Writers: Natasha Roland and Xhloe Rice
A production that starts with a passionate harmonica duet is setting up for quite the show, and A Letter to Lyndon B Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First delivers. Dynamic duo Xhloe and Natasha provide a forcefully physical, witty, and moving tale of boyhood, war, and Scout’s Honour.
No longer The King’s Head Theatre, this Islington audience are transported to camp, where life is about muddied knees, spit handshakes, rope swings, and praising the beloved Lyndon B Johnson. Energetic physicality gives this production an enthralling pace, and Roland and Rice are totally in tune as they embody Ace (Roland) and Grasshopper (Rice), two boys who make-believe as soldiers and only hold hands in ‘extreme circumstances’. Roland and Rice intersperse innocent and witty anecdotes about camp with a touching fable of a boy sent on a task to become a man, and eventually, the true horrors of war.
The pace of the production sees the pair jump (often literally) from one tale to the next, from comedy to devastating sadness, with great effect. The pair are polished and have the on-stage connection of two who create together often. Ace and Grasshopper build this intimate connection that can only be built in childhood – and when this is taken into the battlefield, for real, it’s evermore devastating.
Building on their own experience in military families, the boyhood into manhood, fable into war, the trajectory is excellently handled. In simple terms, it’s an evergreen tale of boys who want to be like their dads, and to make their mothers proud. Among this is an important conversation about a particularly American masculinity, about utilising this manhood for violence in the name of a politician. But it’s the simplicity at its core that is heart-breaking, and beautifully presented without preaching or cliché to boot.
Hillbilly the camp bully, for example, who crushes stick insects eventually turns into Billy the sadistic soldier, using Vietnamese locals as target practice. It’s the oscillation between the witty, matter-of-fact style of childish storytelling into the barbarity of war that is so effective.
An electric pace, and with occasional aid from Angelo Sagnelli’s lighting design, means the production is able to transport from location to location, from church to Camp Councillors hut, to the battlefields of Vietnam. Just as we fall into the lake on the rope swing, we are transported into a rolling river in the heart of the jungle, in terrifying danger. Musical interludes are perfectly placed in these moments. Beatles renditions on the harmonica used for laughs, at the climax make for a hugely touching final emotional punch.
It’s a mixture of storytelling, engaging physical theatre and clowning that is hard to pull your eyes away from.
Runs until 14 September 2024
The Reviews Hub Score
Physical, witty, and moving
