Theater: Silly Psychos

A Cook for Mr. General (by Steven Gethers) unloads a cargo of G.I. psychos and supermisfits at a Pacific rehabilitation camp. There is a baby brain who cannot sleep without his blue blanket. There is a balmy barracks lawyer whose eyes roll around like loose marbles. And there is a bearded oddball mystic who wears his G.I. blanket like a poncho, and upon being asked his rank, replies: “Commander of the forces of the Lord.”

These neurotic goof-offs are more amusing than they have any right to be—but the one who should be the funniest of them all is less amusing than he ought to be. The fault in Playwright Gethers’ farce lies in its ill-conceived hero, a hulking, preposterously implausible Greek cook named Tomas Agganis (Bill Travers). Actor Travers tries manfully to get a tongue-hold on his role, but what comes out is Basic Choctaw compounded with his Wee Geordie burr. A boyhood brush with the Greek constabulary has left Agganis with the disconcerting habit of kayoing any man who lays a hand on him. This reflex comes in handy whenever Playwright Gethers needs to plot-boil a climax.

The story makes Agganis a kind of displaced restaurateur who soothes the ulcers of “Mr. General,” the camp commander (Roland Winters), with such far-out Hellenic treats as octopus and goats’ bladders. The resulting buddyhood is so mawkish that most of Act II goes down the sentimental drain. There are two rowdy high spots. At one point, Mr. General’s two-star superior (John McGiver) stuns the camp and apoplectrifies himself by Jeeping in on a Greek-styled folk fling, where he finds the cook and Mr. General doing kick-ups (in non-Government-issue evzone skirts and tasseled headgear) to the shrill piping of bouzotiki records. And in Act III there is a court-martial, with the key kooks testifying, that resembles a Marx Brothers movie sequence scripted by Salvador Dali. The cook and Mr. General are both outranked in acting honors by John McGiver. He plays and looks like Captain Bligh in khaki.