Rabe, David (Vol. 8) - Rabe, David 1940–

Rabe, David 1940–

Rabe, an American playwright, is a Vietnamese War veteran; most of his work, which has been well received by both critics and the theater-going public, concerns the effect of this war on its soldiers and veterans. (See also CLC, Vol. 4.)

The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel [is] a not unrewarding play by David Rabe. It concerns a confused young man who briefly comes to tragicomic life in the Vietnam war, then goes down in it to absurd and anonymous death. Rabe knows the war, having been through it; and knows, what is more, how to write. His able play nevertheless suffers from splits down the middle in two directions. Horizontally, it tries to be as much about the war and the sad and comic grossness of army life as about the peculiarities and tergiversations of a funny little man trying to find himself. It even wants, I think, to relate the home front (or lack of one) to the battlefront. In these dualities and...

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