Word: clennon
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...society to reward a man with the Congressional Medal of Honor for doing what it has taught him was evil and abhorrent -murdering other human beings. Cole's medal winner, Dale Jackson (Howard E. Rollins Jr.), a black Viet Nam hero, has cracked up. A psychiatrist (David Clennon) tries to rid Jackson of his survival guilt complex. Why did he live and his buddies die? The notion that survival can be worse than death is probably the weakest proposition in the play. However, the two principals are admirable. Wary, arrogant, streetwise, tormented, Rollins' Jackson makes demands on every...
...acting is generally very sharp and sustains the play despite structural problems. Gustave Johnson plays Jackson with a self-depreciating, off-the-cuff with that evolves into passion and outrage, bordering on frenzy when he tells of the horrors he witnessed and the frustrations he felt. David Clennon is an adequate psychiatric sounding board, although he sometimes moves and gestures in a stiff and awkward...
...only major shortcoming is that the scene is somewhat overplayed. Clennon takes an eternity to light cigarettes, shuffle folders, and perform other simple tasks that would go unnoticed were they not performed with such tedious, painstaking care. Too often, these just create empty gaps in the action. Similarly, jokes are often belabored by both actors as if they are asking for a laugh. Consequently, all they get is a nervous titter...
Welcome to Andromeda is another matter. The hero (David Clennon) is one of nature's ignominious errors. He is totally paralyzed except for his fingers and his head. His bed is a movable crypt. On his 21st birthday, his mother, a vampire bat whom we never see but whose oppressive presence empties the room of breathable air, has gone off to buy him some presents. She has left him in the care of a Southern nurse (Bella Jarrett). She, it develops, is an alcoholic who once gave a patient the wrong medicine. He, it develops, wants the wrong medicine...
...feel is just as unendurable as you think it is. The jokes you make as a fencer against fate merely underline your epitaph." If so, the playwright may count his luck as equal to his talent, for one can scarcely imagine more gifted and sensitive actors than David Clennon and Bella Jarrett for conveying his purpose and his vision...