Veteran brings audience into challenges of PTSD in Urbanite world premiere

Perhaps only military veterans and those closest to them can fully comprehend how the horrors of war lead to post traumatic stress disorder and the emotional roller coaster that follows when they return home.

But in her one-hour, one-person play “Backwards, Forwards Back,” which is having its world premiere at the Urbanite Theatre in Sarasota, playwright Jacqueline Goldfinger does more than any stage work I can recall to give the rest of us a sense of how seemingly simple things in our world can trigger episodes and potentially dangerous reactions.

Actor L. James, an Army veteran himself, plays a soldier who reluctantly tries virtual reality therapy with exposure to the kinds of events, situations and images that caused the trauma in the first place. His worried sister has given him an ultimatum about the treatment if he’s to have any hope of seeing her two children again. She is afraid for him and her kids.

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The title, the soldier tells us, is a reference to the way PTSD sufferers move through life. Sometimes they move backward and sometimes they advance, only to have a stumble that takes them back again.

We get a sense of that in the time shifting of the play. The soldier greets the audience from a treatment room where he dons a virtual reality headset and we see the images he’s watching. There’s a seemingly calm desert landscape that shifts into a warzone with burned-out tanks. In another, he wanders through a beautifully green park, only to be confronted by a building fire with sirens suddenly erupting.

These images are scattered throughout the show as the soldier relates his experiences overseas (think Iraq or Afghanistan) when an explosion blew a family’s home away, leading to torment that has haunted him for months or years.

Under the staging of co-artistic director Brendan Ragan, James creates a gripping picture. He describes things with such detail and precision that we can almost see everything happening, even if it’s all only inside his head. He makes PTSD real and human and we feel we really get to know and understand the challenges he faces.

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Goldfinger uses frank language and lots of four-letter words that might upset some overly sensitive audience members, but probably not the ones who have attended past Urbanite shows. It all sounds perfectly natural and appropriate for the character and the story.

Jeffrey Weber’s scenic design features a futuristic-looking screen for projecting the virtual reality videos, above a platform and a couple of raised circles which Ragan and James use well to represent different locations and moods. Alex Pinchin’s projection design may not be in the most cutting-edge style but it is effective to take audience members where they need to go.

The play marks the final production for Ragan, who announced this week that he is leaving the Urbanite, which he co-founded nearly 10 years ago with Summer Wallace, who will become the sole Producing Artistic Director. Ragan is taking a new job as artistic director of a theater in Arlington Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.

‘Backwards Forwards Back’

By Jacqueline Goldfinger. Directed by Brendan Ragan. Reviewed March 26. Through April 23 at Urbanite Theatre, 1487 Second St., Sarasota. Tickets are $39, $25 for those 40 and younger, $5 for students. 941-321-1397; urbanitetheatre.com

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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Review: Soldier puts human face to PTSD in Urbanite world premiere