pieceofmyheart Everybody can name multiple works about servicemen’s experiences during the Vietnam War—Platoon, Born on the 4th of July … even some stuff not done by Oliver Stone. But unless you are such a big Dana Delany fan that you own the box set of the late-1980s TV series, China Beach, you may be wondering: What about the servicewomen?

Playwright Shirley Lauro has some answers. The stories she tells in A Piece of My Heart constitute a cross-section of female experiences south of the 17th parallel in the late ’60s.

Lauro delivers the stories of A Piece of My Heart—mostly rapid-fire anecdotes—primarily in what we might call the first-person collective: six characters narrating and acting out their experiences, almost all of which come down to coping (or trying to cope) with the “hell on Earth” all of them found in Vietnam. Narrator unceremoniously gives way to narrator—their narratives sometimes going back and forth like a ping pong ball—in what could be a mess, except that Lauro’s got the coordination to pull it off.

Fortunately, so do the six female actors. Each of them plays not only her primary character but several auxiliary characters in the others’ stories. The job they do is tricky, switching personalities sometimes with barely a chance to take a breath (especially since Lauro has no interest in observing any of Aristotelian dramatic unities). Yes, occasionally there are some timing flubs, but they are the exception, not the rule, and the play comes off without a real hitch.

If the script has a weakness, it’s that Lauro may be trying to give us the female experience of Vietnam—as if there is such a thing—and goes for too wide of a cross-section.

We get this right off the bat: Martha (Celeste Jiminez) grew up as an army brat; Maryjo (Jonelle Holden) is a fun-loving singer; Sissy (Bianca Meiloaica) just wanted to escape her sheltered suburban life; Whitney (Katherine Jones) is a career nurse working for the Red Cross; Leeann (Susannah Kim) is both Asian and a war-protesting hippie; Steele (Shanelle Moore) is a black Southerner already with a history of military service. Collectively they experience romance (including the obligatory first lesbian experience), rape, racism, sexism, drug use, etc.—in short, just about everything Lauro could cram in.

It’s not so much that any of the specifics lacks credibility, but Lauro’s so busy looking for an angle by which to insert yet another part of the female Vietnam experience that (for example) you’re anticipating Leeann’s identity-crisis moment long before it inevitably comes.

Production-wise, this is a solid show. Amidst a minimal set design that through simplicity evokes the American flag, director John Zamora has blocked his actors’ moves in such a way that the jerky shifts of narrative are never unintentionally disorienting. Except when intended, such as the nurses’ first experience of a mass-casualty incident—the chaos of which is pulled off by Zamora and company with perfect control, right down to the audio mix of music, actors, and bullhorn.

The acting of all six principals is solid. Here and there I would have liked a little more time taken with the dialog, but generally Lauro’s lines aren’t particularly conversational (they’re not bad, just a little stiff sometimes), so making them sound more natural is tricky. This shows especially in conversations between characters.

In Act Two, though, Lauro brings the characters together in a simple but clever enough way, and here we get an interplay between the actors that is quite something. Suddenly the pace is much slower, much more real, and when we watch Sissy break down, we—i.e., both the audience and the other characters—are right there with her.

This is only New Strand Ensemble’s second show and their first in Long Beach. Founded by Zamora, Kim, and Richard Martinez, the company mission is to challeng[e] the artistic experience through exploring the human condition. We are committed to finding the common thread of humanity within a multicultural environment.”

Our city has room for more of that.

 A PIECE OF MY HEART NEW STRAND ENSEMBLE • THE EXPO: 4321 ATLANTIC AVE • LONG BEACH 90807 • 562.233.9646 NEWSTRANDENSEMBLE.COM • THURS-SAT 8PM • $15; $12 FOR STUDENTS/SENIORS; $10 FOR CURRENT/FORMER MILITARY PERSONNEL; $5 FOR HIGH-SCHOOLERS • THROUGH OCTOBER 30