a brutalized young African woman who summons, of all people, Edith Wharton as a lifeline in her tortured existence.
During other moments, you cringe at the stock formula that makes Westerners — two people who couldn’t tell a military checkpoint from a mango stand — key elements in the story. Sure, this setup helps address the fractured politics and inevitable exploitation that’s the crux of the problem. But it’s all clunky mechanics.
In this Horizon Theatre production, fictional New York Times reporter Maryka Lindstrom (Elizabeth Wells Berkes) is desperate to put a face on the multitudes of murdered and displaced villagers who have fallen at the hands of the government-supported raiders known as the Janjaweed. When Maryka presses (manipulates?) a local doctor named Carlos (Eric Mendenhall) into helping her, she gets the portrait she needs: English teacher Hawa (Michele McCullough Hazard) is a pregnant Muslim who has been gang-raped and faces punishment for the crime of adultery.
After Maryka persuades — and essentially lies to — Hawa to get her story, the three plot a hasty and risky escape across the desert to Chad. That frightening, and funny, hegira opens and closes Winter Miller’s 90-minute one-act, which, with all its frantic expository dialogue, feels a lot more edifying than emotionally involving.
“In Darfur” earns credit as an exercise in dramatizing a global crisis. But its stagecraft suffers whenever Hawa is absent.
A journalist who has worked at the New York Times with columnist Nicholas Kristof (who helped get her into Darfur for research), Miller tries to personalize the character of Maryka with the kind of cliched dialogue that Meryl Streep would have trouble selling. Berkes doesn’t have much of a chance.
“You sound like a doctor stationed in hell on earth,” she tells Carlos after hearing his backstory. And after one strident phone conversation with an unmoved editor, she exclaims: “I need a front page story or Darfur is buried!”
Good heavens, get me rewrite.
Still, there’s enough shadowed complexity and good writing here to sustain interest, even anticipation.
Lisa Adler’s taut direction turns spontaneous flight across the desert into a symbolic exodus, and the brief attack scenes are choreographed swiftly and potently. Chris Bartelski’s lush soundscape works impressively, either with the scatting of automatic gunfire or the pitiful buzzfly hum of the aftermath. Tamara McElhannon’s clever costume changes allow a small cast to seem like an army of people, even as our pristine journalist apparerently has found a One-Hour Martizining in the middle of a desert.
And then there’s McCullough’s memorably touching performance, one that’s almost enshrined in relief — her sleek, delicate jawline suggesting not only physical famine but also the impoverishment of all our ideals.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays. 8:30 p.m. Saturdays. 5 p.m. Sundays. Also 3 p.m. May 3. Through May 11. $20-$35. 404-584-7450. www.horizontheatre.com.
Bottom line: Edifying drama can be more preachy than involving.
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