Word: hummell
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...BASIC TRAINING OF PAVLO HUMMEL...
...with Mama-san and her whores. Through the bead curtain, a hand lobs a lump of steel. Thump and roll. "Grenade!" Soldier scoops it up, hesitates in stupid disbelief. FLASH! BLAM! So begins-and 140 minutes later, in an almost exact replay, so ends-The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel. Between these two unanswerable exclamation points, Playwright David Rabe strings the lifeline of the soldier, Pavlo; then on that cord he attempts to hang what he sees as the rags of national honor, bloodied by the Viet...
...Basic Training of Pablo Hummel. Open Circle Theatre. 76 Warrenton St., Boston, 8, Mon. Thurs.; 7:10 Fri.; 6:30, 9:30 Sat. Through April...
What is most remarkable about the play is how effortlessly Rabe goes beyond the war and what is obvious to proceed with the personal story of Pavlo Hummel. It baffles classification and makes world war two dramas like Arthur Laurent's Home of the Brave look like a Yank comic strip. For Hummel the army world is his only hope for salvation, the only remedy for his fatherlessness. And in a way he makes it his salvation. Home on a furlough, his pink-suited, mod half-brother treats him with the mild contempt he always has until Hummel explodes. "Look...
...Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel might not be perfect. This production is long--it includes some of the material cut out for New York--and it might lack some of the intensity of a more limited drama. But each scene is so interesting and the whole texture of the play is so rich with its cadence counts, lap-hopping whores and old rock songs that it's impossible to say what should be deleted. Rabe's too sweet a talker. And anyone who can make 1966 eerie and fascinating shouldn't be tampered with...