THE INNOCENTS’ CRUSADE
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The question of how to find meaning in an uncertain world has intrigued many contemporary playwrights, but none more than Keith Reddin. “Either you build yourself a bunker,” he has said, “or you learn to deal with it.” His Peacekeeper is set in a bunker–an underground nuclear-missile site where soldiers watch their lives disintegrate while they anticipate the moment that will destroy the world but validate their sacrifice. Reddin’s 1990 Life During Wartime presents no less gloomy a picture, of a society where home arsenals and top-of-the-line burglar alarms cannot prevent senseless murder. Building bunkers seems futile, but in The Innocents’ Crusade (1992) Reddin takes “dealing with it” a step further and offers a slightly more optimistic solution. Oh, the heroes still march off–not to certain death, for all death is certain, but to a life fraught with risk. They do so, however, with a clear awareness of what their choice entails and the faith that their deaths will not have been in vain.
Soon after, in an effort to impress a wayfaring heiress he encounters in a hotel bar, Bill claims to have initiated his own crusade in the name of honesty and truth. To his surprise, Laura believes him. So do many others, and before long Bill finds himself at the head of a motley assemblage of disenfranchised pilgrims, ranging from the lone survivor of a Post Office massacre to a mercurial young scruff who likens himself–in flawless Chaucerian verse–to the squire bound for Canterbury. As the crusade gains momentum and strange prophets appear, Bill’s confidence grows and, with it, his independence, until the inevitable day when a 13th-century shepherd boy arrives to tell Mr. and Mrs. Sherman that they are now alone.
