By
Darlene Donloe
Zulu Time is described as a poignant and
startlingly original drama set on an American aircraft carrier during the civil
rights era.
The story, which
takes place on a flight deck, catwalk and selected interior spaces of an
American Essex Class aircraft carrier in 1965, opens somewhere off Catalina
Island near Los Angeles. From the deck some crewmen can see smoke from the
Watts uprising.
Unbeknownst to
two white crewmen, one of whom is on the deck spewing racial hatred, a black petty
officer named Ronnie (Christopher T. Wood) is behind them and overhears the
hateful tirade of one of the Navy pilots.
The focus of the
story is about Page Boy (David Ghilardi), the Navy pilot who refuses to
apologize to Ronnie for voicing his desire to bomb the Watts rioters.
In an effort to
squash what he feels is an impending uprising on the ship due to a racial
divide and bad feelings, the captain (John Marzilli) has Ronnie thrown in the
brig and then off the ship.
Unfortunately
for the play’s sake the premise falls short because the lack of an apology
doesn’t significantly kick up any dander. In fact, it doesn’t really show how
any other crewmen, other than the three on the deck, was aware of the incident. At the
urging of the captain, an Asian officer named Yamato (Scott Keiji Takeda) is
assigned to keep Ronnie in his place. Somewhat of a racist himself, the captain
doesn’t necessarily feel Page Boy should provide an apology. His directive is to thwart a different kind of
war that may start brewing onboard the warship.
No semblance of that war ever really materializes.
The racial angst, as well as the homophobe angst on the ship comes from ignorance and cultural bias.
Nowhere in the
play does Ronnie rally the black crewmen to mutiny or even retaliate in any
way. He just simply becomes insubordinate and refuses to perform his own
duties.
However, the
situation between Page Boy and Ronnie does eventually lead to an unfortunate
incident – for which Page Boy expresses regret.
Chuck Faerber's all-male play would work brilliantly even without the race angle, primarily due
to the fact that you have men from all backgrounds, races and cultures in
cramped quarters for months at a time. With that as a backdrop – mutiny, racial
unrest, in fact any kind of unrest would surely raise its ugly head.
Zulu Time is an interesting, original story about
yet another race-related Navy protest, of which,
historically, there were apparently many.
It does manage to weave the notion of acceptance, sexuality, difference,
rank, race relations, friendship, tolerance and how all of the above mixed with
testosterone and machinery –can be explosive.
The
writer’s note says – ‘The official line is that there has never been a mutiny
on a United State Navy vessel at sea. The unofficial one is that the Navy never
came closer to mutiny than during the tempestuous 1960s, when civil rights and
the Vietnam War threatened to tear American cities apart. These same issues
also wrenched the ‘floating cities’ that were American aircraft carriers – the
largest and most powerful warships ever built. Zulu Time is a fictional attempt
to capture those violent days. It also tries to show the contradictory ugliness
and allure of a unique culture within a culture – U.S. Naval Aviation – with
its entrenched bigotry and startling meritocracy, its marriage of the technical
and the spiritual, its danger and, above all, its overpowering beauty.’
What
is Zulu Time? Well, in the military, Zulu Time is Greenwich Mean Time, or a coordinated universal time. (
Some
of Director Richard Kuhlman’s direction is creative, especially when showing
the constant movement aboard the ship. Everything mechanical and everybody human
have to work in concert for order to prevail. That being said, the slow pace of
the show drags the energy and the story.
Regrettably,
some of the dialogue was lost either from the actor’s occasional rapid delivery
or from the acoustics. Thank goodness for the Navy Airman’s Glossary, which was
provided in the handbill.
The
show flows easily from one scene to the next as a result of Gary Lee Reed’s
mobile set and the precision of the actors. Kudos to David B. Marling’s sound
and Gina Davidson’s costumes.
Zulu Time, written by former Navy pilot Charles
Faerber and directed by Richard Kuhlman, stars Acquah Dansoh, David Ghilardi,
Tony Grosz, Byron Hays, Jake Hundley, Ruffy Landayan, Trevor Larson, John
Marzilli, Joe Spence, Scott Keiji Takeda and Christopher T. Wood.
Zulu Time, Hudson Theatre, 6539 Santa Monica
Blvd., Hollywood; 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 3 p.m. Sun. through Aug. 9; $25; Running
time: 120 min. Reserve online at: https://www.plays411.com/zulu
On the DONLOE
SCALE: D (don’t bother), O (oh, no), N (needs work), L (likeable), O (oh,
yeah), E (excellent), Zulu Time gets
an L (likeable).
All photos by Ed Krieger
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