Exit Vietnam. Enter Iraq. The New Group's revival of Wallace Shawn's 1985 "Aunt Dan and Lemon" at the Harold Clurman Theatre is as scathingly prescient about the poisoned lies we're being told today as it was about yesterday's. True, the Kissinger diatribes need parsing, the lengthy speechifying can become wearying, and some of the sardonic comedy has been lost. But what remains is as startling as ever.
The story of the (mis)education of 11-year-old Lemon by her worldly "Aunt" Dan has much to say about how supposedly civilized societies twist compassion and morality to suit their needs. "Buildings will collapse. Planes will come crashing out of the sky," says Aunt Dan, and you have to check the script to confirm that the same words were in the original version.
Dan defends those who offer "a safe and decent future" over dead bodies and the objections of wimpy students and journalists. The argument, weakly countered by Lemon's mother, who wonders where the human heart comes in, shapes Lemon's anorexic life.
The play's middle section makes the hedonism manifest. Sex leads to murder, amorality to expediency. Conflating all evil, Shawn sardonically says that we enjoy our way of life only because others are willing to kill to maintain it.
Director Scott Elliott implicates us all by having Lemon on stage while the audience enters, observing scenes she's not physically in, and turning up the house lights during her final justification of fascism.
As Lemon, Lili Taylor has the cutting innocence of a charming bad seed. As Aunt Dan, Kristen Johnston is a blowsy siren, while Melissa Errico and Bill Sage are tense as Lemon's helpless parents. Isaach De Bankole is a satanic stud, but it's Brooke Sunny Moriber as the cold-blooded Mindy who almost steals the evening.
On Derek McLane's oppressive, curtain-enshrouded set, the work still shocks.