I Have Before Me A Remarkable Document Given To Me By A Young Lady From Rwanda

I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given to Me by a Young Lady from Rwanda - the length of the title alone is almost as exhausting as the emotions that the characters go through; and although the title is long and formal, and the play deals with a potentially sprawling subject matter - the 1994 Rwandan genocide - it is an intimate experience. While not all of the script translates brilliantly to the stage, the story and performances are powerful enough to recommend this New England premiere at the Stoneham Theatre.

...Young Lady from Rwanda is written by Sonja Linden, the daughter of Jewish survivors of Nazi Germany who herself worked with Rwanda refugees. She neatly creates a composite of these survivors in the character of Juliette, who lost her family in the butchery of the genocide and fled to London with the hope that she will be able to write her story with the help of a British writer (named Simon.) Trouble is Simon is a minor poet and failed novelist who is put in the unfortunate position of telling Juliette that her novel, while factually correct, isn't really publishable. As Simon gently pushes Juliette to pour more of herself into the story, eventually prompting her to reveal the true horror that she experienced, Simon himself finds meaning in the work that he didn't find in his own novel and consequently comes to realize the power of the written word that he's been trying to teach his pupils all along.

Simon emphasizes to Juliette that the best writing can be incredibly simple (a bit ironic coming from an author who's first novel is a pretentious commentary on ego which purposely omits the letter "i",) and Linden hews closely to that maxim with her writing. It's a spare production with just two actors on a bare stage, except for a few tables and chairs, and an economy of language that's most beautifully displayed in Juliette's attempt at a writing assignment - a description of her gray room that turns into a soliloquy on her gray, hopeless life.

This simplicity of form allows both the intimidating magnitude of the Rwandan genocide to hit home because it's experienced through Juliette's single viewpoint (for a good primer on the events of and leading up to the genocide, see the excellent program notes;) but also because it puts the performances of Dorcas Evelene Davis as Juliette and Owen Doyle as Simon in a spotlight that each richly deserves.

Davis is impressive all around, nailing the emotionally wrenching monologues that recall the killing of Juliette's family and the soul-deadened, haunted eyes of a girl who has seen too much. But what's best about the performance is that she never loses the fact that Juliette is a girl, one who can be awkward when meeting Simon, whom she's sure is famous, learned writer, and then amusingly scornful that he's nothing but a "scribbler" who doesn't even drive a car as nice as her father's.

Doyle (who appeared as Mr. Meany in A Prayer for Owen Meany at Stoneham last season) gets the less showy part, but provides excellent chemistry with Davis and is just as strong in the script's surprisingly numerous comedic parts, nicely puncturing the stereotype of the stuffy, snobby British writer. Doyle's Muppet-like face shows not only Simon's own awkwardness and lack of confidence but also his passion for writing and, most sweetly, his bit of a crush on Juliette.

Where the play falls a bit short is in the script, which chops the story up into too many short scenes that never letting Davis and Doyle the time to really build the tension between them until the second half of the intermissionless show. And while the two actors are more than capable of commanding the stage for the entire play, they do feel a bit hermetically sealed. It would have been interesting to see Simon actually play a scene with the wife Maggie and see the friction between the two. But the few few-too-many not so riveting monologues pale in comparison to the those more gripping ones that offer an intimate window into a horrific chapter of human history.