Daily Blague

Not having seen Defiance twice, I am very unsure of the contribution of sheer surprise to its huge power. Is it merely enormous, this contribution, or essential, something that will keep the play from having a similar magical punch the second time that one sees it. Surprise is in any case so surprising an element of Defiance that I find that I am unable to write about the play without referring to it. Having done that much, I might as well put up spoiler alerts and go ahead with writing about what I saw, instead of coyly contriving to sing the praises of something I don't identify.

I have therefore decided to write for readers who have already seen Defiance. I may have already said too much! If you haven't seen the play but plan to do so soon, try to forget this short paragraph, and come back afterward.

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With Defiance, John Patrick Shanley has made his last play, the celebrated Doubt, into the first work in a cycle of highly dramatic meditations on authority. Like Doubt, Defiance is short, consisting of one long act broken into several scenes. It is equally successful at leaving the audience with a powerful conundrum about right and wrong, and about the balance, if any, that can be struck between them. Its construction, however, is not at all the same. In Doubt, the problem dawns not long after the show begins, and one marvels at Mr Shanley's ability to move his cloud of uncertainty at a steady but cumulative pace. That same skill, one can see after the fact, is put to use in Defiance to a very different end - the misdirection of the audience's expectations - so that, when the bombshell comes, well after the half-way point as the stopwatch flies, it is a real bombshell. Even the crusty New York audience at Stage I last night was audibly shocked. After which there was just enough moral argument to infect us with the urgency of matters that we were witnessing. Then we were out in the street, talking about it.

Until PFC Evan Davis steps into Captain Lee King's office, we don't know quite where Defiance is going, but that's all right, because the show holds our interest with very strong characters, and in fact we would rather postpone the moment when the play hunkers down to a confrontation about Black Power, Viet Nam, or some other issue of national concern. Set at North Carolina's Camp Lejeune in 1971, Defiance promises, or threatens, to tread some very familiar territory. We have Lt Col Littlefield, a propulsive Commanding Officer; Captain King, a tightly-sealed administrative officer with two tours of Viet Nam behind him; and Chaplain White, the newly-arrived chaplain, on his first post. Littlefield's wife, Margaret, is a very lively character, wonderfully enacted by Margaret Colin, but in terms of the action, her function is closer to that of a Greek chorus, which suits the period and moral climate of Defiance.

Continue reading about Defiance at Portico.