When the Senate Select Intelligence Committee released its report last month detailing just how enhanced the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” got during the Bush administration’s war on terror, the least surprising response was probably Dick Cheney’s. The former vice president first said the report was “full of crap”; then, a few days later, he vehemently defended the interrogation and detention program as entirely justified and legal. In other words, I didn’t do it—and I’d do it again.
Jim and Harriet are eager to show their cooperation and patriotism, assuring the Franks that they’re devout Christians who voted for Ronald Reagan. So eager are they to demonstrate their cooperation, in fact, that they agree to let the agents bring Tommy home and interrogate (read: torture) him where he grew up.
The script’s satire of U.S. counterterrorism measures, meanwhile, settles for easy targets and blameless victims. Tommy is a sacrificial lamb brought on for no purpose but to suffer, while the cartoonish Frank and Frank have no purpose but to inflict the suffering. Filled with certitude and barely suppressed rage, they’re one-dimensional bullies who’d waterboard you as soon as look at you.
Through 2/14: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM Trap Door Theatre 1655 W. Cortland 773-384-0494trapdoortheatre.com $20-$25
