The Theatre: AWOL

Blood, Sweat & Stanley Poole (by

James and William Goldman) shoots its best line in the title. In three acts, this small-bore saga of the peacetime army in the mid-’50s rarely hits a comic target that has not already been riddled in the long and simple-minded annals of G.I. humor.

Lieut. Stanley Poole (Darren McGavin), a hard-bitten campaigner, has been frightened out of his dimmish wits by a directive. To hold his rank, he must pass a college test; to pass the test, he is bribing the post education officer with every last field jacket and wall locker in his supply room. Peter Fonda, an egghead private who goes psycho at the sight of an unsheathed bayonet, offers to tutor McGavin, and soon he is running a class for every Neanderthal man on the post.

Thin as a soda straw, but vastly more resilient, Fonda makes a personable Broadway debut as the third of the acting Fondas (Father Henry, Sister Jane). Otherwise, all of the familiar adenoidal monsters that only a first sergeant could love show up for roll call in Stanley Poole, and the laughs are mostly AWOL.