THE WORLD TRADE Center towers stand pristine, an image on a large screen at the back of the stage. A video montage of the infamous morning in lower Manhattan shows first one and then another plane crashing into the towers. Dense smoke pours from the upper floors, and then suddenly the buildings collapse, helpless giants felled by toys.

It's not hard to imagine audiences overlooking The Guys' more obvious weaknesses in the wake of 9/11, even the hokey, vaguely self-serving dialogue and tedious construction. The actors hold scripts as if the production were a staged reading, in order to remind us of the improvised quality of life in the days and weeks that followed the attacks, and that the people and events discussed are real. Such considerations would have been beside the point in 2001, as New Yorkers began the painful and bewildering business of making sense of what had happened. This early and unique contribution could be welcomed for what it was: an attempt to offer a community outlet for grief, and a sincere salute to some very brave souls who died serving their city.

But as it moves away from New York and the events of Sept. 11, 2001, the play becomes less tenable, not only as theater, but also as an attempt to speak relevantly to audiences who've lived for two years with the savage war on terror unleashed and justified in the name of 9/11. The play makes no attempt whatsoever to use political tools to sort through what could be the single most important event of our time. Its concerns are therapeutic – the difficulties and importance of processing grief, and the pleasures of a newfound sense of connectedness – exhibit A being the improbable encounter between an upper-middle-class writer and a working-class fireman. "Nick and I were not supposed to meet," Joan (Sharon Lawrence) marvels, wide-eyed, as if it were fate – a lost phone number, an impossibly full schedule – rather than class-based attitudes and opportunities that stood between them. "You could not create another sequence of events that would lead his life to me."

The business that brought Nick (Keith David) and Joan together – he needed a ghostwriter – explains The Guys' almost clinical emphasis on coping with trauma, but the therapeutic perspective comes up short when turned on the event itself. "I keep trying to figure this out," Nick says. "We can't figure any of this out," Joan responds. "It's too big for us. There is no reason. There is no reason."

Of course, refusing to ask why does not put the play beyond politics. Rather it serves a political end, perhaps inadvertently, by lumping together all such acts – and most opposition to America's will – as the work of psychopaths who, as George W. Bush likes to say, "hate our freedom." Since, the logic goes, such acts have nothing to do with politics, then they have nothing to do with our responsibilities as citizens of the most powerful empire in history.

Though Nelson's characters speak of reclaiming "the guys" from the TV news frame and politicians, the play stays remarkably close to the terms and perspectives of television. By contrast, The Death of Klinghoffer – a wonderful new film adaptation of composer John Adams's opera based on the 1984 hijacking of an Italian cruise ship by Palestinian terrorists – offers a unique experience. It humanizes and recontextualizes an event previously available only in postprocessed form, after being mugged by TV's mind-numbing concatenation of seemingly unrelated horrors. The film allows us an opportunity to connect with the dramatic chain of events in a new way by providing a subtle, nuanced examination of motives and political context. Likewise, New York comedian Reno's response to 9/11, Rebel Without a Pause, uses a constant neurotic turning over of truths to create an experience that is ultimately more complex, open, and honest than The Guys.

The horizon recedes only once, briefly, when Joan describes and completely dismisses the perspectives brought by a pair of Argentine visitors. Was it possible not to remember the confusing saga of America's amnesiac former POW, Jessica Lynch, or the missing WMDs, or Saddam Hussein's once certain connection with Osama bin Laden when Joan rejects the reference to press censorship in the United States made by one? And nearly two years into America's war on terrorism, was it possible not to at least wonder why two educated men who were themselves survivors of torture by their government could, as one admits, have enjoyed the image of the towers collapsing? Joan falls back on therapy – or in this case the lack of it – to justify her reaction, explaining that they were still too absorbed with their own war 20 years earlier to appreciate the uniqueness of our situation.

What Joan doesn't tell us – and possibly may not know herself – is that beginning in 1976, Argentina's bloody military regime, which routinely tortured, murdered, and disappeared opposition forces, was backed by three successive U.S. administrations. It was finally deposed, and in the face of overwhelming evidence, its leaders admitted their guilt. It is interesting to note that when Argentina's generals ruled, they justified their claim to power and all efforts to remain in power by waving a familiar banner: the war on terrorism.