Vietnam Wounded Bare Their Scars in ‘Or’

Fifteen years ago, Felton Perry felt audiences needed to see a play dealing with the aftereffects of Vietnam. Today, he thinks they need it even more.

On Friday, his 12-character “Or”--which premiered at the Evergreen (now the Fountain) in 1973--opens at the Richmond Shepard Theatre. “I had really bad timing,” Perry chuckled, recalling the original production. “A lot of people didn’t want to hear about Vietnam then. Of course, a lot of other people did. And now, everyone’s interested.”

The actor/playwright is recognizable to TV audiences as John Ritter’s amiable partner on the ABC series “Hooperman.” But don’t look for Perry to be taking a performing role on this one: He’s strictly the producer. “It’s about providing opportunities for others,” he said earnestly. “I got a couple of extra bucks from ‘Hooperman’ and had the choice of either buying a Cadillac or getting into a theater.”

He thinks he made the right choice. Set among a group of wounded and disabled in a veterans’ hospital, Perry’s play (with the benefit of extensive rewrites) “has a timeless quality,” he said. “To me, it’s not only about Vietnam War veterans, but all men who go into wars--and get wounded, scarred. Vietnam is just the entry point. Maybe if people paid more attention to our veterans, ‘Or’ would not have been necessary.”

“I’m going back to the South again, going simple again,” said performance artist Jan Munroe of “Blood Is, Thicker Than, Water,” a trio of monologues which recently opened at Beyond Baroque. “It’s three monologues for three completely separate characters, who happen to be linked by geographic area,” he said. “It’s North Florida, where my father’s from and where I’ve spent a lot of time. It’s a fascinating place. I’ve gotten a real feel for the language there, the natural storytelling--which is, for the most part, based in reality.”

William Lanteau stars in “Blood Is,” Ronnie Claire Edwards performs “Thicker Than” and Munroe himself appears in “Water.”

“My guy is the ‘me’ character in this,” said Munroe, who was initially wary of doing the piece. “In a way, I’d never had to do that. In ‘Alligator Tails’ (Roadshows, 1986), I did the whole town, thousands of people. In ‘Plato’s Symposium’ (Powerhouse and Court, 1986), I played one of the old philosophers. In ‘The Genius’ (South Coast Rep, 1987), I was a professor. But I wrote this very close to home, from my own specific experiences. It looks at the whole integration situation there in the mid- to late ‘60s--through my eyes as an outsider.”

LATE CUES: Joseph Cacaci’s “Self Defense,” which was scheduled to open Saturday at the Matrix, has been canceled. Producer Joe Stern cites artistic differences with the play’s author/director. . . . Did you know: the most expensive theater ticket in town is--deservedly--”Tamara” at $80. The cheapest? “The Heir Transparent” at $4.

CRITICAL CROSSFIRE: Playwright Lee Blessing (“A Walk in the Woods”) has returned to La Jolla Playhouse with the Beirut-set hostage drama “Two Rooms.” Amanda Plummer and Jon De Vries star, Des McAnuff directs.

Said Dan Sullivan in The Times: “ ‘Two Rooms’ is an idea for a play, but the idea has only been roughed out so far, and it’s to the credit of McAnuff and his company that the holes in the script aren’t more apparent than they are.”

Richard Stayton, in the Herald Examiner, dubbed the effort “exceptional. Blessing writes like a playwright-diplomat negotiating the terms of our emotional release. He does what all the ‘Nightlines’ and ’60 Minutes’ can’t do: free our feelings about the nine American hostages still held in Lebanon.”

In the Orange County Register, Thomas O’Connor compared it favorably to “A Walk”: “Three of the four characters here breathe real air, and Blessing mostly challenges his passion for lyric monologue to the play’s advantage.”

From Welton Jones in the San Diego Union: “ ‘Two Rooms’ is a slight play undermined by the same devils which make its subject so frustrating. As might be expected, though, it has received a superior production from the Playhouse.”

In the Reader, Jonathan Saville noted that “With a minimum of action, indistinct characters and blurred themes, ‘Two Rooms’ does not seem to have very much going for it. But its language, while not the authentic language of drama, is often striking in its eloquence.”

From the San Diego Tribune’s January Riddle: “Like ‘A Walk,’ which did not win the Tony (but should’ve), this is a political drama. Also like ‘A Walk,’ this play doesn’t presume to offer us answers to complex world situations. It does, however, force us to listen to some discomfiting questions.”