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Show The Daily Utah Chronicle, Friday, December 8, Page Eight 6ft v. 1978 'Visit to a Small Planet' Theatre 138 hea ATWERP Chronicle staff Theatre 138 s production of "Visit to a Small Planet" is a play in two acts, but it seems like two separate plas. The play is set in 1958, at the home of Roger and Reba Spelding, outside Manassas, Va. The visitor is Kreten, an extraterrestial being with menatl powers far beyond our own. He was aiming to visit the Civil War, which he wanted to observe because of a personal interest in hostility. He meets Gen. Tom Powers, the stereotypical military man; Roger Spelding, a news analyst, his wife, Reba, who is not blessed with much intelligence; their daughter, Ellen, an art a peace-lovinappreciation major; and her beau, Conrad farmer. Kreten decides he is satisfied with 1958, and will simply start a war between the I'nited States and the Soviet I'nion. by WALKER VAN 'Small Planet' is overrun with dated Cold War comedy g May-berry- Needless to say, the Earthlings react with consternation when he is successful. The play was written by Gore Vidal at about the time in which it is set. Vidal 's writing is witty, but much of the material in "Small Planet" has become dated in the two intervening decades. This is underscored in the first act. It is rife with obvious slights that lost their freshness anti-militar- y and appeal long ago. It is overrun with witticisms about the Khrushchev years which warrant a history piofessor's interpretation; and with glorification of pacifism, which, while no less desirable today, has become old hat. Finally, the treatment of sex, much of it geared for shock value, is worth, at best a smile after the massive changes in atitudes toward sex in the last 20 years. The second act displays a more universal (and, continued on page 10 Eisenhower OSHMOVIE:78clO,FRI&SAT 66 D (a MwacgOds o (s 99 ( I v rv O o (A c o CD o c x: ao O Q A JF.RRY WEINTRAUB PRODUCTION JOHN DENVER "OH, GOD!" TERI GARR DONALD PLEASENCE Based on the Novel bv AVERY CORMAN Screenplay by LARRY GELBART GEORGE BURNS PG Ns P:oduoc: by JFRRY WEINTRAUB Prom Warner Bros A Directed by CARL REINER Warner Communications Company |