David Kleinberg’s solo theater work, Hey, Hey LBJ, is the powerful and moving personal story of his year in Vietnam as a combat correspondent — in the bunkers, in the field, and later editing the division’s newspaper in the safe environs of Saigon.
Running 90 minutes as part of the Capital Fringe Festival, the show offers personal insight into what it’s really like to be at war. These are the stories you want to hear from your father or grandfather but can’t get him to open up about. While Kleinberg speaks specifically about Vietnam, many of the real life experiences relayed in the piece speak universally. One can imagine similar events happening in our current battles.
Kleinberg recounts one battle that he and his comrades rarely speak of—when they attacked a village, and saw women and children escaping the blaze, with fear in their eyes. During another battle that left some of his buddies dead and more injured, Kleinberg happened to be in Bangkok on a break, trying his luck with the ladies. When watching Kleinberg tell these stories, one gets the feeling that they are ones he needed to tell. On his blog, he describes writing the piece: “Even after all this time, I cried half the time I was writing this. If the piece shows anything, it clearly demonstrates how war taints just about everyone it touches.”
But the performance isn’t all battle scenes. In one particularly humorous segment, he is assigned four weeks of shit detail for messing up an article in the paper. Shit detail is exactly what it sounds like; David had to lift and move container after container of shit from the latrines, day after day, week after week. Fun! (This is DCist’s Alan Zilberman’s next assignment.) Throughout the performance, Kleinberg intersperses bits of lightness — video clips, humorous moments, ’60s music, silly dancing, funny nicknames and made-up songs—with more heavy material, allowing the audience to soak up the experience of being at war without feeling overloaded.
David Kleinberg returned home to an unwelcoming country that was clearly opposed to the war. He didn’t disagree, claiming “There are just wars, but I don’t think this was one of them.” Kleinberg joined the cause as a veteran, speaking to huge applause at a 1968 protest at San Francisco City Hall. Kleinberg continued his writing career at the San Francisco Chronicle, and is now a comedian and performer, having appeared with Robin Williams, Dana Carvey, Sinbad and Richard Lewis.
Hey, Hey LBJ! had me mesmerized. I listened intently, I smiled, I laughed, and I cried as Kleinberg acted as himself, his fellow comrades, his lieutenant, and his friends back home to tell his personal and gripping account of his year at war.
Hey, Hey LBJ! is playing at the Goethe-Institut Theater on Saturday, July 12 at 1:30 p.m., Tuesday, July 15 at 6:30 p.m., Wednesday, July 16 at 9:30 p.m., and Friday, July 18 at 6 p.m.
