Heroine

Written and Narrated By: Mary Jane Wells

Length: 1 hr and 27 mins

What’s NOT to love, if anyone can say that about this…?

It’s difficult to say that I loved Heroine… after all, how can a horror show of a play that deals most dramatically in Military Sexual Trauma, PTSD, with a slaphappy dash o’ grief there within the beginning and the end be anything BUT a Tragedy?

Maaaybe cuz of the grand amount of suuuch dark humor, without which you, like our “heroine” Danna Davis, might look for a vein to open?

And indeed, it does open with Sgt. Davis in the hospital and looking frantically for her folding knife, looking frantically for a vein to saw into. And then, we’re drawn in by the stellar performance by Mary Jane Wells (Also known here on Audiobook Accomplice as, quite simply? Mary Jane Freaking Wells… and you’ll see and hear why if you give Heroine a Listen…).

First performed in the US at the Kennedy Center in 2020, ‘twould appear that it was great as a show, but truly? As an audiobook, the production is sublime. Lots of sound effects that almost overwhelm but pull back just as you think you’ll go insane, as though Sgt. Davis is that close to slipping into the oblivion of permanent madness. A cast of oh, maybe, but a few, as Ms. Wells handles a multitude of people whose lives touch upon that of Sgt. Davis (Whom I shall now call Danna, seeing as I just spent 1 1/2 hours in her head).

The woman, no both women, whether Danna or Wells, are simply amazing. Danna’s willingness to make her story into a play is beyond brave. Take THAT, Anuradha Bhagwati and your ENDless sniveling in the grossly overrated Unbecoming. Whereas Bhagwati kvetches and moans, at no point in her story does she show herself as being a good service member; she falls asleep on duty and whines when others really wanna throttle her for not having their backs. Here, Danna is a stellar comrade in arms, but is unfortunate enough to be a lesbian… and a hyper intelligent one with just the right amount of snark to go with it. Ooooh, threatening to predators who must take down the only way they can: Through violation, rape, terrorizing, dehumanizing, leaving her body torn and bleeding, her mind a mess. Leaving her knowing she’d lose her career… if she told her story.

Uhm… Trigger Warning, anyone? Uhm… Trigger Warning(S!), anyone? If you’ve experienced sexual trauma, you’ll find it here. If you’ve experienced betrayal and violent attack, you’ll find it here. If you’ve experiences of war—of ambush, combat, being wounded, seeing people who are friends or lovers killed?

You’ll find it here. Get ready, because Danna bars no holds in telling things openly. And Wells, good GOD! throws it all out there with a vivid reproduction of how combat is experienced to the individual, the sense of time not speeding up but, rather, of life becoming more vibrant, more full, colors brighter, blood redder.

Life in the Armed Forces can be, and often IS, a matter of We Don’t Ask but We Know/We Humiliate and Rape/And You Can’t Tell.

Doesn’t matter if it’s a serviceman or a servicewoman, far too many have lived Danna’s nightmare… and maybe have not lived to tell their tale but have chosen the bullet to the brain approach. Danna comes back, having had to sign a lie to her wartime experiences, when she had to serve with one of her attackers, when she had to see a beloved lover killed, cradling her close as the woman reassured Danna that she wasn’t afraid.

But Danna loses her career anyway. And nearly loses her mind as she tries to cope with heavy duty PTSD, with night terrors, with hyper vigilance and flashbacks and blackouts where it’s Kill Or Be Killed in her head.

Powerful. Stunning. Brutally Honest. Raw language and the roughest, darkest, funniest Humor imaginable.

And Mary Jane Freaking Wells… ‘Nuff Said…