Word: rabe
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Most of the credit has to go to the text, by award-winning playwright David Rabe. It is a complex and ambitious piece. The considerable action unfolds on the company's marvelous set resplendant with giant records, neon beer signs, and flashing lights. The set remarkably resembles a seedy lounge; it is the only truly recognizable aspect of the production. The surrealistically awful tale focuses on go-go girl Chrissy's growing instability, and the insensitive cretins there to witness...
...play has been called compassionate by some, but it is really a cold-blooded indictment of gender relationships and the modern world. Rabe wrote the play largely in short takes, and the quick scenes fail to make the characters any more accessible or sympathetic...
Forbes, cast in the lead role, suffers the most under this burden. With acute psychological insight, Rabe drew Crissy as a confused child-woman. But he keeps Chrissy too busy with some ridiculous subplots; the script calls for more emotional acrobatics that even an actress of Forbes' considerable presence can successfully perform...
...Rabe's script, though innovative, is flawed. Despair and disillusionment too readily become modern cliches, and should be meted out carefully...
...script, by playwright David Rabe (Streamers, Hurlyburly), introduces some complexities into this schematic story. Eriksson owes his life to Meserve's military skills. The sergeant, who is not presented as a psychopath, and the other men are in a furor because a buddy has been killed in an ambush at a supposedly pacified village. Eriksson has an interesting speech in which he argues that the standard rationale for bad wartime behavior ("We might at any second be blown away") is exactly wrong. It is precisely because soldiers live inches from death that they should be "extra careful about what...