Sticks and Bones

David returns home after he is wounded in the Vietnam War. He is blind, yet he sees better than anyone. He comes back to a family that couldn't have been more typical of its era. Denial, racism, a deep desire to hide everything under the carpet. A father that is an absolute brute, a mother whose weakness prevents her from keeping the family together, a younger brother whose only ‘'ideals'' are pretending to play his guitar, eating chocolate cake and fucking girls in the back seat. How can David not fall into despair?

David Rabe's play is a constant punch in the stomach. It throws you on the ground, and receive blow after blow, unable to move. You are frozen, witnessing the struggle of a young, broken man whose life and love have been destroyed, whose family home becomes Hell on Earth, worse than the worst battlefield. We could refer to PSTD, racism, middle-class narrow-mindedness, rednecks living in their own distorted microcosm. For me, these are just words. What horrifies me is the absolute lack of any kind of tenderness, not to mention love, from the parents to their child, the cruelty inflicted on the son who fought for an empty cause. When your home becomes a snake pit, what can you do?

From the beginning to its shocking closure, Sticks and Bones is one of the most terrifying, complex, demanding plays in American Drama, a treasure that we need to bring out of its present oblivion. If anyone is listening...

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