Boats On A River

   “BOATS ON A RIVER, a new play by Julie Marie Myatt, can be distinguished both by what it is and by what it is not.   What it is, is a play by an American playwright that reaches beyond the borders of this country, to examine life in other parts of the world and to use that examination as a prism to reflect back on our own culture. In that regard, it is a singularly refreshing departure from the navel-gazing that occurs in much of American theater.   What it is not, is melodramatic or pat or clichéd or shrill. And for a play that deals with the trafficking of young girls in the Cambodian sex trade, it deftly works in a quasi-journalistic fashion to tell its story palatably without diminishing or glossing over the horror of its subject matter.   Myatt traveled to Cambodia to create a fictionalized story of an American who runs a center that pulls girls out of prostitution.   Sidney Webb has clearly gotten too close to his job and, after 15 years at it, is on the verge of burnout. His condition isn’t helped when a headstrong American blows into town, raids a brothel and drops a trio of his “rescues” —three girls ages 13, 8 and 5—into the already over-crowded center. Plus, Sidney is having difficulties with his wife, a Vietnamese woman scarred by her own past in the sex trade.   The script ranges all over the place—attempting to climb into Sidney’s head, examining the circumstances and attitudes of the young girls, even giving an unflattering glimpse of an American tourist awash in his own sense of entitlement and willfully ignorant about life in Cambodia and his own small-but-damning contribution to the sex trade.   Myatt calls for adult actresses to play the young prostitutes, an obviously necessary concession and one that allows audiences just enough distance to absorb her thematics without recoiling in revulsion.…   But Myatt also conjures a final stage image that hammers the play home with heart-stopping clarity.   …If it gets to our heart a bit too much through our head, BOATS ON A RIVER still has a certain poignant grace to it as a story of those struggling mightily to do the right thing against a vast, invisible and diabolical machine.”Dominic P Papatola, Twin Cities Pioneer Press