'Streamers' packs a mean punch

By Michael Ward

Just like America's involvement in the wars in Indochina, the violence in David Rabe's award-winning "Streamers". is a gradual thing.

There is an awful lot of dialog, an awful lot of innuendo and enough insults to turn any barracks into a battleground long before it does inevitably erupt.

But once it does come, it is like a valcano ... the mindless kind of fury that stems from a brain turned as red as the havoc and blood it creates.

"Streamers" marks the debut of Center Repertory Company's first production in its new headquarters at 1630 Euclid Ave. It is both an

R 2 In Review

auspicious and controversial beginning: Auspicious for its standard of acting and graphicness of violence; controversial for its subject matter.

The former is to be admired, the latter, like the conflagration on that ill-fated peninsula itself, is to be shunned, except by the strong of stomach.

Not that "Streamers" actually gets to Vietnam. It is set solely in the cadre room of an army barracks in 1965 when the young men of America were awaking to the fact that the fighting in Southeast Asia was no sideshow.

This had certainly dawned on

Martin. As the play opens he had cut his wrist in a half-hearted suicide attempt.

He is being tended by Richie, who shares the room with another white private, Billy, and a black recruit, Roger:

With a practical approach to their military service, Billy and Roger get on well together, probably too well for Richie's liking.

He makes vague, part serious, part humorous homosexual approaches to Billy.

Another central character is another black soldier, Carlyle, with a personality as changeable as a corkscrew's stem.

From there the plot develops into a story of switching ideas, ideals and alliances.

There are also two unanswered questions. How did such mentally twisted individuals as Richie and Carlyle get into the army in the first place? And why didn't their comrades or superiors sort them out long before the tragic climax?

Now on the plus side, there are some magnificent portrayals especially from Daniel Whitner as Roger, the kind of soldier you would wish to have at your side when the going was at it worst; and Richie, whom you would hardly wish on the Viet Cong. He is played by Bradley Boyer.

Mark Dennard McKinney captures the unpredictable Carlyle ably and Clifford Fetters is convincing as the thoughtful Billy. ·