War past haunts buddies in ‘Last of the Boys’

The characters in Steven Dietz’s play “Last of the Boys” are haunted – by the false hopes of the 1960s, by the specter of the Vietnam War, by familial dysfunction and the splintering of personal relationships. And then there’s the actual ghost, the spirit of a dead soldier, who skulks about as a painful and inescapable reminder of the past.

The drama, which opens at the Modern Theater Spokane on Friday, concerns two lifelong friends and Vietnam veterans in the late ’90s. One of them is Ben (Todd Beadle), who lives in an abandoned California trailer park and has closed himself off from the world. The other is Jeeter (George Green), who has become a liberal college professor and is open about discussing his experiences in the war.

“(Ben) has made a choice to remove himself from society,” said the show’s director, Diana Trotter. “He’s one of those vets who doesn’t talk about the war and just wants to be left alone. And Jeeter is that guy who’s still trying to process it and wants to talk about it. … They’re both on a quest, I think, for some kind of salvation or redemption.”

As “Last of the Boys” opens, Ben’s estranged father has passed away, though Ben has skipped the funeral. Jeeter, however, attended the service, and he shows up at Ben’s trailer with his new girlfriend Salyer (Chasity Kohlman) and her mother Lorraine (Teri Grubbs) in tow. We soon learn that the specter of Vietnam also hangs over them, and Dietz uses these characters to expose the scars of war and explore the psychological toll of violence.

“I think it’s interesting – how are these men coping? And the women – the wives and the daughters,” Trotter said. “In a larger sense, it’s about how we work through it. All four of these characters have this trauma that stems from the Vietnam War, and they’re all trying to work it out differently.”

Trotter, also a local actor and a professor of theater at Whitworth University, has previously directed two other Dietz plays (“God’s Country,” “Lonely Planet”). Much of his work is small-scale and character driven, and she says the emotional questions at the center of “Last of the Boys” are indicative of the writer’s dramatic dexterity.

“He’s masterful; his plays don’t give themselves away on one visit,” she said. “Dietz says some things in this script – this is how it is between these two men at the end. But we’ve looked at each other and said, ‘Are we sure about that? Would we think that if he hadn’t come right out in the stage directions and said what they’re thinking and feeling?’ ”

That ambiguity is, Trotter said, one of the strengths of “Last of the Boys,” and she hopes that it inspires post-showing discussions amongst audience members

“I hope they’re engaged by the story, and that they’re moved by it, in whatever way is useful to them,” she said. “I tend to be drawn to shows where people can leave the theater and talk about what happened. Are these men irreparably broken, or did they move forward? I hope people don’t just forget about it when it’s done.”