The play O'Brien subsequently wrote should be the same. Despite Wilma Theater's sterling production and spot-on direction by Michael John Garcés, "The Body of an American" never really grips us the way it's obviously meant to. O'Brien builds the play around his quest to meet Watson and understand him. But unlike another such play — the celebrated "I Am My Own Wife," which traces playwright Doug Wright's quest to crawl into the mind of his subject — "The Body of an American" never finds a "reveal" or even skims beneath the surface of Paul Watson's psyche.
The play, produced at the Wilma on a scant set with a rich projection design of Google maps, archive photos and a blizzard by Jared Mezzocchi, takes us all over; it covers the Mideast hotspots where Watson spent much of his career in great danger to report the news and document atrocities, and ends up in the Canadian north, where Watson and the playwright finally meet after a long period of e-mail interviews. Despite its geographic breadth, "The Body of an American" ends up nowhere. It leaves us hanging, after an indulgent hour and 50 minutes without intermission.
The warm curtain call that Ian Merrill Peakes and Harry Smith received for the many roles they gamely take was well deserved at the performance I saw Friday night. But even as I enthusiastically applauded the acting and the production, I couldn't help but wonder what we were all doing there.
The playwright shows us, in his script, that as he and Paul Watson became friends, the somewhat disinterested Watson gave him scant insight. And that's just what he passes along.
_"The Body of an American" runs through Feb. 1 at Wilma Theater on Broad Street, between Locust and Spruce Streets. 215-546-7824 or www.wilmatheater.org.