(David C. Nichols’s article appeared in the LA Times, 9/8.)
The controversy surrounding "My Name Is Rachel Corrie" will not likely dissipate with its forthright Los Angeles premiere at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum. Still, local audiences of all ideological stripes can finally put this much-debated work into context, thanks to a remarkable title performance by Samara Frame.
Alan Rickman and Katherine Viner's 2005 monodrama culls diaries and emails of 23-year-old American student Corrie, killed in 2003 by an Israeli army bulldozer while protesting the razing of a Palestinian home as a peace activist in Gaza. Blowback has followed the play ever since New York Theatre Workshop indefinitely delayed its planned 2006 U.S. premiere, causing Rickman and Viner to withdraw it.