Hero with an asterisk: American Lives Theatre premieres "Arlington"

Ex-Marine's impulsive act arouses silhouettes.

Two recent news events confirm the timeliness of a documentary-style new production by American Lives Theatre: Barney Frank died the other day, remembered mainly for his witty, progressive service in the U.S. Senate and his stature as the first openly gay national political figure. The other current event is among the Trump-initiated proposals for physical changes to Washington, D.C., a triumphal arch near the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery, a gesture of vaunting personal glory from a noted disparager of military sacrifice.

Andrew Kramer's "Arlington, or Your Forgotten American Hero" opened Thursday in spectacular but far from superficial fashion in the Russell Theatre, the main stage at the Phoenix Theatre Cultural Centre. The story is steeped in the irony of American heroism, distorted by political agendas, bias, and cultural fashion. Chris Saunders' direction allows the cast to probe the wide range of behavior and attitude that shapes the hero's fate.

Depending on the mood of the times, heroic behavior is judged according to the identity of the purported hero in society. In 1975, the story of Oliver Sipple, the ex-Marine whose impulsive gesture deflecting a would-be presidential assassin's gun, became overshadowed by his sexual identity. As a gay man when coming out was risky, Sipple, known as "Billy" in his San Francisco community, becomes unhinged by the burden of his subsequent fame, which has crucially alienated him from his family in Detroit.

Kramer's unbuttoned writing style, wonderfully supplemented by video and still projections

Oliver Sipple confronts Harvey Milk's challenge.

showing people and events relevant to Sipple's story, places the action mainly in the protagonist's studio apartment, about which Devin Pierce Scheef's set design speaks volumes. A large easy chair center stage helps emphasize his isolation. The back and side walls are decorated with sticky notes, hiding wall openings to the outside world. Often that world comes bursting in on Sipple, chiefly in the form of persons who impacted his life, sometimes in ghostly or fantasized visits. His Vietnam war-related PTSD carries over into his psychological struggles with unwanted fame, eventually to fatal effect. 

Michael Hosp brilliantly plays the conflicted soldier, eloquent and anguished about his unsought exposure to the scrutiny of a world largely hostile to homosexuality. Obstacles remained to coming out even in 1975 San Francisco, the dramaturgical program note reminds us. The bias that takes virulent form in Oliver's blue-collar family is clearly made to stand for the widespread hostility that tarnished the new hero's fame across a nation anxious to hold on to the virtue of military service after the Vietnam debacle. 

Yet a nation traumatized by a presidential assassination less than a dozen years before was prepared to celebrate his action, saving the life of Gerald R. Ford, up to a point. But the revelation blared by the celebrated newspaper columnist Herb Caen crossed that point and any dream of Arlington as the hero's final resting place was erased.

Kramer understandably has to view the real-life characters somewhat as caricatures, or as symbols of the societal turmoil over sexuality and emerging demands for personal and group freedom. So it's easy to understand how play-acting, something of a cultural staple for metropolitan gays emerging from the closet, shapes how straight and gay people alike are portrayed here. I have no idea of how Herb Caen came across to people in person, but it makes sense that Jonathan Studdard, in one of several roles, played the columnist as a law unto himself, a sneer on his lips, disdainful of any collateral damage his  published writings could cause. 

Oliver's close-knit family before unraveling

Everyone in this story stands for something germane to America in the 1970s. When we look through their performative aspects to regard them as people, we see them mainly as Oliver Sipple experiences them. The performances are outlined by agenda-setting: We may sympathize more with the camera-shop proprietor turned politician Harvey Milk (played with apt flamboyance by Jay Hemphill), soon to be martyred to the cause. But we are also invited to appreciate the narrow embedded perspective of Oliver's mother, father, and brother in the poignant performances of Suzanne Fleenor, Rob Johansen, and Evan Wolfgang. Each of those actors shines as well in other roles, and Anthony James Sirk's costume designs embrace each character with the appropriate look. 

It's clear that what must have been intense workshopping has paid off handsomely in what was evident opening night in "Arlington." The development of a complex story that necessarily owes much to recent history never comes through as a lecture. What you may learn from this show is never as important as what you will certainly feel. Emotional understanding is as real in such theater as any intellectual grasp you might gain from exposure to it. And there's more than one kind of valor, whether or not it's accorded a place at Arlington.

[Photos: Indy Ghost Light]