One Red Flower, a musical play by Paris Barclay, is a Vietnam War story. Based on the book Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam, the play unfolds letter after letter from six soldiers stationed in the jungles of Vietnam. A seventh character (Florence Lacey) in Signature Theatre’s season opener, represents the recipient of the letters sent home and predominantly serves as the mother of the main character, Specialist Fourth Class Billy “Spanky” Bridges (Stephen Gregory Smith).
    Not unexpectedly, this two-act, 20-song play is text heavy. However, at a running time of two and a half hours with one 15-minute intermission, a tighter and shorter play would be a significant improvement. Since Barclay is a two-time Emmy Award winning director of NYPD Blue, The West Wing, and ER as well as many other estimable credits, expectations were high. This is not to say the play dragged or did not engage the viewer, but there are aspects of the piece that feel unresolved or puzzling. Compared to another Vietnam War musical, Movin’ Out, the Broadway smash hit that combines the legacy of Billy Joel’s ever-popular songs with Twyla Tharp’s quirky but fascinating choreography, One Red Flower seems like small-scale regional theater.
    Nevertheless Signature Theatre artistic director Eric Schaeffer has rendered an impressive production that opens with the strong visceral vibration of a helicopter landing on stage. The audience doesn’t see the chopper (as it did in Miss Saigon), but the war machine swiftly enters the landscape of the play. Another impressive projection is the simulation of monsoon rain. Schaeffer also uses projected text and images to deepen the experience of the war-torn setting. Projected names on gauzy curtains with fallen soldiers standing in spotlights behind those curtains makes the last scene at the Vietnam War Memorial Wall immediate and painfully moving as Spanky’s mother tearfully exclaims it was better to have had her son for 21 years than not at all.
    Barclay opens his musical strongly and intelligently with the song “I Was There” which lets the audience know up front that every soldier had a different experience and that “his Vietnam was not my Vietnam.” Strategically with this song, Barclay positions himself to allow for aspects of the 'Nam War not seen in this play such as fragging—the assassination of an officer by his own troops, race relations among the soldiers, or the mass murder of civilians such as the March, 1968 My Lai massacre. In the rockin’ song “Paper Soldier,” Spanky explains that they had to learn a whole new language to talk about this war, a war that his mother Eleanor, in counterpoint song, cannot understand. One of the more gung ho soldiers who thinks killing Gooks is like hunting in the woods back home quips, “This is the only war we got, don’t knock it.”
    Disappointing is the closing song of the first act, one of the more unfinessed moves Barclay makes. By the end of the act, Spanky progresses from office clerk to combat soldier as well as suffering a stabbing rebuff from his wife who writes that she doesn’t care if he comes back. His commanding officer, First Lieutenant Kenny Rutherford (Clifton Duncan), loses one of his best men and has to stuff down his feelings of personal loss. The men engage in smoking pot to blunt their feelings about the combat fatalities they witness and the medic Specialist Fifth Class Marion Johnson (Josh Lefkowitz) rails against the “stench of hypocrisy in the name of democracy.” Marion wants a reason why he and the others should be there in 'Nam. The closing song “4:16 AM” is an about-face from the previous song “I Don’t Understand This War.” “4:16” addresses the July 20, 1969 landing on the moon. Barclay uses this song to reignite patriotism among the soldiers and "for the longest minute,” the men sing, “no one was dying.” The trouble is the song and the scene stop with one of the soldiers affirming, “I know we belong here.” What has preceded this scene projected just the opposite--the U.S. should not have been in Vietnam where a soldier could not tell the difference between Vietnamese friend and foe.
    Tying into the optimistic ending of act I is the image of the one red flower that Marion and Spanky sing about toward the end of act II. The flower, “something beautiful and thornless born in the thick of the jungle,” represents a “kindness in the face of war” like a buddy’s smile. What precedes the “One Red Flower” song is Sergeant George McDuffy (Joshua Davis) announcing that he has gotten a venereal disease from a Vietnamese prostitute he has fallen in love with, private first class Alan Chisholm (Kurt Boehm) disappearing and classified as missing in action, Lieutenant Rutherford and medic Marion’s volunteer work on behalf of Vietnamese orphans to make amends for accidents of collateral damage, the soldiers’ refusal to re-enlist and their confessions that they would rather be garbage man at home than soldiers in Vietnam, and, finally, Kenny Rutherford’s morale shaking death. What then does the image of the one red flower mean? Is Barclay suggesting that one rare instance of unthreatening beauty always exists in every thorny situation and for this, men are willing to die?
    Stand out performers in this production are Clifton Duncan as Lieutenant Kenny Rutherford and Joshua Davis as Sergeant George McDuffy followed by Stephen Gregory Smith as Spanky Bridges. Smith’s sweet tenor voice could not always be clearly heard. The five-piece band led by Jon Kalbfleishch provided appropriate accompaniment at sound levels comfortable to understand the sung text. Occasionally, though, in such songs as “Saigon Tea” the band sounded thin which probably reflects more on the orchestration than on the talents of the musicians.
    With many quotable lines, Barclay provides a tremendous amount of fodder to chew, particularly in the face of the current war in Iraq. One Red Flower needs additional work to satisfy the discerning viewer, but because the music does not distinguish itself nor linger in the mind after leaving the theater, it’s not clear that further changes would elevate this work to the Broadway stage.

    August 26, 2004, Arlington, VA                                            - Karren L. Alenier