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Show i Page B4 Wednesday, November 25, 19S1 The Newspaper Open for dinner and featuring live entertainment, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday Entertainment 7 nights a week. Dec. 1 - Richie Havens Dec. 16 Country Gazette Dec. 27 -John McEuen prtBand) Jim IbbOtSOn (formerly of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band) 1 5 lis ' REASU 1 1 Ml S - y- jj O . t'' '",', ,''' fiy-'i7 fff. If? o o O R!DDC0 EMITS e v.. , "U. 1 268 Main St. Easy commute to Park City 2 bedroom home on 3A acre with Weber Rjver frontage. Totally furnished. $52,500 with good terms. HAL TAYLOR ASSOCIATES 649-81 81 RE MOUNTAIN HOME tftthife teMi'WifWSiBti'i'in BY GEORGE A. THOMPSON & FRASER BUCK ir. Thompson and Mrs. Buck will autograph the new edition between 2 p. m. and 4p.m. Saturday Nov. 28th 1981 Refreshments On Verville, the straight-arrow and Hughes the sad sack find humor, despair and comradeship as they hold their little foxhole against the Cong in "Back to Back" Vietnam play succeeds in too-short run By Rick Brough If you saw "Back to Back" this week at the Egyptian Theatre, you were lucky. If you didn't, you should see it the very next chance you get. Al Brown, a Philadelphian-turned Philadelphian-turned Utahn, wrote a memorable mem-orable comedy-drama about the War in Vietnam. It uses MASH-like humor, a mood of despair at the waste of war and disgust at the Indc-china situation in particular. When the play only has one week's run, I can usually indulge myself and just watch the play without analyzing it in detail. But I shouldn't let "Back to Back" go without some feeble effort at describing its special quality. Historic Main Street "" i: 1 1 ' 1 -S'. rS- -r- The play spans 24 hours from morning to morning in a foxhole with a G.I. odd couple. Hughes (Chuck La Font) is a draftee, and the company screw up, who is so helpless his other soldier buddies have to take turns watching him. He functions with amiable stream-of-con-sciousness. He talks about hometown girlfriends, movies, TV, draws pictures in the sand and, since he has an intestinal problem, is continually running off to the crapper. (Once there, he has the disconcerting habit of trying to start friendly conversation with the guy sitting next to him.) Verville (Tom Green) takes everything seriously. He thinks the strategy of the military brass is lousy. He knows the Cong are winning. His memories of home are bitter because of a neglectful father he hates. And despite himself, he's attracted to Hughes' funny non sequitur stories. Both actors are so effective effec-tive you can't imagine what their personalities are in real AN OLD WEST life. LaFont doesn't push for big effects to make his character believable, but instead shows Hughes through a kind of friendly innocence. Hughes is the platoon misfit his buddies scorn him, a lot of times they don't even talk to him but he reacts to this ostracism with confused innocence, which is more poignant than if he had done the usual thing, and acted with the droopy, pathetic air of a whipped dog. When he's playing by himself in the bunker, LaFont's acting is just quiet enough to look casual, yet also loud enough to reach the audience. That's a pretty difficult feat. His best moment of idle fantasy comes when he's pulling on his clothes and remarks to an invisible companion, "There's 20 dollars on the table." Tom Green as Verville doesn't get as many of the laughs he reacts more than he acts. He's a straight man for Hughes, but, like any straight man, it's his timing that makes the jokes work. .1, "i-4i DINING EHPERIENCE Thanksgiving Day Special Hours: .luii.i. Lunch 11:30-2:00 Dinner 5:30-10:00 Sunday Brunch: 10 - 2 And his dramatic handling of scenes is nothing less than stunning. One of the scenes in the play Verville's tape-recorded tape-recorded message home to his folks is an obvious tear-jerking device, but Green transcends the moment mo-ment with the raw vulnerability vulner-ability he shows. Warning: Anyone watch-. ing the play will have to get used to the slow pace which is part of the style. The story is, after all, about two soldiers who are battling ennui as much as the Cong. But there were some errors which could be rectified rec-tified in the otherwise excellent excel-lent direction by playwright Al Brown. You get the feeling the two actors aren't always at times comfortable with each other. This may only ref!$ct.Jh Jinj&rijfgr- table relationship between the two characters, but it isn't consistent with the repartee between them that is supposed to show a more familiar relationship. Still, in some scenes they are hilarious, as in the moment 12-6 368 Main Street, Park City, Utah 64-1570 when Hughes slips on a Grocho mask and waits for Verville to see it and react. Brown is skillful in suggesting sugges-ting the passage of a whole day in his story, but he is aided by Dewey Douglas' lighting effects. The most skillful effects comes in the middle of a night-time Cong attack, when the stage suddenly lights up and fades into semi-darkness to suggest sug-gest the passage of a flare. (The only major goof came at one point when the lights were supposed to go down and didn't, which allowed the audience to see the two actors arranging their sandbags sand-bags for the next scene.) Another element which aided the atmosphere was a rasty background song, "Mama, Take Me Home," written by Richard Jewkes jani Lou Borgenicht. ' ' The play swings skillfully from hilarity to horror. One doesn't have to take a chauvinistic view of Utah theater to say "Back to Back" is one of the best dramatic efforts about the Vietnam war. feast |