Sand

It’s no news that millions of Americans opposing the war in Iraq sincerely support the troops there. Playwright Trista Baldwin obviously counts herself among the vast number, but it’s doubtful whether
Sand — the damn-the-war outcry that she began writing in 2003 and which the Women’s Project is currently presenting — is the ideal way to demonstrate that heartfelt support.

The three figures in desert fatigues whom Baldwin introduces are passing bored hours guarding a remote gas station. The setting — which Anita Fuchs has designed to resemble an explosion in a ceramics factory — is the dramatist’s reminder that oil is the true rationale for United States presence in the late Saddam Hussein’s besieged dominion. Justin (Alec Beard), the “everysoldier” who hails from Oregon, can declare with innocent conviction, “Everybody goes to Wal-Mart.” Tough sergeant Armando (Pedro Pascal) is of Puerto Rican heritage but has always lived in the continental U.S. 18-year-old African-American Kiesha (Angela Lewis), a private from Hoboken, stands in for all the female soldiers taking on what was once strictly considered a man’s patriotic duty. “I never felt I could feel strong like this, in my mind, in my body,” she declares.

From the moment that Traci Klainer’s bright desert lights go up on Justin, the audience knows, if only in general terms, what will happen to the threesome. The particulars won’t be revealed here, but the temptation to ask a few questions about the narrative as it predictably unfolds is too strong to resist. Will the trio continue being merely bored into small talk about their lives at home for the entire 80 minutes that Baldwin takes to tell her cautionary tale? Will something distinctly sexual take place between either or both of the men and Kiesha? Will Justin emerge from his ordeal completely free of post-traumatic-stress-disorder symptoms? Will the attractive actors — each of whom gives his or her utmost — be able to make more than minimum headway with their thankless roles? What do you think?

Before Baldwin supplies the expected answers to the above queries, she does provide a few surprising interludes. One involves an alternatively obsequious and demanding Iraqi, Ahmed, (played by Pascal out of his fatigue shirt) with whom Justin jousts several times and against whom he takes an ultimate action that tragically backfires. During one of these meetings, Ahmed, having brought a boom box along for that visit, cajoles Justin into gyrating with him in a traditional dance. Baldwin also throws in some historical background that isn’t often mentioned: Iraq was founded by the British in 1920.

Incidentally, the founding of Iraq ties into Baldwin’s title, which plays on the many associations of the word and the many familiar phrases in which it’s lodged. To some extent, Iraq was established by drawing lines in the sand, and the outraged playwright surely wants to stress that point. There are a few visual and implied allusions to the sands of time. To that end, Justin — also mourning a sister’s suicide — frequently contemplates a World War I bullet and a photograph from the same period that he finds partially buried in the sand. Also, Justin often runs through his fingers the sand Fuchs has shoveled on the set as a symbol of evanescence.

Then there’s always the phrase “footprints in the sand,” which this piece is like: It vanishes in the slight breeze stirred as patrons walk up the aisle on their way to the street.