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written by J.T. Rogers, directed by Joel Greenberg

Studio 180, Berkeley Street Theatre, Toronto

March 11-April 3, 2010

American playwright J.T. Rogers has structured his 2006 play The Overwhelming as a thriller.  The action is swift and the atmosphere tense, especially under Joel Greenberg’s taut direction.  Yet, the play’s subject matter, the Rwandan genocide of 1994 when an estimated 800,000 people were slaughtered, is so incomprehensibly horrific, it evades Rogers’ attempts to convey even its prelude.

Jack Exley (David Storch), a white poli-sci professor, brings his teenaged son Geoffrey (Brendan McMurtry-Howlett) and his second wife Linda (Mariah Inger), an African-American essayist, with him to Rwanda to interview his old friend Joseph Gasana (Nigel Shawn Williams), for a book about grassroots politics he needs to write to gain tenure.  The family arrives but Gasana can’t be found.  Rogers’ portrait of these American innocents abroad is amusing only until their naiveté starts to look more like stupidity.  Murders occur in Rwanda daily, no one can be trusted and no one tells the truth, yet Exley persists in his quest to find Gasana since, as we are told, his entire as yet unwritten book depends on that one interview.  Even if we accept this improbable contrivance and ignore that this political scientist has no sense of politics, we wonder why he insists on keeping his wife and son in a dangerous country.  “But we’ve already rented the house,” he tells Linda, as Rogers thinly papers over a plot-hole.  Linda and Geoffrey come off no better--Linda for believing the romantic African fantasies of her dubious guide, Geoffrey for sleeping with a prostitute in an AIDS-infected country. 

American dunderheadedness aside, the play is excellent in revealing layer after layer impediments to Exley’s quest and idealism.  The US cannot be be counted on for help, nor the French nor the UN.  Neither the Tutsis, who were in power, nor the Hutus, who are now in power, are blameless.  Ultimately, Rogers suggests no one is blameless in a genocide including those who stand by and do nothing.

Storch’s permanent stare of incredulity and bizarre American accent do nothing to rescue Exley’s weak character, but Williams invests Gasana’s frequent monologues with warm humanity.  Both Inger and McMurtry-Howlett make their characters’ gullibility somehow understandable.  The seven other cast members all give passionate performances.  The world ignored the Rwandan genocide because the country was deemed insignificant.  Rogers’ greatest achievement is to make us aware that genocide is never insignificant, no matter where it happens.  

        

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly, 2010-03-12.

Photo: David Storch and André Sills. ©John Karastamatis.