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Pugilist Specialist. Scotsman. 8.5.2003. Joyce McMillan.	Pugilist Specialist is this year's brilliant offering from the hard-hitting American ensemble The Riot Group, fast emerging as leading Fringe critics of their country's culture and policy as it embarks on a new phase of history as the world's only superpower. Writer Adriano Shaplin and his team - Stephanie Viola, Paul Schnabel and Drew Friedman - avoid the pitfalls of predictable anti-war grandstanding by going straight into the belly of the beast, and trying to understand the splits and conflicts that are bound to emerge among the American military and the political right as the country becomes ever more deeply drawn into its role as global policeman and de facto imperial power. The situation is stark; somewhere in America, an elite group of marines assemble for briefing on a covert operation to assassinate a Middle Eastern leader.	There's an ageing post-liberal colonel, a slightly crazed sniper called Freud, an uptight military archivist and propaganda man called Stutter, and a fiercely talented and single-minded female lieutenant, Emma Stein, who is known to have made a public complaint about certain abuses she suffered during her time at an army training base. And through 70 minutes of breathtakingly fast and penetrating dialogue among these four characters, backed by a quiet, rhythmic soundtrack of mounting complexity and intensity, Shaplin mounts a searing analysis of the gulf that is opening up between imperial idealists like Emma Stein who believe in the values and principles embodied in the US Constitution, and in a national mission to create a global society that reflects those principles and old-fashioned military men used to a culture of legitimized brutality, unthinking obedience, and cynical self-interest.	Here, it's the idealist who proves the loser. But whatever we make of its desperately tense final moments, Pugilist Specialist emerges as perhaps the most truly grown-up piece of theatre on this year's Fringe; a show that spares itself the effort of dumbing down or sexing up, and simply cuts straight to the dark, complex and often bitterly comic heart of the new global politics that is shaping our future, whether we like it or not. > return to top
Pugilist Specialist. Glasgow Herald. 8.5.2003. Andrew Eaton.	It's a military operation. A trio of cameo-ed up grunts, trained to kill are cherry-picked for a mission impossible. The operation? To assassinate a mustachioed Arabic despot -The Bearded Lady- and liberate the free world as we know it. One's just following orders, another's laughing his way through the fear, while the other, the most capable of all, is a GI Jane with much to prove, and who can mix it up with the best of them without any need for sexual favours. In the end, however, orders are orders, and in the dirtiest war of all, it seems every one's expendable. There's something exceedingly pure about the Riot Group's work. Almost zen-like in their stylistic simplicity, the well drilled quartet stays pretty much stock still throughout, yet conjure up a battlefield of institutionalized aggression that moves from the mess hall to the field with only the twitchiest of leaps.	Here, as they spar with a barrage of machine-gun exchanges that punchline each scene, they're still as focused as in previous years, but significantly less hectic. Consequently, the purity of their aesthetic is allowed to breathe, conspiring to make them an even more dangerous proposition. Adriano Shaplin's script is a wordy trawl through the undergrowth of emotions smoke-screened by the very notion of a just war. Its language is culled from press conferences and po-faced secret-agent shows, and is played so straight as to heighten the situation's life-or-death absurdity. As the lone woman in the troop, Stephanie Viola is no Private Benjamin, but a steely agent provocateur caught in the crossfire of a chain of command at odds with itself.	It's a brilliant progression for the Riot Group, who need to ensure that their shtick doesn't become stale or formulaic. Their biggest achievement here is the use of events in Iraq as source material for something genuinely, creatively, and brilliantly provocative without ever beating the audience about the head with it. If you're looking for collateral damage, go tell it to the marines. > return to top
Pugilist Specialist. Evening Standard. 8.5.2003. Rachel Halliburton.	The Riot Group deploys irony like a weapon of mass destruction, ripping with ease through the sentimentality and carefully constructed illusions inherent in political language. Last year, this furious and devastatingly funny theatre company reworked King Lear for a CNN-style newsroom, now they return as steely-souled marines, on a mission to assassinate a Middle Eastern dictator with a moustache and a country full of look-alikes. Writer Adriano Shaplin punctuates savage observation with quasi-Shakespearean riffs on any subject from the idea of war fought by babies (because they're cold-blooded and fearless) to the true value of the hot-dog. The cast's deadpan delivery, accompanied throughout by a shifting ambient beat, gives added punch to the desert-dry humor of such lines as: "If at first you don't succeed... redefine success", or "Victory forgives dishonesty".	Two benches run across an otherwise bare stage, for a production which shifts between the headquarters where the assassination is planned, and the scene of the assassination attempt. Dressed in camouflage, the four members of the San Francisco company trade phrases, toying with concepts of poisoned diplomacy and bloodlust-- whether it's Paul Schnabel's 51-year-old colonel grimly informing his pretty and flinty ambitious female lieutenant (Stephanie Viola) that he objects to a "world too weak to see you in a body bag", or Lieutenant Freud (Shaplin) asking: "Can you feel how much sense the world makes?" as he gets off on the excitement of having shot his ammunition.	Incredibly, Shaplin is only 24. If he and his brazenly intelligent group continue to evolve with such poise and originality (what other company could pull off a joke about Saddam's seductive eyes and the problems of infra-red goggle?) the theatre world will be a better if more cynical place. At the show's shocking end, the cast received a standing ovation from the front row - a fitting tribute to their lethal linguistic fireworks. > return to top
Pugilist Specialist. Guardian. 8.6.2004. Lyn Gardner.	Somewhere in America, a political assassination is being planned. The target is an Arab leader with a very big moustache. The participants are a hand-picked trio lead by a fatherly, once-liberal colonel. There is an uptight communications expert keen on following orders and a full-of-himself sniper.	There is a final member of the party, Jessica Stein, a sharply intelligent and successful explosives expert who has become a thorn in the military's side since she made a complaint about harassment and was splashed all over the front of the New York Times. Still, this woman is a professional ("success is my feminism") and she'll get the job done.	The Riot Group has been cutting a swathe through Edinburgh in recent years with its portraits of an America in crisis, and it hits the bull's-eye with this stylish and intelligent reflection on the moral conundrums that open up when you start trying to play policeman to the entire world. A real piece of tense, hard theatre about the tense, hard realities of the times we live through. > return to top
Pugilist Specialist. The List. 8.7.2003. Steve Kramer.	This engrossing piece of theatre is likely to be the best thing you see this festival. The Riot Group's latest foray into political theatre and the politics of theatre sees four US Marines preparing a black operation involving the assassination of a Middle Eastern leader. A zealous female meritocrat, a psychopathic sniper, an emotionally dead technician and a sinister commanding officer combine to provide a searching examination of American military expansionism as you could find.	A simple, compelling score sets off the rich incantations and aphorisms of Adriano Shaplin's script, which takes us on a rich journey through rhythmic repetition and startling turns of phrase. There is an exploration of neo-conservative ideology that uncovers, in its minions, and through, by implication, to its leaders a sub-erotic relationship of America to the enemies it finds to propagate paranoia.	Meanwhile, the role of history, gender relations and philosophy in all is elucidated. If that sounds pretentious, then I should add that this piece is as funny as anything you'll see. One particular sequence, where the squaddies read aloud letters sent to them by American children, is a highlight among many. Just see it. > return to top
Pugilist Specialist. Independent. 8.8.2003. Mark Fischer.	It's shaping up to be a festival of serious intent. None of your whimsical relationship dramas here-- it's all tough plays on big political themes. Which makes the Riot Group, from San Francisco, look all the more at home. The company blasted through the complacency of recent festivals with their award-winning Wreck the Airline Barrier and Victory at the Dirt Palace, and now it's back with a ferocious look at the American military and its obsession with taking control of the Middle East.	Young writer and director Adriano Shaplin treats his actors and his language with the same rigour. He writes in a dense, fiercely intelligent barrage of words, while his actors perform with a tightly drilled muscularity. It's a style that demands close concentration, as they portray an undercover marine corps on a cold-blooded mission to take out an Arab leader.	Their brutal world-view is brilliantly satirized, for example when they receive a batch of politically subversive letters from American schoolchildren, and though sometimes Shaplin can seem too clever for his own good, there's no denying the power of this invigorating company. > return to top
Pugilist Specialist. Daily Telegraph. 8.11.2003. David Gritten.	The bloody, sometimes farcical events in Afghanistan and Iraq are the most compelling stories of our times, and every other stand-up comic has a routine about the absence of weapons of mass destruction. But it might seem premature for distinguished dramatic writing on this topic to have emerged Yet Pugilist Specialist, by the remarkable 24-year-old American playwright Adriano Shaplin, is exactly that - a riveting drama posing thoughtful questions about the war against terrorism.	The cast comprises Shaplin and three other members of the San Francisco theatre collective the Riot Group. They play four US Marines on a clandestine mission to eliminate a hostile Middle Eastern political leader, nicknamed "Big 'Tache". They're an intriguing quartet: the wisecracking sniper Lt Freud (Shaplin); a paternal, ex-liberal colonel; Harpo, an uptight, secretive communications/propaganda man; and Emma Stein (Stephanie Viola), a single-minded explosives expert, distrusted by the military since she complained about sexual harassment and made the New York Times front page. Together they plan, attempt and botch the assassination.	Shaplin's characters talk in stylized cadences, delivered at quickfire pace. "I eat unconscious desires for breakfast," quips Freud. "I know where loose talk goes to die," Harpo protests. "There's a reason peace and quiet are partners." Each character typifies a certain attitude towards the war on terror and the moral ambiguity of murder in pursuit of a possible greater good. In exploring these conundrums, Shaplin has created dazzling theatre. It's hard to imagine more brilliant or arresting new writing being uncovered in Edinburgh this year. > return to top
Pugilist Specialist. London Times. 8.13.2003. Robert Dawson Scott.	It is the comedians rather than the tragedians who seem to have most to say this year about weapons of mass destruction and the dangers of international terrorism. Perhaps events have been moving too fast for even the most agile theatre group. But these two plays suggest there is fire in the belly of at least two writers--one American the other Australian.	Those walking out probably wouldn't like Pugilist Specialist, the latest from Adriano Shaplin's four-person Riot Group, much either. The US group has developed a particular non-naturalistic, declamatory style. This year Shaplin turns his caustic wit on the inside of the US military machine, Special Forces, black ops. An operation to take out a Middle Eastern leader with a moustache (no, no prizes at all) is being planned by an elite unit. But it turns out that even the middle of the machine is rotten with corrupted values, spin and politics, and in a sickening cynical twist at the end, a whole new kind of friendly fire.	Although the Riot Group uses only a couple of benches and a throbbing soundtrack by way of setting, this marks a step forward in its work. There is more individual characterization, a more complex narrative arc and a more subtle build-up of tension. Above all there is more confidence in Shaplin's writing, somewhere between David Mamet and the late Bill Hicks He tends to give himself the best lines--goodness knows, there are enough to go round-- but this, too, is exhilarating theatre. > return to top
Pugilist Specialist. Time Out London. 8.13.2003. Brian Logan.	Edinburgh wouldn't be Edinburgh without another hit production from the Riot Group, whose Victory at the Dirt Palace made it to London last year. With Pugilist Specialist, writer/director Adriano Shaplin has let a little air into the company's rarefied house style. This new production zeroes in on a US military mission to assassinate an unnamed Arab leader. As the assassins bicker and the plans evolve, Shaplin exposes the moral (and logical) unsustainability of America's self-commissioned campaign to rid the world of evil.	As with Dirt Palace, Shaplin's characters speak in clipped, impossibly smart epigrams. But he's learning to let humanity, and drama, in on the equation. The party's eventual mission to nobble so-called Big 'Stache is a masterpiece of tension that brilliantly unites Shaplin's love/war metaphor. The army exists to provide the weak with comfort: 'can you feel how much sense the world is making all of a sudden?' asks Freud, as his finger tightens on a trigger.	Imagination is gratuitous. 'I'd rather be alive and ignorant,' says Shaplin's colonel, 'then dead and sensitive to the facts.' A vivid and timely play. > return to top
Pugilist Specialist. Scotland on Sunday. 8.17.2003. Mark Brown.	There are numerous plays on this year's Fringe which expose important aspects of American militarism, but the Riot Group's Pugilist Specialist reveals something more; namely, an ensemble company and playwright who are destined to leave a lasting imprint on 21st-century theatre. Writer Adriano Shaplin has already given strong indications of his brilliance, and this beautifully constructed, searingly intelligent play suggests that he is set to join the likes of Arthur Miller and David Mamet in the pantheon of great modern American dramatists.	His latest piece eschews blunt polemicizing in favour of a poetic satire which is as rare as it is penetrating. Where his superb Wreck the Airline Barrier used characters as vehicles for his writing, here he subverts all received notions of the US military in an extraordinary and complex vision of a clandestine 'black operation' against a prime target in the 'war on terror'. Whether the Special Forces operatives are debating their male commanding officer's supposed "feminism", or stating that there is "no feeling in what I do", the play overflows with the driest and revealing humour. As cocksure, suspiciously ultra-macho Freud (played by Shaplin himself) engages in scintillating psychological gymnastics with Stephanie Viola's cerebral "military spokesmodel" Stein, the organic relationship between Shaplin's writing and the Riot Group's performance comes into the clearest focus.	Shaplin's text betrays a distilled power similar to Beckett or Pinter, it is as if every word has been carefully weighed and measured before being put in the script. The almost intuitive playing of the ensemble is its natural partner, reflecting a physical and verbal economy, and a needle-sharp precision which makes for the most invigorating new theatre. > return to top
Pugilist Specialist. Sunday Herald. 8.17.2003. Dan Bye.	The Riot Group, who return with Pugilist Specialist, have won two Fringe Firsts in recent years.	This year, they have deservedly made it a hat trick, with this slow-moving but utterly absorbing look at the fraught politics of the American war machine. In a series of tense, taut scenes, an elite squad of marines slowly botch a political assassination.	And aside from the obvious stuff about America's dangerous hegemony, writer Adriano Shaplin has important things to say about the cult of machismo and the politics of language. > return to top
Pugilist Specialist. The Stage. 8.21.2003. Thom Dibdin.	Hard hitting and powerful, the Riot Group return with Adriano Shaplin's latest play, which uses the American military machine as a dark metaphor for the American government's attitude towards its citizens. Four soldiers are sent on a covert operation to terminate a Middle Eastern leader.	Drew Friedman plays the anally retentive Studdard, a specialist in recording field operations. Paul Schnabel is the ineffective Colonel in charge. Shaplin plays Freud, a sniper there to carry out the killing, whose inability on the firing range is the real reason for his use. Stephanie Viola is the high-flying female officer whose ability to speak her mind has made her the real target of the mission.	Told in brief blocks of dialogue as if repeated from field recordings of the mission, the intolerance of these individuals for each other is quietly wheedled out. Although they are largely static, this is a set of four individual performances that are uniformly excellent and go beyond the non-visual nature of the set-up. Ask them to move around the stage, however, and the company does not gel as an ensemble in the way that it might if an external director were involved. Superb storytelling but flawed in its presentation. > return to top
Pugilist Specialist. Guardian. 1.9.2004. Michael Billington.	Iraq has not only galvanized British political theatre, it has recharged American drama. You could hardly have sharper proof than this mesmerizing piece, written by Adriano Shaplin for San Francisco's Riot Group. It brilliantly dissects the US military mentality and the country's obsessive need for demoniacal enemies.	Four marines gather for a briefing on a clandestine mission to assassinate a Middle Eastern leader: clearly, though never explicitly, Saddam Hussein. One marine, bullishly played by Shaplin, is a loud-mouthed sniper. Another is a secretive communications expert. The third is a female explosives specialist distrusted by the top brass for complaining about sexual harassment. The most tantalizing figure is the colonel, who, like many of the neo-cons surrounding George W Bush, once espoused liberalism. Shaplin's play exposes the divisions within the US military and, by implication, the political elite. Freud, the sniper, for example, could be said to represent a Rumsfeld-like disregard for alien systems and what he calls the enemy's "cock-sucking religion".	But it is Shaplin's use of language that gives this play its resonance. It combines military euphemism, such as "clipping" for "killing", with a gift for pungent aphorism. The key moment comes when the colonel says of invaded countries: "They either love us or they love to hate us. Either way we're spreading love." This obliquely expresses Shaplin's idea of America's urge to impose its values on the rest of the world. This collective production is economically staged and dazzlingly acted by Shaplin, Stephanie Viola as the bomb expert, Drew Friedman as the technician and Paul Schnabel as the colonel. After London, the company tour and should not be missed by anyone fascinated by theatre's capacity to engage with the real world. > return to top
Pugilist Specialist. Time Out London. 1.12.2004. Dominic Maxwell.	After scoring a hit at last year's Edinburgh fringe, the Riot Group's strikingly smart military escapade has pulled into town with critical decorations dangling from its lapels. It is, without question, a bold and skillful entertainment, which skewers American military logic with peerless precision. Adriano Shaplin's script depicts the Middle Eastern mission of four marines, out to knock off a Saddam-like dictator.	The cast sit in combats on two gym benches, speaking towards us as a mic hangs above their heads. Drew Friedman's strait-laced Lt Studdard records it all for posterity; it's as if this is a reconstruction of the tapes. Stephanie Viola's Lt Stein is high-profile and high-intensity, a female fighting machine who wants-- and gets-- no special favours. The author plays Lt Freud, a punchy sniper: 'I'm clipping anything with a moustache.' Paul Schnabel's Colonel Johns is in charge, operationally and philosophically: 'If at first you don't succeed then redefine success.' Characters spat with unabashed articulacy; every well-honed line bursts with ideas.	And yet... permission to speak freely? 'Pugilist Specialist' is a pretty dry experience. A sharp-focused snapshot of American imperialism it may be, but whether you'll choose to buy into its staccato intellectuality is another matter. It's delivered with rapid-fire aplomb, but with a slick military bearing exacerbated by the productions purposeful flatness. If you can't believe these people are who they say they are, the show's brilliance becomes more obstructive than illuminating. There's too little time to savour Shaplin's wit; not enough incident to leaven the tough chat. Head annihilates heart. There's a serious talent at play here; a rare enthusiasm for precision of thought. But, after little more than an hour, it was a mighty relief when the bombardment ended. > return to top
Pugilist Specialist. Evening Standard. 1.19.2004. Nicholas de Jongh.	When Americans were offered chances to see the scathingly provocative Pugilist Specialist, which poses hard questions about the United States' conduct of its war on terrorism, they turned away. So the San Francisco-based Riot Group and its highly talented 24-year-old dramatist, Adriano Shaplin, turned to Britain. They were welcomed at last year's Edinburgh Festival with open arms, three awards and blissed-out reviews. There is no denying the remarkable theatrical impact that this 85 minutes of tense playing has on British audiences. Shaplin's dialogue, which enjoys more than a touch of the poet, comes at you in sparks and stings. The thoughtful malice of its wit hits political targets. The outline narrative, in which four American marines face the undercover task of eliminating a dangerous Middle East leader; sounds like the plot of a patriotic Hollywood action movie, with Tom Cruise flashing his teeth. But Shaplin's take upon this military action, in a joint production by the actors, is bracingly removed from anything physical.	The scene is variously a barracks, airplane and desert, though the stage is bare apart from two backless benches that are moved around to suggest location changes. The idea is to give an impression of actors recording a live radio play. A microphone hanging above the performers significantly reminds us every word is being recorded by the American military for propaganda and training purposes, or junked if anything goes wrong. The quartet, a fiftyish colonel and three young lieutenants, one female, all speak in a stylized diction of cryptic, laconic, witty ellipses. It is as if, Shaplin implies, they have been variously infected with flippant cynicism. These marines, however, with ripostes about deconstruction and Darwin, sound too intellectual to be true.	The battle of words and sex-war sniping, as they debate and question the logistics of assassination, helps to communicate a chilling sense of how American terrorist policy slips into artful, manipulative double-dealing. "Victory forgives dishonesty" is seen to be the marine's trade-mark credo. In a climax of devastating surprise the marines go out on their mission. Stephanie Viola's stroppy explosives expert Lieutenant Stein emerges as both the fall-guy and propaganda weapon of a treacherous American war-machine that Drew Friedman's withdrawn Studdard and Shaplin, himself playing the cock-sure Lieutenant Freud, memorably drive. > return to top
Pugilist Specialist. Daily Telegraph. 1.19.2004. Dominic Cavendish.	To say that Pugilist Specialist by San Francisco's hippest theatre outfit, the Riot Group, stormed the 2003 Edinburgh Festival is like saying Saddam Hussein has had a rough year. No other fringe show attracted so much excitement, or as many superlatives. One critic pronounced it "a masterpiece", another put its 24-year-old author Adriano Shaplin in the same league as Arthur Miller and David Mamet. With such praise, the worry was that, when assessed away from the festival frenzy, the play's reputation would crash down to earth. As one who participated in the chorus of approval, it is a relief to find that, remounted in London prior to a UK tour, Pugilist Specialist displays the clout everyone claimed it had. It's true that this sinister four-hander detailing the build-up to the attempted assassination of an Arab leader by a clandestine cell of US marines carried a topical frisson during the man-hunting mayhem following the Iraq war. But the play's great virtue is that, although razor sharp in it use of language, it never ties itself down to specifics.	The target is jokily referred to both as "Big 'Stache" and "The Bearded Lady", a man who possesses "bedroom eyes". Even if Osama bin Laden followed the deposed Iraqi dictator into US custody, the text would need no alteration, its central provocation being that America craves the enigma of an enemy, which it insists on personalizing and feminizing. That might make Pugilist Specialist sound like an exercise in conspiracy-theorizing, but the piece is as far removed from a flag-burning polemic as you could wish. Indeed, in its quick-fire articulacy, the quartet presents the military in a perversely flattering light. Yes, free-thinking female explosives expert Lt Stein (Stephanie Viola) finds herself pitted against the macho obduracy of communications geek Lt Studdard (Drew Friedman) and cocksure sniper Lt Freud (Shaplin himself) but the familiar skirmishes of sexual politics and career in-fighting are subsumed within smart philosophical set-tos.	Wit and detachment are the watchwords here, with Shaplin pumping out one-liners like a Schwarzenegger Woody Allen: "They either love us or they love to hate us - either way, we're spreading love," Paul Schnabel's world-weary Colonel advises his cohorts. The starkness of the set, the blankness of the actors and the grinding effect of a looping soundtrack threaten to become overpowering. But the sheer intelligence powering the evening is invigorating. Forcing you to question the place of dissent and the value of military might, the Riot Group live up to the hyperbole they harvested in August. > return to top
Pugilist Specialist. Independent. 1.20.2004. Paul Taylor	Pugilist Specialist, brought to us by the San Francisco-based Riot Group and the dramatist Adriano Shaplin, finds a provocative angle for its take on "the war on terror". Rather than preach a safe sermon to the converted, it holes us up with four US marines who are being briefed to take out a Saddam-like Middle Eastern leader. They're a disparate bunch: a paternal, post-liberal colonel (Paul Schnabel); a wisecracking sniper (Shaplin); an uptight propaganda specialist (Drew Friedman) and a lone female, Lieutenant Emma Stein (Stephanie Viola), a single-minded explosives expert, distrusted by the military.	The production is stark, the scenes taut, and the exchanges crackling with bone-dry cynicism. Through the discrepant attitudes of this quartet, Shaplin offers a mordant demonstration that far from being a monolith, the American military and the political Right are bound to succumb to internal divisions as the US becomes enmeshed in its self-appointed role as globo-cop.	What emerges is an almost erotic compulsion to be defined in relation to the enemy. The irony here is that the losers are people like Emma Stein, old-style imperialists bent on spreading the values and principles embodied in the Constitution. She is determined to complete the operation; it's just that the operation isn't what she thinks it is. "We need the target more than we need her," purrs the Colonel. "No more targets, no more history". > return to top
Pugilist Specialist. Financial Times. 1.20.2004. Sarah Hemming.	Which is mightier, the sword or the pen? Pugilist Specialist is a ferocious attack on American military values, yet it hits its targets not with displays of violence but with dazzling play of language. Indeed, for a drama about war, Pugilist Specialist has astonishingly little action. The four performers occasionally change formation, re-arranging the layout of the wooden benches on which they sit, altering the composition of their group. Yet despite its stillness, Adriano Shaplin's piece is highly charged and, in its own way, shockingly brutal. You sit pinned to your seat by this young American writer's bayonet sharp dialogue, by the Riot Group's superb, highly disciplined performances and, above all, by the disturbing, deeply skeptical portrait that the drama paints of American military and political strategy.	The piece presents us with four marines - three lieutenants and a colonel - who are set to assassinate a middle-eastern tyrant. There's the tough, female explosives expert (Stephanie Viola); there's the strangely taciturn specialist in communications (Drew Friedman); there's the unreconstructed trigger-happy sniper (played by Shaplin himself). And presiding over them is a one-time liberal colonel (Paul Schnabel), who struggles to frame military policy and the reaction to it into acceptable jargon: "They either love us or they love to hate us. Either way we're spreading love." Much of the energy of the piece arises from personal power-play between the characters: the attempts by the men to undermine their female colleague; the jostling for supremacy between the male soldiers. But as the play progresses towards the operation, it takes in probing arguments about America's urge to spread its own values and finally arrives at a shocking conclusion in which Shaplin attacks his leader's apparent enthusiasm for finding enemies. The mission is cynically, and savagely aborted because the officer in charge decides that the target is more useful alive than dead.	But it is not just the subject matter that grips the attention, it is also the tight structure and razor-sharp style. Shaplin uses a combination of black humour, tough poetry and military jargon to mount his attack. Occasionally the writing is self-indulgent and the piece doesn't need Shaplin's mesmeric soundtrack under it the whole time. But Shaplin, only 24, is already a writer of striking authority and intelligence, and his piece, expertly delivered by the cast, hits its targets with precision and force. > return to top
Pugilist Specialist. London Times. 1.20.2004. Benedict Nightingale.	The Riot Group's new piece won so much at Edinburgh last year - the Scotsman's First of the Fringe Firsts, no less, along with ecstatic comparisons to Miller and Mamet - that I went with unusually high hopes to see its London restaging. Well, I fear I'm in a minority. Pugilist Specialist strikes me as a good example of Edinburgh transfer syndrome. That's to say, what seems bright and buoyant on the Royal Mile in August can look a bit sickly when it's exposed to the less excited, more demanding audiences you find in London in January.	Let's acknowledge that the San Francisco company and its young house dramatist, Adriano Shaplin, have hit on a subject that is as topical as it was five months ago. Four marines are sent on a clandestine mission to an unnamed but pretty identifiable country to take out Big Stache, as the local tyrant is jokingly called. Let's even agree that the piece's lack of plausibility, tension or anything obviously dramatic need not matter, for Shaplin's aim is to anatomize and satirize American attitudes and military mindsets. But coming from a group known for its theatrical electricity, the result seems to me surprisingly laboured and wordy. The set is nice and simple, a set of benches that are twisted to become a briefing room, a canteen, an aeroplane, the desert. Add four capable actors in fatigues, and you ought to have a strong sense of place or at least atmosphere. But Shaplin's dialogue - now slangy, now precious, now would-be epigrammatic, and always self-conscious - reduces the real world to the sort of intellectually earnest, slightly sophomoric off-off-Broadway theatre I spent my New York years trying to avoid.	Did I really just hear Shaplin himself, playing an unprincipled killer called Freud, say that a fellow lieutenant's lost dignity was kicking and turning in his stomach "covered in soft fur and searching wildly for its father"? The published text says I did. And other lines seldom heard in or around Fort Bragg come from his colleagues: Stephanie Viola as a tough, able explosives expert, Drew Friedman as a communications whiz so passive he can just say "I have opinions, I just don't remember them", Paul Schnabel as a colonel anxious to prove he's not too old for the job. The same musical phrase interminably plinks and plonks as sexism in the army, patriotic xenophobia, spin and several varieties of military madness proceed to the surface. But after a preposterous, bewildering ending I confess I felt that there must be more incisive ways of raising the question behind it all: why are we interfering in Iraq? > return to top
Pugilist Specialist. Time Out New York. 9.23.2004. Adam Feldman.	The Riot Group's military thriller Pugilist Specialist is a carefully taut, 75-minute staring contest, and in the intimate confines of 59E59's Theater B, you can always see the white's of the actor's eyes. The play tracks the planning and execution of a black-ops U.S. Marine mission to assassinate a Middle Eastern warlord, and no matter what the soldiers are doing - discussing details of the plan, debating military philosophy, hiding outside the target's compound - the cast faces front and delivers its lines straight to the audience in brusque, no-nonsense tones.	Pugilist Specialist won top honors at the 2003 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and was raptuously received in its subsequent U.K. tour, perhaps owing to the play's underlying suspicion of American motives. ("Victory forgives dishonesty" is repeated throughout like a new Marine motto.) In its more discursive moments, Adriano Shaplin's script touches on interesting questions of gender, history and loyalty.	But the productions fine acting and dryly confrontational staging serve to camouflage what might otherwise seem like a routine gathering of familiar types: the colonel who may have a hidden agenda (Paul Schnabel), the taciturn technician (Drew Friedman), the female officer with qualms (Stephanie Viola), the loose cannon (Shaplin). The latter two share an erotic tension that also, Shaplin suggests, permeates America's relationship to its enemies. If the play is not quite the dazzlement alleged in reports from our colleagues overseas, it offers trenchant illustration that foul is fair in love and war. > return to top
Pugilist Specialist. Variety. 9.29.2004. David Rooney.	As tensions increase between the U.S. media and the administration over coverage of the war on terror, compromising the flow of information, a visceral performance piece like "Pugilist Specialist" seems all the more trenchant. Staged by San Francisco-based the Riot Group, this bruising work by the ensemble's dramatist Adriano Shaplin chronicles a covert Marine operation to assassinate a Middle Eastern leader via a ricochet of provocative dialogue lasting barely more than one intense hour. Premiered as part of last year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe and receiving its first U.S. run after a U.K. tour, this is an uncommonly bracing shot of galvanic political theater. Starkly mounted on a black stage, relieved only by line markings and by two long benches maneuvered into various positions by the four-member company, this grim glimpse inside the psychology of the military machine is so stripped down that its language, even more than the actors, becomes the most palpable presence onstage. That language is a kind of terse poetry laced with sinister humor that seems mannered and impossibly articulate coming from the mouths of four jarheads. But the sheer force and precision of the exercise make it chillingly convincing. The play concerns four U.S. Marines thrown together on a so-called black op to eliminate a mustachioed Arab leader known as Big Stache, codenamed the Bearded Lady during the mission. The unit is made up of stiffly purposeful explosives specialist Lt. Emma Stein (Stephanie Viola); stoic communications expert Studdard (Drew Friedman); and undisciplined joker Travis Freud (Shaplin), the operation's sniper ("I prefer hopeless romantic"). Pulling the strings is Col. Johns (Paul Schnabel), a new-school soldier whose sensitive leadership chafes Stein and confuses Studdard ("Is this an order? Then it doesn't have to make sense.")	While this is very much an ensemble piece in which the four actors spark off each other with the well-oiled affinity only a tight-knit company can muster, Stein becomes the center of the action. Accustomed to press scrutiny and sensitive to being scapegoated as the Marines' token woman ("Male gossip stinks like napalm in a room"), the lieutenant fears a backlash from the clandestine political assassination and attempts to turn down the mission. As a fanatical adherent to perfect planning, she smells disaster in its sloppy orchestration. But Johns convinces her that refusal is not an option, placing physical control of the mission in her hands. The Marines learn early on that the mission is being documented and -- like contestants on some kind of maniacally militaristic reality show -- their exchanges are modified by their awareness of recording devices. During the extended briefing, downtime in the mess hall and flight to the desert, Stein and Freud spar verbally -- their M.O.s and attitudes to war profoundly at odds -- while Studdard, with cyborg-like detachment, attempts to maintain order and Freud bristles impatiently to hit the sand and start clipping anything with facial hair. Shaplin has fashioned four characters that are more archetypes than individual soldiers. And the playwright is not always subtle in exploring his dense terrain of military morality, the slippery chain of command, the romanticizing -- even sexualizing -- of the enemy and the nature of conflicts in which removal of that enemy may be at cross-purposes with the political agenda.	But while the audience is primed for a dark denouement by the play's cynical tone, the tautly suspenseful detailing of the mission's derailment and the characters' steady escalation from steely reserve to panicked, emotional volatility make for a stunning final act. As a corrosive rumination on the Byzantine strategies of 21st century war, this is pithy, utterly gripping and uncomfortable to watch, its extreme artifice countered by cool control and intelligence. In addition to their tightly wound, fat-free performances -- they're seated for most of the duration -- the cast members also collectively designed and directed the play, lit with the uneasy intimacy of an interrogation scene and underscored by Shaplin's obsessive soundtrack of ambient noise, scrambled audiotape and faint drowsy music. > return to top
Pugilist Specialist. Village Voice. 10.5.04. Alexis Soloski.	The time: the present. The place: an undisclosed location in the Middle East. The mission: the assassination of "Big 'Stache," a/k/a "The Bearded Lady." The team: Lieutenant Stein, an explosives expert; Lieutenant Studdard, a communications whiz; Lieutenant Freud, a sniper; and their leader, Colonel Johns. In Pugilist Specialist, writer Adriano Shaplin and the Riot Group present an exhaustingly timely look at the American militaryÑits logic, its ethos, and its secret drives.	Though Shaplin and company are Yanks, they have made their name in the U.K., courtesy of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The British press hasn't stinted on the laurel wreaths, hailing twenty-something Shaplin as heir to Arthur Miller and David Mamet. (A dubious honor?) From the evidence of Pugilist Specialist, these encomiums are premature, though Shaplin's dialogue does demonstrate flair and clipped precisionÑapparently; he used military training manuals as a style guide. What's more extraordinary is the fluidity and cohesion of the ensemble, a unit since their student days at Sarah Lawrence. Performers Drew Friedman, Paul Schnabel, Stephanie Viola, and Shaplin function with a nearly eerie synergy. They play dissimilar characters, but work as an indissoluble corps.	In Stuff Happens, currently playing at London's National Theatre, playwright David Hare alleges a British capture of Osama bin Laden was aborted as the Americans demanded the hero's part in that narrative. Pugilist Specialist offers a similarly chilling scenario. In a recent interview, Shaplin has said, "The reason [Bush] is in power and Saddam isn't is because he has the bigger budget, the bigger military, and all the historical metaphors on his side. He has the better story, that's all." Shaplin may not be a world leader, but he's telling a good story as well. > return to top
Pugilist Specialist. New York Times. 11.4.2004. Neil Genzlinger.	The staging is spartan and so are the characters in ''Pugilist Specialist,'' an engrossing, inventive dissection of the American military mind. The play is the work of the Riot Group, a troupe based in San Francisco that certainly knows how to travel light: the four actors work on a stage adorned with nothing but two long benches. They portray marines sent on an assassination mission in a Middle Eastern country, but this is no conventional action drama. Adriano Shaplin, who wrote the piece and also portrays Lieutenant Freud, the mission's marksman and resident smart aleck, conveys the goings-on as a sort of instant-history transcript. This covert mission has been documented, and the actors speak not so much to one another as to the unseen recording devices. It may sound like a recipe for dry toast, but it is absorbing, even a little scary, thanks in part to a subtle, ominous soundtrack, also by Mr. Shaplin.	"Pugilist Specialist" had its New York premiere in September at 59E59 Theaters. That production, a model of stark precision, was recently transferred intact to 45 Below. Drew Friedman is Lieutenant Studdard, the communications officer, and Paul Schnabel is Colonel Johns, the commander. The focus, eventually settles on Stephanie Viola as Lieutenant Stein, whose job is to rig bombs but who also carries some other, metaphorical baggage. Mr. Shaplin's pieces are written specifically for the members of Riot Group, and it shows: the four performers are in perfect, foreboding sync. And Mr. Shaplin's dialogue, despite some painful stretches of preachiness, for the most part balances nicely on the edge of ellipticalness. Lieutenant Stein, early on, wonders about the repercussions of the mission. "Exactly how big of a backlash, in your estimation?" she asks Colonel Johns. He replies: "How big? Well, how long is a piece of string?"	Maybe Mr. Shaplin's characterizations of American warriors are nothing but jazzed-up stereotypes. In these days of spin and rigidly controlled press access, it's hard to tell exactly what the military mind-set is, especially among people trained for covert work. But stereotypes or no, "Pugilist Specialist" is sharp political theater, bound to send the audience out talking. > return to top
Pugilist Specialist. San Francisco Chronicle. 12.3.2004. Robert Herwitt.	"Language!" Snapped or uttered as a cautionary admonishment -- but always as a complete sentence -- the word pulses with meanings in the Riot Group's "Pugilist Specialist." It's a mutually understood chill-out signal for the three Marine lieutenants gathered for a secret mission briefing, and a verbal weapon in their jockeying for power. It's a warning from the communications specialist that their conversation is being recorded. It's also a heads-up for the audience. The language in "Pugilist" is sharp, funny, evocative and distinctly original -- as crisp as the stripped- down design and as invigoratingly forceful as the performances. The entire Bay Area may want to take note: The tight-knit troupe, which has been earning high praise in Edinburgh, London, New York and elsewhere as "the San Francisco- based Riot Group," is finally making its local debut, in a three-week run that opened Wednesday at the Magic Theatre. It's well worth a visit. The five-person Riot is indeed based here, if only somewhat technically. The group began life in '97 as refugees from the Sarah Lawrence College drama department in New York, organized by playwright Adriano Shaplin, who is also one of its actors. It moved with Shaplin to Berkeley in '01 and officially incorporated as a theater company in San Francisco. It's been putting its shows together here ever since, each written by Shaplin, but has staged only a few preview performances before opening in Edinburgh and touring elsewhere. "Pugilist," which won top awards at the 2003 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, has been on the road almost ever since -- including two months in London and two runs off-Broadway. It's being co- produced here by, among others, the Magic and Riot's United Kingdom producer, Louise Chantal. There are neither boxers nor any overt physical combat, but violence is explicit and implicit throughout the play's compact 75 minutes. "Pugilist" is an incisive and allusive critique of American military values, ranging from a pervasive disregard for international law and arcane perversions of language ("Victory forgives dishonesty," the soldiers reassure each other) to the use of female soldiers as media symbols (with unsettling echoes of the manipulation of the Jessica Lynch story).	And though there's virtually no physical contact, violence radiates from the performances as well. Shaplin, as he's explained in interviews, writes specifically for the Riot actors, and each piece is collectively developed and directed -- a practice that pays off in exceptionally tight ensemble work and sharply individualized characters. The Marines on this secret assassination mission share the same military jargon, but each speaks a variation rooted in his or her specific background and personality. Lt. Emma Stein (a focused, hardened and wary Stephanie Viola) is a key player in the mission to assassinate a troublesome Middle Eastern leader -- a mustachioed dictator who's been a problem for some time -- and any body doubles, family members or bystanders who might get in the way. Stein is an explosives expert, with some fame in the covert-operations ranks for having engineered "the Palace Banquet," an apparently "well-catered" affair with exceptionally sanguinary results. Stein is also something of a troublemaker, or at least considered a problem for having raised some ethical issues at her last post. She's a military feminist, caught between defending her sex and trying to be one of the boys, guarded, assertive and very much aware of her media-genic value to the Marines. As she puts it, "I've been instructed to embrace my role as military spokesmodel." Viola's clipped, casually combative delivery establishes the tone in an opening monologue as she awaits the briefing session. Tall, bald, magnetically terse Drew Friedman adds to the expectant tension as the remarkably uncommunicative communications specialist Lt. Studdard. Shaplin adds edgy humor and a menacing sexual undercurrent as a smirking, rule-bending, good old boy sniper named Travis Freud, who can't resist baiting Stein with crude innuendos.	Two long wooden benches serve as the set, rearranged for briefing room, plane and combat scenes in sharp-edged squares of white or red light. The costumes are camouflage pants and tan T-shirts all around. A nervous musical pulse in Shaplin's sound design underscores the tension, and the sounds of rewinding and fast-forwarding tape remind us that Studdard is recording the entire mission -- for reasons that will become clearer as the convoluted and ill-fated operation proceeds. An avuncular Col. Johns (Paul Schnabel) briefs the trio and tries to enforce discipline, with varying degrees of success. On the surface, he's a man given to strangely ineffective morale-boosting pronouncements about the impact of military missions ("They either love us or they love to hate us. Either way, we're spreading love") and non sequiturs ("Deconstructionists make the best historians"). But he's scarily effective at playing his troops against each other. The intensity falters a bit as the mission moves toward its final phase, and Shaplin could do more to fill out the battlefield confusion of its climactic action -- just before "Pugilist" comes to the rich irony and ambiguous tragedy of its striking conclusion. But Shaplin's is a truly original voice. He writes with a spare intensity that combines sharp observation and wry humor with a lean poetic allusiveness. Outrage at the catastrophic misadventure in Iraq permeates "Pugilist," but Shaplin's politics are far from didactic. The drama is deftly character- driven and, for the most part, cleverly developed. The ambiguities are as thought-provoking as the language and performances are energizing. The Riot Group may have found its most receptive audiences elsewhere so far. But, whether or not its members continue to make the Bay Area their home, one hopes they won't be so shy about performing here in the future. > return to top
Pugilist Specialist. San Francisco Bay Guardian. 12.8.2004. Robert Avila.	The Riot Group's Pugilist Specialist, a sharply satirical, improbably lyrical psychological thriller written by company member Adriano Shaplin, makes its Bay Area debut at the Magic Theatre. Three marines with extensive, specialized training in black ops gather under their rather wry commanding officer (Paul Schnabel) for a mission to assassinate a mustachioed Middle Eastern dictator, code-named the Bearded Lady.	Lt. Stein (Stephanie Viola), the lone (and alpha) female of the group, is a demolitions expert who holds her own (and masks her ambivalence) behind steely nerves and a combative wit; the somewhat Lurch-like Lt. Studdard (Drew Friedman) is a stone-faced, laconic expert in communications (naturally); and Lt. Freud (Shaplin) is the swaggering loudmouth sniper whose alpha male nature doesn't stop him from licking the boots of his superiors.	Pugilist Specialist isn't out to seduce new converts to the armed services, but rather to explode the seductive ideology of American imperial hubris from within. Just about all its bellicosity comes packed in lethal rounds of rhetorical one-upmanship, macho posturing in wonderfully elevated dialogue draped in the floss of military argot, which lights up the practically bare stage like a volley of tracer rounds. > return to top