A Soldier's Nightmare Follows Her Back Home Charles Fuller tackles a searing subject - sexual assault in the armed forces - in his new play, "One Night ...," set in a dingy motel room where two former soldiers have taken refuge after the shelter they were staying in caught fire. With increasing attention being paid to the alarming frequency of rape in the United States military - there are three competing pieces of legislation on the issue being considered by Congress - Mr. Fuller's play could hardly be more timely. But while the matters it considers are painfully topical, Mr. Fuller's play, at the Cherry Lane Theater in a coproduction with the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, grows overwrought and sensationalistic as it depicts the suffering of Alicia (Rutina Wesley), a former Army truck driver whose life has unraveled since she went public with charges of rape against three fellow servicemen in Iraq. Alicia has found a savior of sorts in Horace Lloyd (Grantham Coleman), a soldier from her unit she knew only casually when they were both deployed. Horace sought Alicia out after they were both discharged, having heard that she was not adjusting well to civilian life. Although they are not married - sexual intimacy, it is implied, is still impossible for the traumatized Alicia - they have spent the last nine months together, as Horace has tried to help Alicia sort out her problems. He tries his best to talk her down when she is suddenly overtaken by nightmare memories of her experience, but Horace, too, is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and finds himself fighting off sudden attacks of panic or rage. As they try to settle in at the motel where they have been put up for the night (noises from prostitutes turning tricks in the room next door can be heard in the bathroom), flashbacks from Alicia's past alternate with scenes set in the present. The scenes in which we see how various Army functionaries reacted to Alicia's attack (some sympathetically, some not) are the subtlest and strongest in the play. The lieutenant (K. K. Moggie) who first takes up the investigation cautions Alicia that to file "unrestricted" charges - naming names - could be problematic for her; Alicia insists that she is more than happy to go forward. In a later scene we learn that the two men who were identified (Alicia couldn't see the third) were given only minimal punishment. Later still, a major (Matthew Montelongo) tells Alicia that she cannot appeal the judgment, because her commanding officer, who chose to consider the incident a matter of consensual sex, has the final say on punishment. Mr. Fuller, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning "A Soldier's Play" and a veteran himself, presents a bracing vision of the subtle intimidation and outright hostility faced by women who bring charges of sexual assault in the Army. It's one that accords all too grimly with published reports. As Alicia's interview with the major winds down, he offers his own view that women shouldn't be allowed to serve alongside men in combat. "You can't ask a man to stop being a man just because he wears a uniform," he says bluntly, restating the ugly notion that rape is, fundamentally, the fault of the victims. But "One Night..." is on less sure ground when we return to the present. We learn that Alicia's fanatically religious mother offered her no sympathy, and that her husband treated her with contempt, eventually snatching away their son and hiding him with relatives rather than let him be raised by a tarnished woman. Alicia's mother sided with husband. Late in the play comes a revelation that suggests Horace's motives in seeking out Alicia may not be as pure as they might seem. Such events threaten to turn Alicia into an operatically ill-used heroine from a 19th-century melodrama, betrayed and reviled at every turn, robbing the play of its hard-hitting realism. Mr. Fuller piles on still more trials when the motel's owner, Meny (Cortez Nance Jr.), turns out to be a pimp and suggests to Horace that maybe Alicia should join his work force. Horace declines, with disgust. Under the direction of Clinton Turner Davis, Ms. Wesley (best known as a co-star on HBO's "True Blood") gives an uneven performance. Her dazed eyes and trembling limbs, the faltering voice and lurches into hysteria, can sometimes seem overstated and obvious. She is far better in the less-fraught flashback scenes, in which Alicia's anger and bewilderment at her treatment are movingly depicted. Mr. Coleman's Horace persuasively mixes acute sympathy for Alicia with short-fused irritation at her sullen inability to let go of her grievances. Ms. Moggie and Mr. Montelongo are good in several small roles, while Mr. Nance offers a slickly sinister portrait of a seemingly friendly fellow with a poisonous dark side. Although the dramaturgy ultimately grows overripe, "One Night..." still raises painful questions. One sad scene finds a dismayed Alicia pleading with an official from the Veterans Affairs Department to expedite her application for disability benefits. "Why am I a hero if I die," she says, "and a nuisance if I live?" One Night ... By Charles Fuller; directed by Clinton Turner Davis; sets by John McDermott; costumes by Jessica Jahn; lighting by Nicole Pearce; sound by Sean O'Halloran; video by Gil Sperling; fight director, Unkledave's Fight-House; associate producer, Seri Lawrence; production manager, Eugenia Furneaux; associate production manager, Janio Marrero; production stage manager, C. Renee Alexander. Presented by Cherry Lane Theater and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Angelina Fiordellisi and David Van Asselt, artistic directors; Brian Long, managing director. At the Cherry Lane Theater, 38 Commerce Street, Greenwich Village; 866-811-4111, cherrylanetheatre.org. WITH: Grantham Coleman (Horace Lloyd), K. K. Moggie (Medic/Lieutenant/Troop 2/Captain/Doctor/Interviewer), Matthew Montelongo (Army Major/State Trooper/Troop 1/Fire Marshall), Cortez Nance Jr. (Meny) and Rutina Wesley (Alicia G).