22 MINUTES REMAINING Reviewed
22 MINUTES REMAINING
Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle
Perhaps the most stunning script in the autumnal fringe festival of Marin is 22 MINUTES REMAINING.
Rarely does satire attain such subtlety and profundity in less than 15 minutes.
Writer Ignacio Zulueta gleefully packs in every cliché, bias, double standard, special plea, rhetorical ruse and propaganda device that the running dog, anti-Zionist, press and Al Jezeera routinely spew before the great undiscerning, the myopic masses and the fatuously politically correct.
While most of us have heard most of the arguments trumpeted by MR Zulueta, his play is a good warning to all us rubes: if you listen to the dim of the same fables enough times, they begin to gel into an aspic resembling truth.
The title 22 MINUTES REMAINING refers to the warning time that the Israeli Defense Force (I.D.F.) provides to residents of structures that are about to be destroyed by a retaliatory Israeli Air Strike.
With a sleigh of the writer's hand, Zulueta cleverly omits any mention of the precise warning times that terrorists groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Al Qeda routinely provide to non-combatants before directing a Suicide Bomber, Qassam, Scud, Katyusha, Iranian Fajr-3, or Commercial Jet into soft civilian targets like discos, villages, schools or trade centers.
Zulueta adds an element of mystery to 22 MINUTES REMAINING by shrouding the fact that the IDF air strike may have some remote connection to the 200 missiles a day that Hezbollah was raining down on civilian targets in Northern Israel.
Zulueta does not believe in spoon-feeding his audience nor taking sides in the Middle East conflict: he never states which of the world's kicked around and marginalized ethnic groups ARE entitled to a homeland.
Is it the French Canadians? The Basque? The Druze? The Armenians? The Kurds? The Gypsies or Roma or Romani? The Maronites? The Bedouins? The Falashas? The Coptics? The American Indians? The WASPS? The Jews of the Diaspora? Help us out here MR Zulueta.
Except to assume that the Palestinians ARE entitled to a homeland in Gaza, the West Bank, Galilee, Judea, Jordan and the Negev, Zulueta does not risk his credibility by wading in to the homeland issue.
Perhaps his underlying answer to the Jewish homeland is ensconced within the conversation between the Lebanese woman—Myriam—who refuses to leave her condemned home, and the IDF caller—Gilda—beckoning her to flee for her life.
Their conversation gets around to the proverbial Jewish march into the sea—either single file our en masse: Israel is a democratic country they can decide for themselves—either way, the amphibious gesture will be construed as a meaningful peace overture by the Arabs and the Arab sympathizers.
Then too anything short of total immersion will be viewed as an illegal occupation of Arab lands.
Zulueta is not without nuance: Myriam states that her son could not find work in Lebanon and was forced to leave the utopia of Lebanon to find work in decadent Haifa.
Is Zulueta contrasting the 20 percent unemployment rate in Lebanon to the vibrant, Mephistophelean economy of the Zionist entity?
Zulueta is careful to reign in the questions provoked by 22 MINUTES REMAINING.
We leave the theatre certain that Zulueta condemns retaliatory raids by the IDF for as many as 200 missiles a day targeting civilians in Israeli, but would he recommend that same restraint on the part of the United States if 200 missiles a day were launched by the French Separatists of Quebec into New England?
How many missiles per day should the U.S. tolerate from Tijuana, Matamoros and Nuevo Loreda if Mexican Ultranationalists were to begin a war to repatriate all the lands lost during the Mexican-American War of 1846 and the Gadson Purchase of 1853?
If you enjoy anti-Zionism dressed up as comedy, farce, political satire and parody and maybe a whiff of anti-Semitism masquerading as anti-Zionism, then this play is for you.
Look for it in a theater near you, unless Homeland Security finds it first.
U.S. Naval Aviator and Lieutenant Commander Retired
Math Teacher at Encinal High School A.U.S.D.
San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle
Sidewalk Politician and Arm Chair Liberal