Lone Star
***
Pvt. Wars
*
President Bush's weird comparison of America's role in the Vietnam war with its invasion of Iraq lends renewed piquancy to James McLure's 1979 black comedy, double-bill. The impact of war is refracted through the minds of American soldiers who returned home damaged or disturbed, but defiant too.
So consuming, however, is our celebrity-obsession, that you would be forgiven the belief that the sole interest of Lone Star and Pvt. Wars is the stage debut of Mick Jagger's son, James. Mr Jagger junior, who plays both a dim-witted, small-town Texas guy and a pompous university boy back from Vietnam, duly reveals himself to be a natural-born, versatile actor. He has his daddy's lips too.
The plays not the players, though, ought be the crucial thing. McLure takes no political stand over Vietnam. His double-bill is grounded in theatricality rather than reality. Even so McLure discovers an amusing, atmospheric comedy in the altercations and game-playing of simple guys in the backyard of a small-town, Texas bar. Designer Georgia Lowe gives the place a nicely dilapidated air, with long grass growing from a pile of tyres.
Shane Richie's far too loutishly swaggering, thirtysomething Roy, back from Vietnam, reveals no trace of the muscular high school hero he used to be, even if he remains arrested in adolescence. The news that his brother Ray, whom William Meredith portrays with cool conviction, had a secret affair with his wife, alerts us to Roy's role as a loser.
When Jagger's shoulder-drooping Cletis, sagging under the weight of his stupidity, is exposed as the wrecker of Roy's pink Thunderbird McLure wittily completes the Vietnam veteran's deflation. "That car is my youth," Roy laments. "Well, we've all got to grow up some time, Ray retorts.
The interminable, juvenile Pvt Wars, shows three GIs sitting around on an army hospital terrace while recovering from injuries suffered in Vietnam.
The production revels in Richie's grotesquely clowning, overdone Silvio, a compulsive, bawling flasher who has lost his balls and more in battle.
Director Henry Mason fails to prevent Richie from driving this black comedy deep into farcical terrain.
Jagger, transformed as the camp and supercilious college graduate Natwick, in turquoise satin pyjamas and lots of attitude as he quotes TS Eliot, lets in rays of subtle, comic relief. Boy, can he act.
Closes 23 September. Information 020 7226 1916
Lone Star And Private Wars
King's Head, Islington
Upper Street, Islington, N1 1QN
