Fear Up Harsh by Christopher Demos-Brown

This play employs the kind of fluid timeline more typical of film than stage. It calls for very little scenery to allow the action to drift between present and past to show how a Marine ended up with a Congressional Medal of Honor and how the (black, female, lesbian) soldier who rescued him following his valorous act, ended up with a court-martial. The fact that the military and the government want to present their own versions of truth and heroism is hardly surprising. So, I don't really need to see that evolution. The Marine with the medal is a fairly uninteresting sad sack, in whom it is difficult to invest despite all his time on stage. His “friend,” the soldier, is much more interesting and dynamic, and I would be more inclined to watch a play with her as the central character, but I still do not want to watch her waterboard someone on stage.