Synopsis

The Vietnamization of New Jersey

The Vietnamization of New Jersey $13

Christopher Durang

Published by Dramatists Play Service

5 Male 2 Female

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

Produced by the Yale Repertory Theatre and leading regional companies

REVIEWS

"He is a diabolically comic writer whose ammunition is ridicule and whose weapon is scattergun" ~ NY 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

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