Stalag 17, American Blues Theatre. In the pantheon of POW dramas, Stalag 17 ranks somewhere between Jean Renoir’s brilliant Grand Illusion and a 1940s Danny Kaye vehicle. Taut and highly entertaining, Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski’s Tony-winning play is nevertheless a bit formulaic and lightweight. Until its gripping conclusion, this drama of American soldiers in a German prison camp rooting out a Nazi spy in their midst is somewhat quotidian, failing to explore the larger implications of the World War II experience. Instead the playwrights concentrate on familiar American military types and quip-laden patter reminiscent of Beetle Bailey strips and Broadway-musical dialogue (“You’re on borrowed time, ya crud!”). American Blues Theatre’s dumbed-down advertising campaign (“Before MAS*H, before Hogan’s Heroes, there was Stalag 17”) itself suggests that audiences shouldn’t come expecting Arthur Miller’s Incident at Vichy.
