The difficulties faced by disabled American war veterans in their re-assimilation into civilian life have been well-documented, and even with the absurdist spin a young Keith Reddin put on it in 1984, the trials of Franklin Roosevelt Clagg, sent home from Korea minus -- literally -- his good right arm, are by now familiar territory. But the Swing For The Fences company, most of whom are too young to even remember Viet Nam, refuse to take cover in ironic distance, instead grappling with their material as seriously and intensely as if it were 1954 instead of 2001. As, respectively, the idealistic hero who always seems to come out the loser and the unscrupulous hustler who always seems to come out the winner, Johnny Clark and Daren Flam swap dialogue with sharpshooter precision.
Alexis Gladd and Molly Glynn Hammond, as the distraught Mrs. Clagg and her flinty girlfriend, likewise retain their dignity and our sympathies, even when Reddin forces them to serve their own time in Hell doing happy-housewifely duties. Together with Thomas Kixmiller, Doug Pelletier, Reid Robinson and a uniformly attentive technical crew, under the direction of Kurt Naebig, the ensemble exhibits deftly-reproduced dialects, attention to nuance, and a discipline that allows them to take their characters' emotional displays to extravagant heights without ever losing hold of their objective. Wars should be conducted with such planned precision as this.
