"Amelia," a Civil War Story on Governors Island The Civil War tale "Amelia" revolves around the adventures of its feisty title character, culminating in her disguising herself as a man to find her husband in the Camp Sumter military prison in Andersonville, Ga. But the play's true chameleon is its writer, Alex Webb, who portrays all of the characters opposite Amelia (Shirleyann Kaladjian). For 95 minutes, Mr. Webb moves among genders, races, ages and cultures, his physicality and voice shifting fluidly as he goes. Soon enough, the sunken Powder Magazine space in Fort Jay, on Governors Island, where "Amelia" is being staged, thrums with a cast of ghostly personae. Governors Island, which held imprisoned Confederate soldiers during the war, is an evocative site (it's great fun to attend on a Thursday or Friday afternoon, when the island is not otherwise open to the public). But the play, directed by Bill Largess, is a routine affair, depicting a storybook romance between the strong-willed Amelia and the enlightened Ethan, who volunteers for service with the Pennsylvania troops shortly after the two fall in love. Ethan, of course, is too good to be true. He has the right politics (pro-Abraham Lincoln, antislavery) and delights in talking about it with - and better yet, listening to - smart women. The ever-prickly, ready-to-be-insulted Amelia has found her soul mate, and eventually she sets out after her man, not knowing whether he has been captured, wounded or killed. It's something like "Cold Mountain" in reverse. Mr. Webb, who wrote "Amelia" after reading a reference in an Andersonville prison journal to a woman's having sneaked inside, tries to render the sweeping drama of the Civil War on an intimate, human scale. But his language isn't up to the task. Amelia, especially, is far too clichéd to be a sympathetic heroine; her pursuit seems myopically self-centered and foolhardy instead of brave (a scene in which a black man in search of his own family lends her his help, after Amelia has equated her pain with his, is particularly eye-roll inducing). Though it's a pleasure to watch Mr. Webb morph from one role to the next, the play's center remains one-dimensional and static.