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- Guardians -
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 Director: Jason Moore
Writer: Peter Morris
Set design: Richard Hoover
Lighting design: Garin Marschall
Date: April 1st - May 25 2006
Starring:Katherine Moennig... American Girl
Lee Pace... English Boy
Bonus: Official pictures | Candid pictures
Official Site: The Culture Project
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Synopsis : Guardians, written by playwright Peter Morris, is a two-character monologue play --a fictional account inspired by prominent true scandals of the Iraq War: the Abu Ghraib/Lynndie England affair and the publication by the British paper The Daily Mail of fake torture photos, which led to the resignation of its editor.
This twin scandal and the eerie collision of Britain and America raise troubling questions about torture and accountability in the U.S. Army and the responsibility of journalists during wartime. These monologues, where a disgraced American soldier tells her story and a clever English journalist tells how he got his, are searingly intelligent, empathetic, troubling, yet very funny, making Guardians a serious satire of Anglo-American relations and modern political morality. |
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| Official reviews |
The New York Times by Charles Isherwood:
Nevertheless, Mr. Morris, an American playwright who has lived in England, capably masters the sharply contrasting vernaculars of this pair. It helps that the actors fully inhabit the characters shaped by his closely observed language. Aided by a flawless British accent, Mr. Pace gleams with menacing charm as the cocky young journalist, while Ms. Moennig's soldier, with a lopsided smile and hollowed-out eyes, movingly suggests a naïve and once-hopeful young woman whose soul has been scraped bare by trauma.
Still, this plain-spoken West Virginian does salvage from her plight some perspective. Perhaps implausibly, this allows Mr. Morris to engage in political button-pushing that will no doubt satisfy the audience at the Culture Project, where theater critical of government policies ("Guantánamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom," "The Exonerated") has found a warm reception.
"While you was out at the movies ... or looking at pictures of me on television ... somebody broke into your country and stole it," this humble soldier says somberly in the play's last minutes, suggesting that perhaps her future, too, might lie in scribbling angry broadsides for the op-ed pages... [read more]
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Backstage by Lisa Jo Sagolla:
Though it may sound like a bleak affair, Guardians is so scintillatingly written, seductively performed by Katherine Moennig and Lee Pace, and crisply directed by Jason Moore that the evening is a delicious satirical diversion. Morris ingeniously injects sharp political commentary into the beguiling personal stories related by the two markedly opposite characters: the man, a self-described "urban homosexual" whose overarching goal in life is to become a newspaper columnist, and the woman, a moronic hillbilly who simply wants to get out of West Virginia.... [read more]
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New York Post by Frank Scheck:
Under the direction of Jason Moore ("Avenue Q"), Pace and Moennig deliver performances of intensity and conviction, even if they occasionally struggle with their accents. And they make strikingly contrasting figures, he clad in a variety of Saville Row-style suits and she in a bright orange jumpsuit. But the play's fuzzy moral messages never seem to come into focus, and at 90 minutes the evening feels padded and repetitious... [read more]
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Broadway.com by Ron Lasko:
Playwright Peter Morris has expertly crafted this pair of intertwined monologues to practically feel like one complete story. It's smart, cynical, edgy and oddly compelling. Though the play is loaded with humor, many people will be uncomfortable listening to such frank talk about sadomasochism. Like Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, Morris keeps the audience at an icy, almost emotionless distance that has a chilling effect. This piece is much more of a provocative psychological study than a heartfelt drama. Don't expect to come out of Guardians rooting for heroes or hissing at villains; as in life, nothing here is black and white.
Director Jason Moore, best known as the director of Avenue Q, has assembled a winning team for this effective, stylistically spare production. Actors Katherine Moeninng (of the Showtime series The L Word) and Lee Pace tackle their roles with gusto. Both performers do a splendid job in making the audience empathize with the appalling actions of these less than likable characters. And that's no small feat... [read more]
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Theatermania.com by Adam Klasfeld:
Meanwhile, the American Girl (Katherine Moennig) who is clearly meant to be Lynndie England talks about how she became the face of sadism in her country. While most intelligent people realize that England has become a media scapegoat for all of the torture at Abu Ghraib, she is not the martyr that this play makes of her. Toward the end of the play, the American Girl literally points a finger at the audience and asks how we can judge her from the safety of our civilian homes. She also delivers a minute-long tirade in which she contends that "only following orders" is a reasonable excuse for her actions, and insists that she will eventually be seen as "a hero." Though she blames the Bush administration for what happened in Iraq, she lets George W. off the hook by claiming that he's a "marionette" controlled by "money." So, is no one to blame?
Pace, an Obie-wining actor and a past Golden Globe nominee, wins our sympathy with his relaxed, easy charisma. Moennig, best known for her work as Shane on the Showtime series The L Word, suffers a bit from her lack of stage technique and too often indicates the character's emotions. Still, she has a nice rapport with the audience; when her character made a Bush joke at one point, a theatergoer cheered and the actress ad-libbed an appropriate response... [read more]
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New York Sun by Joy Goodwin:
Then there are the characters. The young American woman is quite explicitly based on Lynndie England, the Army private from West Virginia who posed in several of the infamous Abu Ghraib torture photos. The 30-something Englishman is a fictional London tabloid journalist who is made out to be so vile and repulsive that you actually prefer Lynndie England to him.
The only thing that makes "Guardians" watchable is its performers. Katherine Moennig ("The L Word"),in her off-Broadway debut, fully inhabits Lynndie England, from her West Virginia accent down to her alert, fidgety eyes. Her character's entire way of being is an appeal to the audience (whom she addresses directly): Like me, like me... [read more]
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American Theater Web by Andy Propst:
Even as it sounds terrifically cautionary notes about the world in which we live, Guardians, at least until its final 15 minutes, never feels as if it is preaching. Instead theatergoers hang on the two characters' stories, as delivered in Moennig and Pace's beautifully realized performances.
To Moennig falls the difficult task of creating a fully realized portrait of the American soldier, a character that might become a mere parody of a rural hick. Moennig uncovers wonderful layers of insight and humanity in this woman. The actress makes her character's understanding of who she is and where she comes from seem not so much self-deprecating as clear-headed. When this soldier begins to muse on the differences between men and women, and the way in which they need to behave in order to succeed and survive in society, Moennig's commitment makes this woman's beliefs seem sage, even as one wishes that they contained a little less truth.... [read more]
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HollywoodReporter.com by Alexis Greene:
Each character's tale is disturbing. The girl's monologues, acted by Moennig with a West Virginia twang and an appealing mixture of softness and spunkiness, reveal someone who believes that women are naturally on the receiving end of abusive sex and military orders and that by agreeing to both, she demonstrated her patriotism.
The journalist's monologues are complicated by British references and intricate details that are not always easy to follow. But Pace's coolly intense performance creates a portrait of a journalist with no moral center whatsoever.
What's missing is suspense and buildup -- a theatrical climax. The monologues feel formless -- they lack internal rhythm -- and under Jason Moore's desultory direction, there are no dramatic peaks..... [read more] |
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CurtainUp by Jerry Weinstein:
Playing a too-close-for-comfort Lynndie England, Katherine Moennig has the harder role. While Pace uses a to-the-manor-born British accent to full effect, Moennig's attempt at a W. Virginian drawl is a bit overwrought -- distracting from an otherwise focused performance. The most striking choice about her Lynndie England is that she's all ears. Scrubbed of any vanity, with her lobes pushed forward, it's a striking visual of denial and compartmentalization. While her British counterpart is ambition writ large, her goal is modest. She wants to merely make it beyond City Limits.
So many issues can be extrapolated from the evening. Its run opens just as we mark Iraqi Freedom Day, making three years since that statue of Saddam was toppled in Firdos Square, and, as the administration has stated, "we were greeted as liberators." The play also debuts just as Seymour Hersh writes in The New Yorker of planned nuclear strikes to Iran and George Bush immediately dismisses his claims as "wildly speculative." While Guardians... [read more] |
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Variety by Mark Blankenship:
Moennig plays her with fierce pride, creating a West Virginian naif who still wants to believe in a country she feels has punished her for following orders. Her matter-of-fact delivery invites empathy, but even when she recalls her own abuse at the hands of army officers, she refuses to ask for pity.
Representing how U.S. jingoism can warp our perceptions of power, the American Girl is a crucial part of the playwright's thesis. However, she is far more successful as a device than a character. Morris overcooks the symbolism of her rural upbringing, letting the woman speak in lofty metaphors that contradict her professed lack of education.
Too often, she sounds just like the reporter, though they come from different worlds. Moennig's work may be engrossing, but the character always reads like a mouthpiece for a writer who understands his political views far better than he understands the soldier who encapsulates them.
In its final third, however, both script and actors become so forceful that it's easy to overlook the clumsy characterizations and embrace the thinking. There's always room for plays, even imperfect ones, that can whip frenzy out of vibrant ideas.... [read more]
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Village Voice by Jorge Morales:
But for a provocative explanation of how the U.S. and the U.K. lost their moral compass, go three blocks south to the Culture Project's Guardians. A hit at last year's Edinburgh Fringe, Peter Morris's spare play—a pair of monologues, really—is every bit as potent as its neighbor, if not more, with only one-tenth as many characters.
That Pace and Moennig find the humanity in such inhuman characters is nothing short of remarkable... [read more]
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