Poignant ‘Voices’

If there is to be peace in the Middle East, and specifically in Israel, it will not happen in diplomatic shuttle talks between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. It will happen, in that strangely abstract phrase, on the ground. Actor-playwright Steve Greenstein insists on this point in his fascinating solo play, “Voices From the Holy . . . And Not So Holy Land,” at the Sweet Lies Theatre in North Hollywood.

Greenstein’s piece travels well: After an initial reading at San Diego Repertory Theatre and an earlier run at the Bitter Truth Theatre, “Voices” carried on in Antwerp, Belgium and other European venues. Unlike the vast majority of solo performance pieces, Greenstein’s subject isn’t self-centered, but global and cultural. His collage drama of bad blood between Arab and Jew, and Jew and Jew, could play in Juneau or Jakarta.

Yet, as universal as the problems he attacks are--zealotry, nationalism, fear, ambition, yuppiedom--Greenstein’s approach is resolutely specific, offered through an array of characters. His Reseda car salesman, Louis Weiss, is your basic boastful huckster, and a nonobservant Jew married to a Catholic. John, a Palestinian burger-joint owner, feels he’s being pushed out of East Jerusalem and notices that fewer and fewer Jews come to his place anymore. Yossi, an Israeli yuppie hooked on his cell phone, acts like Mr. Casual but painfully recalls the bloody battles he fought in the 1973 war.

In the show’s one slip into overt showcasing, Greenstein suddenly turns into an evangelical Christian preacher, whose emotional antics don’t add weight to trite sentiments on the bloodletting in the Holy Land.

Greenstein then becomes more ambitious with his characters, as he shifts from militantly Orthodox Jew (and ex-American) Marty to a quiet elderly Kurdish Jew, Yosef, being kicked out of his old apartment. Suddenly, we’re near the West Bank, where nervous U.S. tourist Richard doesn’t want to be, while the lives of Suwad and Jad, a Palestinian sister and brother, end tragically.

And, just when we had forgotten about him, it’s back to Louis in Reseda, for a startling ending, which brings the carnage back home and crucially places it in a context removed from the dramatically cliched Arab-Jewish conflict. Ideas and ideologies may lead to killing, Greenstein suggests, but it is finally people who kill people, often for reasons they barely comprehend.

Greenstein the writer makes his points indirectly by simply allowing his characters to speak. Greenstein the actor picks up the thread by absolutely loving each character he plays. It’s why each one feels and sounds so credible, so thoroughly and nonjudgmentally observed.

The Yossis and Jads of this world could be made into monsters, but Greenstein is too much of a humanist to deny them their humanity. Corky Dominguez directed but should apply some of Greenstein’s eye for detail to the often unreadable, sloppily projected slides shown between scenes. That, or drop them.

BE THERE

“Voices From the Holy . . . and Not So Holy Land,” at the Sweet Lies Theatre, 11050 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Saturdays at 4 p.m. Ends May 30. (818) 755-7900.