Review: INTELLIGENCE Premieres at Arena Stage

As the third installment of Arena Stage's Power Plays initiative, Jacqueline E. Lawton explores one particularly sordid moment in post-9/11 history in her new play INTELLIGENCE. Unlike the previous two plays in this series (Lawrence Wright's CAMP DAVID and John Strand's THE ORIGINALIST), however, there's much more work to do if this play is to have a successful future life.

Inspired by true events, Arena describes INTELLIGENCE as "a fictionalized account of a covert operative who, tasked with protecting the national security of the United States post-9/11, is racing to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq when the unthinkable happens." The covert operative, in this case, is inspired by Valerie Plame (played by an excellent Hannah Yelland), the Central Intelligence Agency operations officer whose identity was leaked to the press by a member of the Bush Administration and made public in a 2003 Washington Post article. Lawton's play explores the lead up to this unprecedented event and explores its consequences for not only Ms. Plame, but two fictionalized assets - one in DC and one in Jordan - supporting her efforts to uncover the truth about the presence of WMDs in Iraq. At the center of the fury is also Plame's hothead husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson (Lawrence Redmond), who has spoken out against the Administration's stance on Iraq and related matters in the press. Wilson and Plame's careers become intertwined, which has profound implications for both their work and home lives.

While Lawton does well to leverage public primary and secondary sources related to the Plame affair and to some extent the larger search for WMDs in Iraq, she struggles with creating a cohesive narrative that engages and enlightens me, an informed audience member. When we first meet Valerie, she's trying to garner the support of a boutique owner in Georgetown named Leyla Nazari (played exceptionally well by Nora Achrati) to locate her uncle Dr. Malik Nazari (Ethan Hova), a coffee shop owner in Amman with a history with Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons program. Plame believes that Dr. Nazari has or can obtain - through travel back home to Iraq - information that can support the agency's fact finding efforts.

Putting issues with the inherent believability of the displayed tradecraft aside, this meeting scene is the first point where Lawton's overall narrative begins to unravel. There are three stories at play: Plame's mission with the Nazari's; the events leading to her name being leaked to the press and the aftermath; and the stress that the "Iraq and WMD" situation is placing on Plame's marriage to Ambassador Wilson. Of the three, the Nazari story is the most creative and only exists to illustrate the importance of Plame's efforts and the broader impact of the leak on national security. There's an excellent idea at its core, but it needs to be developed further, perhaps with the support of a subject matter expert. At the end, we're left with a play that contains three stories, two of which we already know because they've been explored better through other mediums (Plame herself wrote a book, there was a Hollywood movie, and a slew of other articles since 2003). Lawton adds practically nothing to this ongoing dialogue other than to demonstrate that writing a play about these kinds of matters that requires weaving fact with fiction is easier said than done.

Another misstep is the character of Elaine Matthews. The fact that she is an African American woman in an upper level position may be wishful thinking on Lawton's part based on well-known issues of diversity (or lack thereof) in the national security/defense world. However, the character's lines are also a problem, which is more troubling. It came off as if Ms. Lawton had watched one too many episodes of any number of television shows set in an intelligence agency and tried to create a strong character based off of what she saw. The believability issues are made worse thanks to Ms. Freeman's extremely stilted performance. I did not see a woman confident in her own skin on opening night, certainly not one that would have a managerial position in the Agency or eventually be offered a plum position supporting the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff (yes, this is in Lawton's narrative).

While the production has a few shining points - Yelland and Achrati's believable performances most notably, as well as the use of real footage of Bush Administration speeches pertaining to Iraq (projections by Jared Mezzoccchi) to reinforce the narrative - there are other stumbling points. Director Daniella Topol's staging is uninteresting and does not reflect the urgency of the situation. What should be an exciting ninety minutes feels more like two hours. It's disappointing for me because one of Topol's most recent plays in DC (IRONBOUND at Round House Theatre) had the opposite effect.

All in all, I certainly commend Arena Stage, including Artistic Director Molly Smith, for taking a chance on this new work. Unfortunately, there's a ways to go to ready it for an audience, particularly here in DC where there is bound to be at least a handful of people with a pretty good understanding of the subject matter.

Running Time: 90 minutes with no intermission.

INTELLIGENCE plays at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater - 1101 6th Street, SW in Washington, DC - through April 9. Many performances have limited ticket availability, but any remaining tickets can be purchased online or by calling the box office at 202-488-3300.

Photo Caption: (L to R) Ethan Hova as Dr. Malik Nazari, Nora Achrati as Leyla Nazari and Hannah Yelland as Valerie Plame in INTELLIGENCE at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater, running February 24-April 9, 2017. Photo by C. Stanley Photography.

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