NICOLE TESSIER PHOTO Nina Buck and Ryan Burbank star in "The Captive" at Ernst.

UH ‘Captive’ revisits
Abu Ghraib scenario

Until last year, most Americans thought of torture as something only bad guys inflict on others. The word conjures images of the Nazis and Japanese during World War II, for example, the North Koreans, or the North Vietnamese, who tortured captured American airmen at the "Hanoi Hilton." But then we were confronted with photos of Americans abusing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib and heard hushed accounts of similar abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo.

"The Captive": Repeats at the University of Hawaii at Manoa Ernst Lab Theatre, at 11 p.m. tomorrow and Saturday. Tickets are $8 general; $7 for non-UHM students, seniors, military, and UH faculty and staff; and $3 UHM students with validated Spring 05 UHM student ID. Call 956-7655.

Can a play written 200 years ago address the issues raised by the acknowledgment that Americans can be just as inhumane as the enemy? That's the intent as University of Hawaii student director Frank Episale presents a successful adaptation of "The Captive" at the UH-Manoa Ernst Lab Theatre.

Matthew G. Lewis wrote "The Captive" in 1803 as a short gothic melodrama about a woman who claims she has been unjustly imprisoned in a dungeon-like mental hospital. Episale uses Lewis's dialogue but the female prisoner is confronted by masked guards wearing black T-shirts and American military-style camouflage pants. The guards' behavior appears to be correct at first but gradually becomes physically abusive and sexually exploitive. One guard forces the woman to lift her dress so he can photograph her diaper-like undergarment. Another forces her to suck on a flashlight.

A photo of each coerced act is then hung like a trophy on the front wall of the prison cell.

Be ready to become part of the action as the guards perform random "security checks" on audience members as well. One guy who didn't pass muster on opening night last Saturday was slammed against a wall and taken away. Signs posted on the Mylar wall that separates the audience from the prisoner warn viewers against "establishing eye contact" with the captive, offering her food or comfort, or reporting anything they see while inside the facility to anyone "... especially to members of the media."

These warnings are repeated by a man with a bullhorn before the guards start in on the prisoner.

Episale's anti-torture message is underscored by a man behind a podium who gives short but stirring speeches about the worldwide longing for liberty and freedom, and the importance of helping oppressed people. Between each short speech, the prisoner and her guards create a tableau that replicates one of the horrors of Abu Ghraib and the alleged consensual sexual relationships between the guards.

Is Episale taking Lewis's work out of its original context? No more than major movie studios do in taking stories about characters such as Pocahontas, Mulan or Hercules, reworking them into politically correct fare for contemporary audiences. Episale's adoption of "The Captive" is powerful political theater but avoids the simplistic shrillness often found in agit-prop entertainment.