Peace Be Onto You (review)

 Spoilers ahoy!

I love classical theatre, and by great good fortune have been seeing one excellent performance of same after another this year.  So a modern play by a writer (Eric Eberwein) with whom I remain unfamiliar led to some worry.   One's luck has to end sometime right?

Maybe, but not this time!

Peace Be With You, a full length drama from Force of Nature Productions follows four characters, each flawed, none evil, not one with most much less all of any answers at all.  Very human, the lot.  

Leo (Benjamin Wheeler) is this adopted kid with issues.  His relationship with a stressed adoptive mom Jody (Lara Fisher) remains strained for all sorts of reasons, some of which seem her fault to some degree--but also his rejection by other foster families until early teens left their mark.  She made mistakes but loves him, not wisely perhaps but sincerely.  He feels that, for both good and ill but more importantly feels lost, deeply in need of some anchor, some goal, some escape from a life that feels like a prison.  

Personally, I can relate.  Tell the truth, can't you?  If not now, at some point in your life?

Courtney (Melissa Murra), Leo's best friend ex, also loves him.  As a friend.  As an ally--they are both adopted but with different histories--and as just someone who treasures him.  She and Jody react rather badly when Leo decides to join the Marines.  

At this point the US Military is engaged...somewhere.  We don't know precisely where, so it could be today or a few years ago, or maybe a few years hence.  It hardly matters.

Then there is Patrick (Mitch Hall), a older man and Marine who has started a relationship with Leo, and did indeed suggest the young man sign up.  He saw in Leo someone in need of structure and achievement, an identity outside his own history, and believed service might work.

It did not.  The facts of combat proved traumatic to say the least.  Even the necessary process of military training ended up doing a lot more harm than good, in Leo's case.  He emerged ultimately isolated from others, paranoid with a visceral belief that everyone at all times are surrounded by armed enemies.  Not a rational, conscious idea, but a sense deep in his bones that is the case.  

Not healthy.  Not feasible.  But who could have predicted this?  One thing I carried away from this show was the mystery which human beings are to one another.  We are not predictable.  This came through so clearly in the production, especially in terms of the performances by all four fine actors in cast, as well as direction by Jahel Corban Caldera.  One character has a line which haunts me still.  "We all loved him.  It was not enough."  A thousand lifetimes worth of tragedy in those few words.  They shook me.  

And so I emerged a somewhat different person from that theatre than the one who entered.  Just as Leo was changed by boot camp.  And every one else in the story emerged as a result of events.  Life.  Concentrated.  Released.  Tasted in the air and the blood by the audience experiencing this play.

Peace Be With You plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm through April 25, 2026 at Sawyer's Playhouse, 11031 Camarillo Street, North Hollywood