Performed at Dance Theater Workshop on Tuesday night, the production opens on a stage bordered on the sides by pieces of delicate string, and thicker, ripped muslin along the back.
The production opens not on a Red Hook tenement, but with a stark black box that lifts to reveal a bare thrust stage, bordered by a low Perspex wall.
The mind is drawn to events in Poland in 1939 where staged border incidents led to a German invasion.
At times, the staging bordered on the twee, as when the soprano soloist, Marlis Petersen, sang "Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit" while floating on a swing suspended from the ceiling.
Inevitably Spain had chances to equalise, Villa finding the side netting with one and, even more unluckily, striking the post with another, Fàbregas bringing a late save from Hart and missing the target with his next chance, and some of England's defending in the closing stages bordering on the desperate.
Ngo Thi Kim Oanh, wearing an orange hooded dress and sunglasses, sits inside a door frame made of thick parchment (more of the same material hangs like drapery along the stage's borders), as Nguyen Van Cuong, the program's composer, performs a melodically percussive score.
The stage is bordered by a piano-key design.
Along the way, what I discovered were all the expected challenges of working in the trenches of American theater -- minuscule budgets, tiny rehearsal halls and stage fright bordering on arrhythmia -- as well as a few things that surprised me.
But the interstate rivalry has grown fierce on a new battlefield — business — as the two states stage cross-border raids and entice companies with generous incentives to move a few miles and resettle on the other side.
Under his authority, the Egyptian military acted in the volatile Sinai Peninsula against Islamic militants who had been attacking Egyptian forces in recent years and using the wild desert terrain to stage cross-border attacks against Israel.
