BWW Reviews: Stirring HEROES Arrives at Shakespeare & Company

After the First World War, the French coined a dozen different medals for their soldiers and in HEROES, three are continuing to wear them proudly. The veterans were all seriously injured but survived the First World War and are living out the late part of their lives in a retirement home run by nuns. It's a place where nothing much happens except in their own minds and under their own steam. In short, from the heights of adventure and combat they find themselves in a place that is not only dull, it is suffocating. But they fight the stifling boredom.

HEROES is Tom Stoppard's translation of the Gérald Sibleyras play Le Vent des Peupliers (The Wind in the Poplars). Seeing Jonathan Epstein as Gustave, Robert Lohbauer as Henri and Malcolm Ingram as Phillipe meshing their acting skills together, you might be forgiven for wondering if the French forgot the most important award of all, a Médaille d'honneur pour acting with courage et de dévouement. Under the guiding hand of director Kevin Coleman, the triad of actors have close to sixty years with Shakespeare & Company between them. They deliver a finely tuned and understated performance that is to acting what umami is to food, savory, pleasant and delicious.

Nevertheless, the play itself is pretty upbeat, never getting very serious or god forbid, trying to make a point. It squanders the opportunity to give us insights into veterans, delivering instead the amusing nonsense that makes Waiting for Godot so fascinating. Instead of Didi and Gogo we have Gustave, Henri and Phillipe filling their time with plans to make an assault on a stand of Poplar trees on a nearby hill. That is when they are not speculating whether Sister Madeline poisons guests in their retirement home on their birthday, or if they just saw the bronze statue of a dog move.

As the plan to escape the home moves forward, minor contretemps erupt over leadership, methods and whether the 200 pound statue is part of their "family" and should be brought along,"perhaps on rollers," Henri suggests. But most of what they talk about is, as with Beckett, just to fill the time in which they are also waiting for the inevitable grim reaper to come. "Soon we will be two," "then one," "then none," they observe.

And while HEROES offers its audience a masterclass in acting, at its heart it is a slight work, filled with the ephemera of life that not only soldiers but most people spend their time worrying over. It is clear that their lives have been truncated by injuries that in one of them, Gustave, we would call PTSD. But the work does not explore this meaty subject, nor does it set up a resonance that many of us have for our own national heroes. These are veterans speaking the words of a French playwright with a British accent, and their values and demeanor are in some ways different from our own here in America. I could appreciate their circumstances, but I could not feel much of anything for any one of them. Despite the automatic worship heroes get, double for those who were disabled, the play lacks real human depth or meaning to trouble the soul. Instead, everything in this play happens in the head, not in the heart.

Which is what a lot of theatre-goers want, and in many ways this is like a summer book you read to escape, not to stir up deep feelings and emotions. There is, of course, some natural poignancy to this trio of vets, but they don't wallow in their individual disabilities. Rather, after all the time that has passed, they long ago accepted each others infirmities and simply live with them.

Whether missing a leg, suffering from petite mal blackouts or shrapnel in/on the brain, they make the best of what they are left with, which mostly consist of the FDI's - the fears,doubts and insecurities of life. Trapped in their retirement home, and spending much of their time on the terrace where they can feel the wind and see the poplars, they pass the time planning one last adventure.

While more an exercise in light comedy - with a hilarious scene in which they grapple a long hose into a climbing rope - it is not the usual Stoppard wordplay or a Hound of the Baskervilles sendup. Instead, it is a summer play, not likely to offend anyone, nor make you think very deeply after it is over. All in all, a delicious lightweight trifle that goes handsomely with warm, lethargic, summer nights.

Shakespeare & Company presents Heroes by Gérald Sibleyras, translated by Tom Stoppard, directed by Kevin G. Coleman, Patrick Brennan - Set Designer, Esther Van Eek - Costume Designer, James W. Bilnoski - Lighting Designer, Michael Pfeiffer - Sound Designer, Fran Rubenstein - Stage Manager. Cast: Jonathan Epstein as Gustave, Robert Lohbauer as Henri and Malcolm Ingram as Phillipe. June 13 - September 1, 2013 at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, Lenox, MA. About 2 hours ten minutes including one intermission. Box Office 413-637-3353. Website: www.shakespeare.org.

Photo Credit: Kevin Sprague

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