The Vietnamization of New Jersey
THE STORY: The scene is a middle-class home in Piscataway, New Jersey, where Ozzie Ann (the mother) and Harry (the father) await the return of their Vietnam veteran son, David, and his native bride, Liat. Also on hand are younger brother Et, a sex-obsessed high school junior who eats cornflakes from his unzipped pants; and Hazel, the irrepressible black maid (portrayed by a male performer) who is the real power in the household. When David and Liat arrive they are both blind (which he demonstrates by walking into the refrigerator) and she is an ex-hooker (who later turns out to be a displaced orphan named Maureen O’Hara). Thereafter come suicide, adultery, the feeble intervention of a homosexual priest and the arrival of a super-patriotic, war-mongering uncle—plus a staccato of outrageous comments by the cynical Hazel. The final result is a scathing, irreverent indictment of the worst aspects of the American character, made real by the incisiveness of the author’s writing, yet hilarious by the wild originality of his vision.
A wildly comic and bitingly satiric study of post-Vietnam America by one of our theatre’s most ingenious and talented young writers.
“He is a diabolically comic writer whose ammunition is ridicule and whose weapon is scattergun.” —The New York Times.
“…convulsively, awfully funny. It is also a provocative and mordant examination of where we have been over the past decade or so and where we are today.” —The Hartford Courant.
“…raucously funny…the audience roars from the first line on.” —Fairfield Weekly Trader.
