The phenomenon we now call post-trauma stress disorder was first employed in dramatic literature by Sophocles circa 441 BC. So extensive a history of tragedy based in revelation of long-concealed atrocities has rendered audiences justly familiar with the narrative arc evidenced in this Akron, Ohio import, but playwright D.C. Fidler's mission is to tell us a story, by gum—two stories, in fact—and he sees no shame in enlisting every available assisting factor toward its completion. Our first story spotlights Weapons Specialist Jason Wynsky, who began suffering nightmares after having been wounded in Afghanistan. (The play is set in 2010.) In order to determine whether this "expensive resource" (the U.S. Army's term for its workforce) can be trusted to carry out his duties, his superiors have ordered him to undergo psychiatric evaluation at Walter Reed Hospital, where the play's second story commences. It seems his examiner, Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence Caplan, was once a combat infantryman, himself, in the Viet Nam war—a conflict long ended, to be sure, but as Wynsky's memories of his battlefield experience gradually assume sharper focus, Caplan finds his own slumber increasingly troubled by buried recollections and their consequences. Our author may present us with only two actors onstage, but their accounts encompass an array of victims likewise scarred by the fallout of faraway terrors: fellow GIs (some barely out of their teens), estranged parents, betrayed wives, gay sons (in the age of don't-ask-don't-tell), martyred rescuers, unexpected comforters, a toy dinosaur named T-Rex and a dog named for the commander-in-chief. A clutter of books and tschotkes in Caplan's office—disarray reflecting the career soldier's imminent retirement—further facilitates Fidler's careful placement of expository landmines amid the seemingly-harmless initial banter.
