The Trial of Jane Fonda (Park Theatre)
The Vietnam War is a lamentable stain on American history and it is a bold move for writer Terry Jastrow to attempt to re-examine aspects of it at a time when the USA is once again in a state of national anxiety and uncertainty.
The combination of eternally controversial subject matter with the sheen of Hollywood glamour – not just the eponymous Jane Fonda herself but also, playing her, film star Anne Archer, last seen on the London stage in 2001 as a replacement Mrs Robinson in The Graduate – should ensure that the Park Theatre has a popular hit on its hands, despite the distressing nature of some of the footage used, and an occasional inertia in the dramatic writing.
The meat of Jastrow's play is a 1988 meeting between the outspokenly pacifist Fonda and a bunch of Vietnam veterans to thrash out the truth behind what happened during Jane's 1972 visit to North Vietnam, where she was famously photographed atop a Vietcong anti-aircraft tank and visiting American prisoners-of-war, earning her the unfortunate epithet 'Hanoi Jane' and the bitter hatred of many US servicemen and their families. If Jastrow's collection of former soldiers fall rather too conveniently into a number of stock types (there's the red neck, the blue collar worker, the businessman, the priest, the former sports star now confined to a wheelchair…), the fine cast ensure that each character registers vividly.
The incendiary arguments within the play are presented with a remarkably even hand. Ultimately Fonda's anti-war stance wins out, aided in no small part by film footage of admissions of some truly stomach turning transgressions by real life Vietnam vets, but the injured pride and genuine sadness of the men depicted also comes across strongly. I wasn't entirely convinced by Fonda's protestations of naivety nor by the too-quick clamber down from gung-ho declarations of American superiority to stoic acceptance by some of the men, but I was absorbed pretty much throughout.
Joe Harmston's slightly static staging, played out on a grimly handsome set by Sean Cavanagh which marries a grubby American flag with a map of Vietnam, makes inventive and appropriate use of projected real life footage: it is to the credit of the actors that they are not overwhelmed by this, especially in such an intimate space. Christien Anholt and Paul Herzberg are particularly impressive as two of Jane's most vociferous opponents while Martin Fisher subtly anchors the piece as her sole ally, a soldier-turned-reverend whose tale of why he owes his life to her is genuinely gut-wrenching. Bathed in her own pink spotlight for much of the play, Archer makes a luminously beautiful Jane, albeit a tad too refined and passive to fully convince as the bolshy, mouthy anarchist she purports to be. Her occasional breakthroughs into aggrieved anger are superbly done, but overall she needs to be spikier and grittier.
Largely humour-free and more of a documentary than a true theatre piece, Jastrow's play isn't great drama but it is undeniably thought-provoking. If director Harmston could up the ante a little, it could be genuinely stirring.
The Trial of Jane Fonda runs at the Park Theatre until 20 August.
Duration: 100 minutes (no interval)
