A playwright/actor’s two Marine Corps deployments in Afghanistan inform Matthew Domenico and Katherine Connor Duff’s The Ninth Door, now holding audiences riveted at West Hollywood’s The Other Space.

The gut-punching Foxhole Theater Company World Premiere stars ex-Marine Domenico as Cpl. Marx, one of nine Armed Forces vets who find themselves reunited in a setting not unlike Jean-Paul Sartre’s for No Exit, except that this time round, the play’s titular doors suggest that there might just be nine ways out.

Like Sartre’s trio of ill-fated protagonists, The Ninth Door’s cast of characters have met their maker, their deaths depicted early on and indelibly so.

Now it’s up to the nine—Sgt. Rawls (Frank Krueger), Lcpl. Prince (Eric Davis), Lcpl. Beauvoir (Brock Joseph), Lcpl. Kripke (Garrett Botts), Pvt. Yates (Matthew Pardue), Pvt. Tucker (Ezra Parter), Pvt. Woolfe (Colin Gutrhie), Doc Locke (Jon Cody), and Cpl. Marx—to relive events leading up to their demise (some by suicide, others by natural causes) and in so doing try to reach a closure in death they did not find in life.

A soldier forced by Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell to stay closeted even from his best bud, another haunted by the image of a Afghan boy he was unable to save, another who left Afghanistan in a body bag, these are just three of the ways their Middle East deployments left these men scarred until the day they died.

Former U.S. Marine Domenico clearly knows of what he writes. Military terminology (DD-214, NJP, SERE training, Blue Falcon, FOB, etc.) pops up throughout. And only someone who has been there, done that, could write so forcefully about lives lived in constant peril while surrounded by unspeakable sights not soon to be forgotten.

It’s in large part because of this authenticity that The Ninth Door works, even for those who, like this reviewer, might wonder if they’ll be able to get past its experimental-theater-style premise.

It works too because the characters Domenico and Duff have created have stories worth telling, and because the actors who bring these men to life do so with unforgettable force and depth.

Incisively and perceptively directed by Ryan Knight, The Ninth Door features one sensational performance after another.

Among those delivering the dramatic goods every step of the way are Davis and Joseph as best friends ripped apart by secrets and lies, Guthrie as a grieving, self-blaming dad, and Parter as a born-again believer.

Cody, Domenico, and Krueger are equally memorable as men unable to forget what they saw and did in an Afghan hut, and Pardue is downright devastating as a teenager so tormented by what he did not do in that hut that a gun to the head ends up the only way out.

Last but not least, Breakout Performance Scenie winner Botts delivers another compelling star turn as a redneck grunt whose post-Afghanistan divorce has him reliving his wedding day ad infinitum to the tune of John Meyer’s “Your Body Is A Wonderland.”

Chris Barolet’s set design may be simple in the extreme (nine doorways set upstage against a plain black wall), but as lit to visually dramatic effect by director Knight, it demonstrates that barebones need not be “Fringey,” and Grant Escandón’s sound design mixes music and effects to provide a potent backdrop.

Completing the behind-the-scenes creative team is fight director CR Mohrhardt, whose stage combat proves so realistic, you might find yourself wondering how the actors escape unscathed.

The Ninth Door is produced by Ruth Smitherman, who doubles as stage manager. Domenico and Duff are executive producers. Joseph King is stage manager and Kaitlyn Cramer is assistant stage manager. Cody Aaron Hanify is swing.

Originally scheduled for a pre-pandemic debut, The Ninth Door was in rehearsals when Kabul fell in August. Its arrival a year and a half later than planned is not only propitiously timed, it sets the bar high for whatever Foxhole Theater Company has next up its sleeve.

The Actors Company, 916 North Formosa Avenue, Los Angeles.
https://foxholetheatercompany.com/

–Steven Stanley
October 9, 2021
Photos: Matt Kamimura

Tags: Foxhole Theater Company, Katherine Connor Duff, Los Angeles Theater Review, Matthew Domenico, The Actor's Company