THE Israeli flag the Rabbi's Wife drapes herself in as she browses the bombed-out mouse-hole like some whacked-out, closing-time parody of the Statue of Liberty at the start of Henry Adam's prescient play says it all. Because, while such a comfort blanket makes plain the here and now, the play's strength lies partly in its geographical opacity, and may be what gives it its longevity.
Regardless, Adam has kicked off the Traverse's Fringe season with a bang, and then some, as the tense boredom of two Israeli soldiers seeking shelter from the blast eventually gives way when faced with a couple of uninvited guests brought to the party by Joseph Thompson's equally wired Captain Yossariat. The Rabbi's Wife and the big-talking Texan preacher are two sides of the same symbolic coin, complicit in the building of something even they're not sure exists. Only those on the ground, high on the war's soiled, pornographic stench, don't know what they're fighting for.
In this respect, Adam and director Philip Howard have created a slowburning morality tale akin to a more claustrophobic The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, but with oil and religion as excuses for greed. Adam's dialectical whirlwind has James Cunningham and Alexander Mikic's testosterone-charged grunts caught in the crossfire by Lewis Howden's Texan and the prospect of what Susan Vidler's Rabbi's Wife can offer, and there are moments of shocking relevance amid the banter. In the end, though, it's the matter-of-factness that lingers, as everyone's belief system gets nailed.
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