LEAVING VIETNAM - REVIEW

What makes a war honourable? What makes it dishonourable? And is there such thing as an ‘honourable war’ or is the fact that countless lives are wasted something that makes the words honour and war mutually exclusive? And how are those who have fought wars and left physically and mentally scarred, ashamed, and with a feeling of guilt supported? The critically acclaimed monologue Leaving Vietnam raises all these questions – among others – but fails to give a straight answer. Instead, it explores the unprocessed trauma, anger, and hatred of an all-American man, and how those feelings can involuntarily strengthen the populists’ voices that have grown stronger and louder over the last couple of years.

Jimmy Vandenberg is what comes to my mind when I think about a hard-working man in the more rural parts of America. Brought up by his grandmother and the always disapproving looking picture of his uniformed grandfather, he started working in a Ford factory from a young age, met a girl, fell in love, and did what a lot of young men all over the country did in the sixties: signed up (or was drafted) to join the Vietnam War. For Jimmy, this was something he had to do. He had to prove himself to the disapproving picture. And maybe to his young girlfriend. But to what costs?

The play is set in a garage, where Jimmy has spent the majority of his time after he retired from his factory job before he was actually ready to retire. He talks about his friends, his wife, his work – and how he recently was visited by a dead man, an encounter that led all of his tucked-away trauma and pain to resurface and him to relive and retell the story of his life and time in Vietnam. The audience is guided with subtle changes in sound and lighting through various episodes of memories that discuss the violence committed by the U.S. Marines in the so called ‘Demilitarised Zone’ which was in fact the very opposite. Jimmy was doing what he was told to do; Jimmy was doing what he was told to think was right. But, either through the influence of an idealised comrade named Jesus Alvarado, his own thought processes after his return from the war, or the pure fact that he returned to an America where people were demonstrating against the war, Jimmy realised that “we (meaning the U.S.) had no business being in Vietnam. We were asking for trouble”.

And trouble they got. Leaving Vietnam introduces multiple issues that the U.S. is currently facing. Be it the fact that veterans of different wars are treated differently (but altogether badly), economic issues, racism – you name it. Without actually exploring it, the play also introduces the thought that those deeply-rooted issues are the soil on which current populist views and voices can grow almost unchallenged, which I think is nothing new.

Although writer and performer Richard Vergette brings the story of Jimmy to life in a moving and believable way, I missed the bigger picture, the point, the “make America Great Again” cap. The introduction of the gay son of former Marine comrade Alvarado and the row he has with his wife over his newly-gained political view fall flat and short after the time taken to tell Jimmy’s life story. Leaving Vietnam is definitely thought-provoking; I am just wondering if it were the thoughts intended by the writer.

{🎟 AD – PR invite – Tickets were gifted in exchange for an honest review}

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