On "The Two Worlds of Charlie F" LONDON - A letter written by Corporal Stephen Shaw of the Princess of Wales Royal Regiment should have arrived at the White House by now. In it Shaw describes a play in which he has acted, "The Two Worlds of Charlie F." And he says that he and the rest of the theater company - Bravo 22 Company - who have just finished touring Britain, would love to come to Washington to perform for President Barack Obama and help American W.I.S. (wounded, injured and sick) service personnel get involved in a similar project. "The Two Worlds of Charlie F" was conceived by the producer Alice Driver after a conversation with a surgeon about casualties returning from Afghanistan. Most of the actors are W.I.S. soldiers from the British armed forces; some are drawn from Commonwealth nations. The playwright cum poet cum novelist Owen Sheers developed the script after group workshops with the members of Bravo 22 Company, incorporating many of their stories and jokes. The effect is extraordinary. Cassidy Little, who plays the title role of Corporal Charlie Fowler, is a Royal Marine, and like Charlie Fowler he returned to Britain after losing a leg to an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan. Where Little ends and Fowler begins is an impossible question to answer; it's a testimony to the acting skills of the company that there's no way of knowing when the actors are retelling their experiences and when they are performing scenes that were never part of their story. The result is a stunning, surprising play. From one moment to the next you don't know whether to expect an explosion, a joke or a song-and-dance number. The play never shies from the grotesqueness of war. Take, for instance, these lines: "This is where war happens. Here. On the bodies of men. Boys. We try and take theirs apart. They try and take ours apart. Yet it's possible to see why the Defense Ministry approved the script (a necessary step, since some of the actors are still serving in the armed forces): It asks us to think, and feel, deeply about the W.I.S. service personnel. "How can we know the dancer from the dance," goes the Yeats line. "Charlie F" allows us to know the soldier from the war. The play has just finished its eight-month run in Britain; it has won an Amnesty International award. The experiment could end there, but it really shouldn't. The audience's response - sold-out performances, standing ovations - clearly shows that there's a commercial reason for more theaters to take on the play. And Sheers has bigger dreams for "Charlie F." He told me the play can inspire theater wherever there's war or armies involved in conflict. Until now it has been run through charities, so Sheers is setting up a foundation to make use of the model possible outside of Britain. The armed forces of Australia are already interested in the idea. And since most wars cause more casualties among civilians than soldiers, Sheers says any such play could include civilians, too. Someone, somewhere - many people in many places - should take him up on his ideas, for the sake of both the audiences who see war as distant and those who know too well its costs, as well as, of course, for the sake of wounded soldiers. I asked Shaw, the actor and letter writer, if he really thought "Charlie F" had made a difference in the lives of the men and women involved. He described the transformation. During the first rehearsals everyone was heavily medicated, defensive, depressed and unsure of what they were doing. But of the actual performances, he said, "I can't describe the feeling of standing up there, knowing you're not worthless." I hope President Obama reads his letter.