Letters from ’Nam
Adapted by Paris Barclay from the book Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam, edited by Bernard Edelman. Directed by Ben Levit. Musical direction by Keith Thompson. Choreography by Peter Pucci. Set by Heesoo Kim. Costumes by Miguel Huidor. Lighting by Peter Jakubowski. Sound by John Stone. With Maureen McGovern, Dwayne L. Barnes, David Burnham, Michael Cunio, Rodney Hicks, Levi Kreis, and Jeff Mosier. At the North Shore Music Theatre through September 23.

It’s arguable that the Vietnam War was nothing to sing about, yet we keep doing it. The overblown Miss Saigon made commercial romantic fodder of this painful episode of our national history. The new Letters from ’Nam is a more earnest effort to pay tribute to the Americans who, by choice or conscription, had to fight that unpopular war. Culled from the book Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam, this " musical play " is the project of adapter and composer Paris Barclay, who’s better known as an Emmy-winning director of television series including NYPD Blue. The show had ASCAP/Disney workshops in Los Angeles and at the Kennedy Center and is now in its world premiere at the North Shore Music Theatre, which prides itself on fostering new American musicals.

It would be hard to get more American than Letters from ’Nam, which is unabashedly patriotic and sentimental (one lyric bemoans a soldier’s being " cursed by long-haired doves " ). The show piggybacks for emotional impact on the widespread feeling — apparent in the nation’s heartfelt response to the Vietnam Memorial — that the men and women who fought in Southeast Asia deserved better than they got. Barclay was moved by Dear America (which was also made into a TV-movie) and sought to transfer its portrait of the everyday experience and spirit of Americans fighting in the paddies of Vietnam to the stage. Using letters by numerous writers, he creates six composite soldiers who are, of necessity, types. But they are brought to pulsing life by the actor-singers of the North Shore production. Veteran chanteuse Maureen McGovern, herself no slouch in the vocal department, stands in for the homefront correspondents in general and one doomed chopper pilot’s mom in particular.

Barclay sets the piece in 1969-’70 and anchors it in the pop rock of the time. The music, though generic, is surprisingly upbeat, more saccharine R&B than " White Rabbit. " The composer has studied with Stephen Schwartz and Stephen Sondheim — Schwartz’s influence is more apparent. There are effective numbers, though, among them the muscular " I Don’t Understand This War " (which has a jazzy reprise) and the infectious " The Kid Is Coming Home. " Others, including a rock paean to " One Red Flower, " sink into pseudo-poetic cliché. All are well performed by an eight-person orchestra directed by keyboardist Keith Thompson.

The biggest problem with Letters is that, having been put together from correspondence, it’s more static than dramatic, though it picks up in the second act. (The first should be shortened — surely we don’t need a song about the soldiers’ not needing stamps.) Abetted by projections, Ben Levit helms an effectively simple NSMT production that emphasizes the camaraderie, essential sweetness, and reluctant bravery of the men. The fact that Letters from ’Nam is about the letter writers rather than the war is a given; still, including one Asian " supernumerary " whose sole function is to take and torture a POW seems unnecessarily reductive.

At the center of the piece is easygoing chopper pilot Billy Bridges, whom we know from the outset will not make it home. He’s imbued with a deft combination of boyish appeal and mounting nerves by David Burnham. McGovern, whose character lacks specificity but whose soaring voice lacks pretty much nothing, plays his mother, who frames the work by reading from a letter she leaves at the Wall. Dwayne L. Barnes gives a robust performance as a black lieutenant for whom the war provides opportunity he might not have had at home, and Levi Kreis is likable as the hard-fighting redneck who comes to respect him. Michael Cunio brings a plaintive singing voice to the POW, who spends much of the musical hanging in a cage, his letters to his wife growing more hopeless. There are strong-voiced performances too by Jeff Mosier as a guitar-twanging Georgia boy chafing in an administrative job and by personable Rodney Hicks as a medic disillusioned by the war. Letters from ’Nam is more workmanlike than inspired, but its salute is deserved and its execution here fervent.

Issue Date: September 13 - 20, 2001