Streamers

The Vietnam Plays #3

by David Rabe

With his earlier plays— The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel , Sticks and Bones , and In the Boom Boom Room —David Rabe established himself as one of America's leading young playwrights. Streamers is his most powerful and successful play.Set in an army barracks in the early days of the Vietnam War, Streamers has electrified audiences from its first performance with its explosive portrayal of a handful of soldiers and their fatally intertwined destinies...Richie, a wealthy neurotic who cannot resist temptation...Billy, an earnest midwestern straight arrow...Roger, a street-wise refugee from the ghetto...Carlyle, a pathological misfit who threatens the order and the substance of their lives...and Sergeants Cokes and Rooney, two aging dipsomaniacal soldiers whose grimly humorous song (about parachutes that fail to open) gives the play both its title and its fundamentally compassionate Beautiful streamer,Open for me,The sky is above me,But no canopy.Streamers is a classic of the American theater.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre, War, Fiction

109 pages, Paperback

First published April 12, 1977

Reviews

[Jordan Muschler · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dated and harder to understand from a modern-day perspective. Perhaps too focused on characters, so much so that plot and theme do not reveal themselves until the very ending. A great director could help make this work, but the language (while serving as a nice time capsule) feels so antithetical to the modern world that it is hard to engross yourself in it. Read this largely because I knew Mike Nichols directed it - I bet that Mike Nichols production was excellent, but on the page I had a really difficult time with this play.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one snuck up on me. I borrowed it on a whim, only really looking for something to fill the empty time on a bus ride. It was engrossing! I started reading it just because it was the first selection in the anthology of plays and I'd never heard of it before.

It caught some momentum pretty much right at the start and really kept my attention throughout.

It's not really a war play, it's more about the studying of several individuals from different backgrounds under pressure, challenging and reaching out and provoking each other under claustraphobic and possibly deranged circumstances.

I usually pick up on the allegorical qualities of plays like this (this guy with the glasses and the big vocabulary represents "the intellect" and so on) but Rabe really does an excellent job of making the characters believeably human, complex and interesting. Characters react in unexpected ways to unforseen situations and the climax comes out of nowhere but seems fitting, in that strange way in which situations have a momentum of their own.

[James Henderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Streamers won the Tony Award for the Best Play 1976. The last in David Rabe's Vietnam War trilogy that began with The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and Sticks and Bones, it focuses on the interactions and personal conflicts of a group of soldiers preparing to ship out to fight in the Southeast Asian conflict. Among them are middle class African American Roger, upper class Manhattanite Richie, who is struggling with his sexual orientation, conservative Wisconsin country boy Billy, and fearful loose cannon Carlyle, a streetwise black. In charge of their barracks are abrasive alcoholic Sgt. Cokes, who already has served overseas, and aggressive Sgt. Rooney, who is anxious to get into combat.
The play's title is a reference to parachutes that fail to open - Streamers originally was a one-act play entitled Knives that Rabe completed in the late-1960s prior to writing the first two-thirds of his trilogy later expanding it into a longer play.

[Brian McCann · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a great play, though I haven’t read other Rabe works in years. More about characters than exposition of plot. Took me a long time to discern WHAT this play was even about. It’s very 1970s to boot.

[Evan · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the 10 best American plays of all time, though it doesn't read as well on paper as it plays on stage. Rabe has used subtlety and nuance throughout, and created one of theatre's cruelest characters in Carlyle. I had the privilege of seeing the original production; I walked away badly shaken. Then I bought the script, read it, and was shaken all over again.

One caveat: Avoid the movie. Everything about it is a mistake. No one does the play anymore, which is a shame, but it remains well worth reading -- aloud with a group, if you can.

[Bobby Sullivan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pointless. Sorry, David Rabe; this one was a miss for me.

[Jon]

Very good, probably dangerous play.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Huh. Prolly have to read this one again. Or see it, which I doubt I would, though.