I'm 99% sure this is the role that got Jeffrey Combs cast as Herbert West.
He frequently tells the story that a casting director approached him for the role after seeing him perform a similar character in a play. Based on the date of this article and the description and appearance of Jeffrey's character, this must be it.
LA Weekly [Los Angeles, CA], 13, September 1984, p. 114
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PICK OF THE WEEK
PVT. WARS
James McClure's play about three men in a veterans' hospital receives a near- flawless production under John C. Fletcher's impeccable direction. Though the play's three characters are survivors of Vietnam, this story has nothing to say about that war, or even about the nature of man and his military, other than the vague sanctioning of an individual's right to fight "private wars" of conscience. Rather, the emphasis is upon one of theater's most enduring situations, the heterosexual male triangle. Woodruff Gately is a hick grunt who now spends his time putting together a radio while two other patients vie for his attention and loyalty: Silvio, an Italian-American emasculated by shrapnel, and Natwick, a prissy rich kid hated by everyone but the affable Gately. Silvio's main form of recreation is flashing his nonexistent genitals to the nurses; Natwick's grasping for poetry leads him to a pathetic evening of failed suicide attempts. Both men make Gately's task infinitely more difficult by secretly stealing pieces from his radio, partly to assert their "superiority" over him, partly to insure his stay at the hospital.
Originally written as a one-act, McClure has expanded - and somewhat overextended - his play to two acts, using a lot of blackouts that fail to tighten the dramatic thread as they progress. It's a simple script with a pat metaphor (the radio as Gately's attempt to construct order in a fragmented world), but with enough. sincerity and concern for its characters to overcome its deficiencies. Gregory Grove is touching without being sappy as Gately, Tony Campisi wonderfully vulnerable as the blustering Silvio, and Jeffery Combs is perfectly brittle as the unpopular prig Natwick. Together the three reveal moments that are both refreshingly sad and funny in their depiction of men whose overriding need is to be heard by other men. Zephyr Theater, 7456 Melrose Ave., W. Hlywd.; Thurs.-Sun., 8 p.m.; thru Oct. 7. Call 851-3771.
-Steven Mikulan
