Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) -- ``They make prosthetic high heels, I checked into it,'' says Maj. Tammy Duckworth near the beginning of ``In Conflict,'' her voice trembling with optimism or rage, who knows? ``Not three-inch stilettos, but at least an inch or two of heel. I'll be good to go.''

Duckworth is one of the 16 veterans, all of them casualties of the Iraq War, who tell their stories during this Culture Project presentation in New York's Greenwich Village.

This is the same group that commissioned George Packer's electrifying ``Betrayed,'' last spring. ``In Conflict,'' developed by director Douglas C. Wager from Yvonne Latty's riveting book of interviews with soldiers, brings us face to face with what the American media have mostly denied us: the anguished words and mutilated bodies of young people returned from the front. Like Tammy, a pilot who came home minus her legs and most of her right arm.

``I miss my body,'' says the flier, played with beguiling artlessness by Suyeon Kim. ``I miss my strong, healthy body.''

Scenes with the vets are interspersed with filmed introductions in which Latty speaks of meetings with her subjects, some of whom were hard to track down, while others were eager to share.

Horrific Death

Not all of them are amputees, at least not visibly. Slugging from a bottle of vodka, Army PFC Herold Noel says, plainly, ``The hardest thing about being in Iraq is being in Iraq,'' before telling the story of a mother and her baby's horrific deaths.

``I came back an amputee but you can't see my amputation,'' he says, woozily jabbing at his head ``My amputation is up here.''

``In Conflict'' comes from Temple University, where Wager, a former artistic director of Washington's Arena Stage who now runs the school's theater program. Kim, Damon Williams (who plays Herold with conviction) and the rest of the company are student actors in multiple roles; they have youth and enthusiasm where more seasoning might be wanted.

But even coming from the mouths of babes, the words of these soldiers gleaning grains of hope in a landscape of despair find their targets: You won't soon forget them.

At the Barrow Street Theatre, 27 Barrow St., Manhattan. Information: +1-212-352-3101; http://cultureproject.org.

`The English Channel'

It's no surprise that Robert Brustein writes like a university wit; he is one. Legendary in U.S. theater circles as founder of the Yale Repertory Theatre and, later, Harvard's American Repertory Theatre, Brustein has nurtured generations of actors and directors while also serving as the insightful if sometimes curmudgeonly drama critic of the New Republic.

No surprise, either, that Brustein would have some dramaturgical fun at the expense of Bardologists who fret and frump over Shakespearean history and sex and whatever. ``The English Channel,'' running in a barebones, earnest yet delightful production at the tiny Abingdon Theatre on Manhattan's West Side, is a university wit's divertissement.

It's a riff on young Will and his gay frenemy, playwright Christopher Marlowe; their pansexual benefactor Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton; and Will's lover for awhile, Emilia Lanier.

The setting is Shakespeare's squalid digs at the Mermaid Tavern, where the sexual shenanigans rival the literary ones: Every utterance by any of his three constant companions, but especially Marlowe, inspires Will to jot down a line destined for immortality or at least Bartlett's.

Brustein's conceit (contrived, I think, only to legitimize the silly title), is that after Marlowe's violent death, Shakespeare is left to ``channel'' the voice of that truer genius.

Daniela Varon has deployed her game young quartet on a postage-stamp stage with verve and economy. Emilia gets most of the best lines in a surprisingly feminist tract. Blonde Lori Gardner, stepping into the role the night I saw the show and later taking it over, was a light, not dark lady, though I'm told a wig took care of that in later performances.

Through Oct. 5 at 312 W. 36th St., Manhattan. Information: +1-212-868-4444; http://www.abingdontheatre.org.

(Jeremy Gerard is an editor for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Jeremy Gerard in New York at jgerard2@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: September 29, 2008 00:01 EDT