Clurman reviews The Basic Training of Pavel Hummel's original production, finding the work a stirring representation of the war in Vietnam Beyond terming the play as "good" or "bad," the critic praised Rabe's work for creating a vivid impression of the horror of the war

I understood little more than half of what was spoken or shouted by the actors in David Rabe's, The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel (Public Theater) . But though I gathered the impression that much of its text was well written, I was not troubled by missing so many of its lines. The pace had to be hectic, the scenes had to overlap, the sounds needed to be raucous: here was inferno

It is supposedly a simple matter to write or stage a play depicting the horrors of war. That is not so. People screaming in agony, bodies flung about, wounds inflicted, harsh...