By SASHA PAULSEN
Register Features Editor
Five men are in one car on a train heading south to Biloxi, Miss. -- strangers who'd under normal circumstances probably have gone through life never crossing paths. But war isn't normal times, and these guys are all new inductees into the U.S. Army. It's 1943. They're heading for basic training in the South. And one of them is writing down everything that happens.
That would be Eugene Morris Jerome, lately of Brighton Beach, N.Y. The wise-cracking kid is now a young man on his own for the first time, and he's been cast adrift from his solid Jewish family into a train car of very odd characters.
Eugene is a little taller, a little older, and not much wiser than he was at 15 in "Brighton Beach Memoirs." He's still a guy with clear cut goals, as he tells the audience: He wants to loose his virginity, become a writer and not get killed.
He accomplishes all three to varying degrees in Neil Simon's sequel to "Brighton Beach," which opened last weekend, and we'll let you guess which one he achieves on his first 48-hour leave in Biloxi. It is one of many pricelessly funny moments in the new Dreamweavers production.
Interestingly, Eugene, played with winning innocence by Jake Garibaldi -- think Tom Sawyer, drafted -- begins to shift himself out of the spotlight, as he chronicles life in Army basic training and studies the guys who are all in the situation as he: the animal-like Joseph Wykowski (Phillip Boone) who has amazing powers of endurance; the nervous, indecisive Don Carney (Adrian Atman), who likes to sing; the wise-cracking, crude but comic Roy Seldridge (David Ewing) and the surprisingly kind James Hennessey (Robert Silva). Eugene becomes all but invisible against the conflict of their certifiably looney Sgt., Mervin J. Toomey (Thomas J. Hinesley) with the most enigmatic barracks-mate of all, the defiant, brilliant Arnold Epstein (Mark Mautner).
Toomey tells his charges he has given part of his brain to the Army (and clearly it's a part that's necessary) and the hole left has been filled in by a steel plate. In a superb and darkly comic characterization by Hinesley, Toomey becomes the personification of everyone's nightmare non-commissioned officer, gloating in his power to be unfair, irrational and hopelessly mad. He is well matched by an extraordinary performance by Mautner as the victim of the sergeant's malice: He sits on his upper bunk (when he's not cleaning latrines) casting down his wry and trenchant observations like a recording angel, and never gives in, at least not when Toomey doesn't have a pistol pointed at him.
The rest of the cast as well, Garibaldi, Boone, Atman, Ewing and Silva, do remarkable jobs of creating their characters, tempering what could be stereotypes with flashes of humanity. Philip Boone pushes the obnoxiously anti-Semitic Wykowski to the edge, but then is able to pay grudging respect to Epstein. David Ewing redeems the crudeness of his character Selridge with a fine sense of comic timing and instinctive humor. Adrian Atman's Carney is the dreamer who belongs anywhere but fighting a war; and Robert Silva's Hennessey provides a steadfast humanity amidst the inter-barrack turmoil, but pays a price for it.
And we can't forget the two lone women in the cast: Linsey Suedkamp, whose va-va-voom hooker Rowena initiates Eugene into the pleasures of the night; and at the other end of the femme fatale spectrum, Abbigail Dwyer as the clever convent schoolgirl Daisy Hannigan, who becomes Eugene's first love beyond himself.
Directed by Ross Nelson and June Alane Reif, "Biloxi Blues" provides an evening of PG rated laughter, that is infused with poignancy of innocence and intelligence crumbling against the madness of the world that's not altogether without its timeliness.
These characters, after all, are being sent out to fight a war, long before they have any idea who they are or what they're doing.
It's well worth seeing, and -- keep in mind, it'll help the actors pay their rent and keep the plays coming.
"Biloxi Blues" continues at Dreamweavers Theater Feb. 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 27, March 3, 4. Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m. $15 general and $12 students and seniors. For tickets or more information, call 255-LIVE (5483).
From the Napa Register's website - © 2003, Pulitzer Newspapers, Inc.
