Word: pochoda
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Cole bases his play on the true story of Dale Jackson, a Black Vietnam veteran and Congressional Medal of Honor winner, who entered an Army hospital suffering from a nervous breakdown. In the play. Jackson (Reggie Montgomery) is confronted by an understanding psychologist (Ralph Pochoda). Their contact peels layers of resistance away from his cool exterior. Montgomery's riveting performance exposes a man consumed by guilt--guilt over bother his unconscionable actions in Vietnam and the fact that be alone of all his soldier friends survived to be actually honored for those deeds...
...doctor's prescription--for Jackson to give back the medal so he will recover--makes the insidious implication that the hundreds of veterans who did return their medals did so to assuage psychological problems. Cole seems to ignore the political protest that the action represented. As the doctor, Pochoda brings concern to the role but is undermined by the material he has to work with...
...directed by Peter Thompson, is well-placed, insinuatingly pleasing, and most effective in the play's most difficult areas--evoking a time and a crowd of people through only two performers, and holding an audience through two hours without an intermission and without any visual or sonic pyrotechnics. Ralph Pochoda and Maryann Plunkett define themselves against each other from the start: Pochoda's Matt is fidgety, defensive, and given to speechifying--his mouth seems to hemorrhage words. Plunkett's Sally takes a pose and holds it, folds her arms over her chest, and seems almost sullenly reticent--giving up words...