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"Necessary Targets"

Off Broadway at the Variety ArtsTheatre

by Kelly Monaghan

This production has closed.

Let me confess straight off that I have never seen "The Vagina Monologues," Eve Ensler's succes de scandal that turned into a worldwide movement of sorts. Like many others in the same position, however, that didn't prevent me from having an opinion. Some of the play's archer conceits ("If your vagina wore clothes, what would it wear?") did not make me want to rush out and see it and my wife is of the opinion that discussing one's genitals in public is not quite the done thing.

So I approached "Necessary Targets," Ensler's new play, with some trepidation. After all, New York wags were already referring to it as "Vaginas Go To War." In the event, I quite enjoyed it, something that can't be said for the New York critics who to a man (and woman) lambasted it, at best praising it with faint damns.

"Necessary Targets" tells the slightly improbable tale of two very different American women, J.S., a sheltered, middle-aged Park Avenue therapist, and Melissa, a young, self-described trauma counselor, who travel to Bosnia at the behest of the American government to see what they can do for the mental health of a group of Bosnian women refugees. If I'm remembering my recent history correctly, these women would be Muslims, but the ethnicity of the women is never identified, let alone dealt with.

Over the course of the play, J.S. discovers parts of herself she had long since put on a shelf and learns a great deal, while Melissa, who is revealed as an exploitative war junkie gathering material for a book, learns nothing. For their part, the Bosnian women each get a chance to reveal their personal traumas and stay pretty much as they were when we first met them.

"Necessary Targets" is a derivative play and rather awkward and predictable in its construction. And it certainly needs no Ensler come from the graves of Bosnia to tell us that war is hell and men are beasts. Still, it is a play, despite some similarities in the technique Ensler used to gather material, and the oft-repeated things it has to say are things that bear repeating. After all, we never seem to get it, do we?

What I liked about "Necessary Targets" is that here we have something that everyone, the critics included, keeps saying they want to see -- a play with lots of good parts for women. Well, Ensler has delivered and she gets flayed. Go figure.

Formulaic as it may be, the piece offers the opportunity for a cast of talented actresses to shine. Preeminent among them is Shirley Knight, as the pampered psychiatrist, who delivers the kind of preternaturally natural performance that reminds you how conventional most "naturalistic" acting really is. I hope drama schools within commuting distance of New York are busing them in for this performance. Diane Venora gives the kind of super-charged star performance that explains her co-billing with Knight; It's somewhat out of scale with the relatively minor character she portrays, but it is an arresting turn nonetheless.

The true co-star of the play as written is Melissa, the high-energy anguish vampire with her tape recorder at the ready to capture the gory details. In the hands of Catherine Kellner she is perfectly hateful, which I think is just right.

The others are all excellent. Alyssa Bresnahan is wonderfully earthy as a woman who clings to the memory of love even though her war-addled husband can offer her nothing but brutality. Maria Thayer captures the irrepressible urge to live of a teenager whose (unspecified) mixed ethnicity makes her doubly a victim. And Mirjana Jokovic moved many in the audience to tears as a bereaved and brutalized young mother.

A special note of praise must be reserved for Sally Parrish who takes on the seemingly thankless task of playing Ensler's most bathetic creation -- an elderly peasant who pines endlessly for Blossom, her lost cow, and who spends much of one scene in a hole in the ground. In performance, it could have been as ludicrous as it sounds in print, yet Parrish (last seen Off Broadway as the patrician mentor in "Wit") manages to find the humanity and dignity in crusty old Azra and makes her rather endearing.

I'm a little surprised that, given the self-evident political correctness of the play, the critical reaction to "Necessary Targets" was so negative. Maybe it's because this is a "woman's play" and the critics are all men, or women trying to write like one. (Or was that a sexist crack?)

Despite the critical onslaught, the play continues to run, evidence (I can only assume) of good word of mouth. I would urge you to see it, if only for the performances. If your vagina could be an actress, it would want to be one of these.

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