‘Cry Havoc!’ @ Lakeside Community Theatre
Image courtesy of Lakeside Community Theatre
—Jan Farrington
Lakeside Community Theatre’s Cry Havoc is an engaging period piece written (first as a stage play, then as a film) at the start of World War II—when nobody knew who would win, who would lose…and what kind of future we were walking into. If the script toes the line of the American point-of-view early in the war, how can it not? Those years were terrifying, with our enemies proving more brutal than we could have imagined.
The story by playwright Allan R. Kenward is a study of 13 women caught up in the combat between American and Japanese forces in the Philippines—on the Bataan Peninsula, whose name would soon (a year or so after the play opened) be known for the infamous “Bataan Death March.” (I had a college professor and friend who barely survived that horror; this isn’t ancient history.)
Only a few of the women are actual soldiers: Army surgeon Doc Marsh (played by Vivian Reed), second in command Mary “Smitty” Smith (Sara Snyder), and Army nurse Flo Harris (Rikki Sushaun). The others are women volunteers (mostly gathered from among women already in Manila and its environs) who’ve come to help set up and run a mobile field hospital. Just like groups of soldiers in classic wartime films, they’re from all over the United States, and of every class and career: switchboard operators, burlesque dancers, farm girls, etc.
Director Carol M. Rice pulls a varied and talented ensemble tightly together, drawing on the play’s movie-banter use of wisecracks and humor—and dialogue that snaps suddenly into deadly serious as their situation becomes more dangerous.
Characters quickly fix themselves in our minds: Reed’s Doc is commanding and sensible; Snyder’s “Smitty” cool and brisk with the volunteers (and hiding some secrets); and Sushaun’s Flo a mix of open heart and quiet courage, an apple-farm girl who keeps her head in a crisis. Among the volunteers there’s Pat (Abby Tanksley) the smart but sarcastic nay-sayer; Helen (Andie Pace), the sassy, Brooklyn-accented phone operator; Grace (Jenny Wood), an upbeat, bold burlesque performer; Southern gal (and avid knitter) Nydia (Chloe Ellison); Sue and Andra (Sara Jones and Rae Harvill), British women who endure a lot. Rounding out the cast are timid, complaining Connie (Reagan Wren); stalwart Stephany (“Steve,” played by Ana Ortega Williams); and calm, nurturing Army cook Sadie (Lindy Englander).
Kerra Sims’ costumes are well done—both the amusingly inappropriate outfits the ladies arrive in (dresses, high heels, hair snoods, etc.) and the various interpretations of military uniforms they come up with: slacks, pencil skirts, and other variations on “khaki.”
The action of the play is confined to the half-underground barracks/bunker the women inherited from the guys who pulled out before them. It’s a great, evocative set by Scott Rice, with bunks and military gear crowded in, and classic WWII pin-up girls on the walls (Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, et al.). The women don’t bother to take the pictures down now that the room is all female—which feels like a quiet joke to savor. The war outside the screen door (we never see a bit of it) is created in our minds by designer Jason Rice, whose battery of sounds makes us jump and flinch; the vibrations of a bombing feel real, and send the lantern over the table swinging and flickering. General MacArthur, what’s taking you so long?
There’s no denying the script has some heavy-handed moments—but on the whole, Cry Havoc is a surprisingly honest, truth-telling view of these women’s wartime experience and how Americans saw history as it was happening, without the layers that collected over it in the years after. It often seems the closer a movie is made to events, the more straightforward it is. (See 1946’s “The Best Years of Our Lives” and compare it to WWII movies made in later decades.) There’s a sudden outbreak of SVS (Surprise Villain Syndrome) in the plot that might make you roll your eyes, and the gals sometimes come off as too snappy/funny for the fix they’re in. But to see this “of the moment” piece from a dire time in U.S. history is something—and pulled off by LCT with plenty of intelligence and heart.
WHEN: June 13-28, 2025
WHERE: LCT, 6303 Main Street, The Colony TX
WEB: lctthecolony.com
