Six months later she was dead – beaten to death under mysterious circumstances. Her remains were sent back to the States to her distraught and angry mother – remains that included both the badly beaten corpse of her daughter and Laila’s personal effects including a journal that she maintained during her trip.

Remains, written by local actress, playwright, and Mo’olelo Performing Arts Company founder Seema Sueko, is currently receiving its world premiere performance as the initial production of Mo’olelo. The show takes on the sensitive and volatile issue of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in a way that is relatively balanced and reveals a fascinating, nuanced, and authentic glimpse into various aspects of both societies that you’re just not going to see on CNN or Fox News – a glimpse aided by Seema’s Masters in International Relations, experience on the World Affairs Council, as well as her own cultural experience (she is half-Pakistani and raised as a Muslim) and her personal experiences in visiting the area.

Seema delivers this glimpse through the use of Laila’s journal that her mother Carol (Linda Libby) finds in her daughter’s belongings. Except for some dialogue between Carol and a senator’s aide (Kathryn Venverloh) who is collecting information for the formal inquest into Laila’s death, the entire play is delivered through Carol’s out-loud reading of the journal and Laila giving voice to her own words. This unusual style of storytelling was surprisingly effective thanks to the skilled manner in which the words of the journal were divided between mother and daughter with the speaker(s) for each line carefully chosen to evoke the strongest emotions, mixing it up between monologues, shorter bursts back and forth that at times feel almost like the two were talking, and occasional simultaneous reading of the same lines.

The play captivatingly draws us into Laila’s experiences in Israel and Palestine, offering us intriguing insights into the cultures with the search for clues regarding Laila’s death keeping the alert level all the higher. The portrait painted is realistically nuanced as neither society is portrayed as all bad or all good, with Laila encountering friendship and racism, violence and kindness in various forms that present both great word pictures and colorful characters. There is no solution offered for the current crisis – just that a beginning would be to try to understand one another from the other’s perspective. And that failure to do so will continue to result in needless death.

The result is a very impressive and important world premiere for the new theatre company. Seems Sueko is magnificent as the young student still trying to figure out who she is while she throws herself into learning about the world even when aware of the danger it presents. She captures the spirit of youth, excited to experience new things, meet new people, dance the night away, try to find a “study abroad fling,” becoming frustrated, hurt, angry but not cynical when brought face-to-face with unfairness and prejudice, and unabashedly frightened when confronted with death. Linda Libby is emotionally compelling as the heartbroken, bitter mother taking poignant pleasure from her daughter’s humor in the journal, agonizing over the entries that hint at the tragedy to come, and resentful of the government’s bureaucratic response to her daughter’s death. As the nice face on that government bureaucracy, Kathryn Venverloh is suitably superficial and politically polite.

Performs through October 3, 2004.

Rob Hopper
San Diego Playbill