Theater's Contested Ground

Corrie seemed destined to pass into obscurity. But journalist Katherine Viner and actor Alan Rickman -- he is best known as Professor Snape in the Harry Potter films -- pored over Corrie's writings and stitched them into an 80-minute monologue. Their play, which Rickman directed, was a "sellout hit," according to the Royal Court's Thomson, and is currently being staged in that city for the third time. There were many positive reviews and some negative.

Which raises an interesting question, largely overlooked in this mess: Is "My Name Is Rachel Corrie" any good? A copy of the play was provided by the Workshop, and though it would surely be a different experience in person, on the page the play brings to mind a surprising work: "The Diary of Anne Frank."

The buoyant writing, the optimism in the midst of ordeal, the mundane girly details mixed with poignant insights, and, of course, the life cut short -- it shares a lot with the intimate confessional scribblings of a Dutch girl who hid with her family during World War II, and who, like Corrie, never wrote with an audience in mind.

"For a long time I've been operating from a certain core assumption that we are all essentially the same inside and our differences are by and large situational," Corrie says at one point, a sentiment that could have come straight from Anne Frank's pen.

A comparison of the two works is revealing. Nobody has ever knocked "Anne Frank" because it omitted the Nazis' side of the story. But whatever your position on the Middle East conflict, it certainly has more nuances than a showdown between Innocent and Evil, and any play that ignores those subtleties shortchanges the subject. That's exactly what "Corrie" does. In the Middle East as presented through Corrie's writing, there are no Palestinians with bad intentions, or Israelis who want peace.

"What we are paying for here is truly evil," Corrie says as the play reaches its denouement. In another place she wonders if "fifty-year-old Russian guns and homemade explosives can have any impact on the activities of one of the world's largest militaries backed by the world's only superpower."

Well, yes, actually. Corrie was in Gaza during the second Intifada, which started in 2000 and killed more than 500 Israeli civilians in the course of five years, many by suicide bombs. Nobody would suggest that this is a fight between evenly matched foes, but to assert that the bloodshed had no impact on Israel ignores the shift in politics, not to mention the grief, that all the killing provoked.

In a review, the Times of London called "Corrie" an "unabashedly one-sided tribute." That's a nice way to put it. But if the play is propagandistic, the next question is: So what? A play so forthright about its passions, on a subject so explosive -- isn't that what off-Broadway is for?

"I think so," says Allan Buchman, the founding director of the Culture Project, an off-Broadway theater. Buchman is one of a handful of artistic directors vying for dibs on the U.S. debut of "Corrie." He was interested when the play was initially shopped around New York last year, but the publicity surrounding the Workshop fiasco seems to have made it an even hotter property. Buchman flew to London recently, in part to lobby the Royal Court management.

"I'm a bar mitzvah boy -- I know that if I said something to my family that sounds critical of Israel, I'd get cold dinner for a week," he says. "And God forbid I mention Vanessa Redgrave," the pro-Palestinian actress. "But maybe this play could spark a conversation, and we ought to be able to have enlightened disagreement about this subject."

The Culture Project considers political plays its mandate. You'll hear more cautious tones from the heads of larger and more mainstream venues. The Public Theater, for example, is arguably the most influential and revered off-Broadway house in the city and, in a way, the logical home for "Rachel Corrie." There's a slight hint of "after you" from Oskar Eustis, the head of the Public, when he discusses the subject.

"Our profound hope is that somehow the Royal Court reconciles with the Workshop," Eustis says, explaining that a host of logistical problems prevents the Public from staging the show. "There are two dangers here. One is the suppression of a play, which is a very serious problem, and the other is the threat to a brave and groundbreaking artistic director who made a mistake. It would be a huge loss if the Workshop and Jim were somehow crushed by this."

The Royal Court hasn't decided which playhouse will get the honors. Thomson, its spokesman, said about a dozen theaters have been in touch and one, the Seattle Repertory Theater, has already slotted the play on its 2007 schedule. But a New York theater will stage it first, Thomson explains, hopefully in the fall.

Does the Workshop have a chance?

"Now they're bowing to media pressure and saying they'd love to do this play," Thomson says with a sigh. "It just seems whoever leans on them, that's what happens. You can't program theater like that."

Nicola realizes that the next round of embarrassment will come when a rival theater gets the nod, making the Workshop seem gutless by comparison and reaping the rewards of all this free publicity. He's ready for it.

"It's an important play with a powerful message," he says. "We wanted to foster a community dialogue about it, and I think, in almost a perverse way, we succeeded."