‘The Things They Carried’ is a Vietnam-era soldier’s somber look at war

By John Townsend, Star Tribune

Minnesota native Tim O’Brien is a preeminent author of the Vietnam experience. His semi-autobiographical story collection, “The Things We Carried,” portrays a platoon under constant deadly threat and the emotional struggles that spring from that.

Stephen D’Ambrose in Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried‚Äù at History Theatre. Photo by Scott Pakudaitis/Star Tribune.

Jim Stowell has adapted the stories into a one-character play featuring Stephen D’Ambrose which opened Saturday at the History Theatre in St. Paul. It runs in repertory with “Lonely Soldiers: Women at War in Iraq” by Helen Benedict.

O’Brien’s title refers to the various items that soldiers carry while on their mission. Both necessity and superstition determine those items, ranging from canteens of water, can openers, and mosquito repellent to a rabbit’s foot, a girlfriend’s pantyhose, and the thumb of a Viet Cong teenager. It also refers to the emotional baggage of men who are viscerally aware that they may very well die.

Stowell’s somber adaptation is shaped into confessional sections that relate to O’Brien’s combat duty, his summer of discontent when he considered defecting to Canada, and wrestling with guilt over surviving while others on both sides of the conflict perished. There are luminous descriptions of nature from Vietnam to the Minnesota/Canadian border. And poetically graphic descriptions of violence — blood spread across a shirt, missing limbs, the “dainty” look of a young dead man.

D’Ambrose is superb. He probes the psyche of a man at odds with the manly duty expected of him with courageous vulnerability. The desecration of a mutilated Vietnamese corpse by his fellow soldiers repulses O’Brien and he does not take part, but he must be loyal to his comrades despite their coarse behavior.

Read the full article by John Townsend from Star Tribune.