STAGE REVIEW : ‘El Salvador’ as Occupied Territory

Heat. Iguanas. Dysentery.

They can only mean one thing: We’re somewhere south of the border. Add a little bang for your buck and--presto, folks!--it’s El Salvador, the place and the play.

At the Gnu Theatre, we’re plunged into Rafael Lima’s “El Salvador” the moment the lights go up on director-designer Jeff Seymour’s hotel room clutter, and we never come up for air. This isn’t a room; it’s occupied territory. Look around: a steamy balcony, a bathroom, lots of electronic equipment, shelves lined with videotapes, scattered socks, dirty dishes shoved under worn-out couches, a Terrorist Alert poster, liquor, Maalox, a pet iguana and telephones, telephones, telephones . . . .

The time is 1981. One organized guy, Skee (Mike Michaud), is manning the transmitter; another, McCutcheon (Drew Pillsbury), whom we later discover is a craven anchorman, keeps hunkering in and out of the bathroom. He is new to the spills and spoils of war. When the rest of the gang arrives--one by one and three by three--the place can hardly contain the clash of temperaments, the restlessness, the overpopulation, the fright and the frustration.

This is pure Theater- Verite coming at you at a bang-bang a minute (the common parlance in these parts), whether delivered by the artillery outside or the artillery within--each man nursing his own emotional one-two punches and internal grenades.

It’s an intricate set of intertwining agendas we have here, beginning with that of the alcoholic bureau chief, John Fletcher (Carmen Argenziano), who is being sued for divorce by a long-distance spendthrift wife, and climaxing with that of that devilish photojournalist John Pinder (James Morrison), who gives machismo American-style its ugliest definition. Completing the turmoil are the haunted minds of the video and audio technicians, Bill Fuller (Leo Rossi) and Larry (David Ross Wolfe), respectively, worn down and out by the horrors of the daily coverage. What a jumpy collection of ragtag reporters.

Playwright Lima crowds them into this room, this night, and throws the switch. What we get is an emotional mega-crunch--a trash compactor grinding up a caldron of raw nerves. Powerful stuff, uncompromisingly rendered by this first-rank ensemble of actors--and unflatteringly masculine, never more so than when Pinder talks Fletcher into the joint purchase of a prostitute (Riad) for the night whom he proceeds to abuse before the assembled company. It’s short-lived but explicitly compelling, nasty business.

Elizabeth Reilly has done wonders with set detail and jungle-warfare costumes. Jeffrey Markle’s shattering sound effects are about as close to the real thing as you would care to get. And Seymour has directed with the same coiled energy he put into constructing the set (which shakes persuasively during an earthquake). But Lima had it there for him in the vivid, muscular writing.

Only the message is soft--that War is Hell. But this play is much more about medium than about message. It’s also about interaction in a tight spot, about war being brutish and self-demeaning, even when the participants carry only cameras and recorders. Perhaps especially when they carry cameras and recorders.

What it lacks in profundity it makes up for in crackerjack action--an odd thing to say when you consider that the five men never leave this hotel room. Lima’s point is that the real war always rages within and to illustrate it he has drawn at least four distinct and potent characters (Fletcher, McCutcheon, Pinder and Fuller), leaving the other three (Skee, Larry and the prostitute) pale by comparison.

In the scheme of things, it’s probably better. There is such a thing as too much concentration of dramatic energy, although a more reactive prostitute might have been interesting. A case can be made for keeping her as passive as this one is and Lima makes it. There is not much that he misses. That the piece comes from the heart of his personal tour of duty as an AP/UPI reporter in the region is incontrovertible. You don’t make this up this well without first-hand experience.

Smartly, “El Salvador” is performed without a break. Just like the war.

Performances at 10426 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood, run Thursdays through Sundays, 8 p.m., indefinitely. Tickets: $15; (818) 508-5344.