The War Comes to Broadway

(Well, the East Village -- 1st Ave at 10th Street.)

If war-story fatigue prevents some theatergoers from checking out “The Lonely Soldier Monologues (Women at War in Iraq),” that will be unfortunate, because this energetically acted example of journalism as theater explores some issues that deserve more attention. Plays and films have parsed the war in Iraq from all sorts of angles — the justifications for American involvement, the treatment of wounded soldiers, the tactical mistakes — but comparatively little has been heard about the increased role of women in the military operations.

Art can be real. Plays can be important. This one is.

But the bulk of the dialogue is revelatory and disturbing. Sexual harassment and assault by fellow soldiers is a constant theme. Lack of respect is another, and isolation yet another, women still being a small minority of the military population. But commendably, the play doesn’t merely ask for equal treatment; it also nods to the particular emotional pressures felt by women in the combat zone, many involving the Iraqi children who would approach soldiers or their convoys. “You’re supposed to run over them,” one soldier laments. “I was a day-care teacher.”

I can imagine what some of you are thinking: 'oh, an antiwar piece written by some far-left peacenik.' May be. The author is a journalism professor at Columbia University: proof enough, Bill O'Reilly would say. But the text was taken from interviews with "an assortment of femnale veterans". If we're going to ask our sons and daughters to go off to war, we (and they) need to know what they're getting into.