Given what we might call the cultural situation, I wasn’t expecting much from Golden Thread’s world premiere of Mona Mansour’s family drama, We Swim, We Talk, We Go to War, and of course like many preconceptions I was wrong. What Mansour gives us is essentially a two-to-three-year argument that meanders around a young man’s choice to serve, go to war, and ultimately kill for America. That he’s a quarter-Lebanese complicates the matter, if not for him at least for his half-Lebanese Aunt.

One of Mansour’s sharpest insights is that the drama of the Aunt and the Nephew is fluid and has few rules. Rather delightfully, it is also a source of joy, exactly what we expect and want from family. So when we first meet She (The Aunt) and He (The Nephew) we immediately get the sense that not only do these two people get a kick out of each other, but also that they’ve always gotten a kick out of each other. They want to be together and that makes this political drama a rarity: two people with profound political differences who want to stay together for the joy of each other’s company.

‘We Swim, We Talk, We Go To War’ runs through December 16 at the Potrero Playhouse in San Francisco. For tickets and information click here. For the Full Review click here.

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