Review-My Name is Rachel Corrie (11.12.06)

My Name is Rachel Corrie (Sunday, 11.12.06)
Minetta Lane Theatre, New York, NY

By: Rachel Corrie (edited by Alan Rickman, Katharine Viner), Alan Rickman (direction)

Starring: Bree Elrod (Rachel Corrie, standby)

What gives My Name Is Rachel Corrie its emotional power is also what ultimately limits it as a theatrical piece. Knowing what eventually happens to the reach Rachel Corrie gives her words a sadness and emotional urgency that the words themselves – though often poetic – do not necessarily themselves suggest. By the end of the show, when we learn of her fate through the BBC radio report, we feel as though everything has been leading to it. Although it is the only moment in the show that is not from Rachel’s own writings, it is the necessary culmination of events.

The problems in the script, which are magnified during the first half hour or so, are that they are an amalgamation of fairly short diary entries, and so the script comes across as somewhat fragmented and disjointed. The first part of the show is focused on giving Rachel’s biography – information about her background, her education, her parents, her friends. The dialogue feels stilted and almost stream of consciousness.

Things improve considerably when the action moves to Gaza. The thoughts and scenes are more coherent, perhaps because the diary entries themselves were observations of whole scenes, images and thoughts, rather than snippets from her early life. The dialogue also picks up a deeper, more serious tone. Again, this is not surprising given what the experience must have been like for Rachel.

The deepening in tone also helps deepen the character of Rachel. Absent from the early part of the evening is any sense of what forms the girl’s political consciousness. Faced with the action in Gaza, however, we come to understand this consciousness.

As Rachel, Bree Elrod is plucky and beautiful, an idealist but not so wide-eyed or naive that she does not understand the gravity of the plight of the people she hopes to help. She is particularly good in Gaza, and what makes her most likeable is that she never comes across as proselytizing, even when she is giving her potentially charged political views.

The main problem with Rachel Corrie, and it is unclear whether it is a fault on the part of Elrod or of the editing of the script, it is that we never really understand what motivates Rachel to be the activist that she is. One never gets a sense of how or why, or even makes a connection between the young girl in Washington and the young woman in Gaza. Perhaps it is a difficulty of telling the girl’s story in 90 minutes. Perhaps it is the difficulty of telling a complete story from the diaries of a girl whose story was never completed. Whatever the reasons, My Name Is Rachel Corrie in the end falls a bit short of the emotional and intellectual movement it promises. That says, it still gives power to a young woman’s poetic words, and brings to life the ideals she fought and died for.