STAGE REVIEWS : Festival ’90 : OPEN FESTIVAL : Explosive ‘Tracers’ Reopens Postwar Wounds

Director John DiFusco and a cast of college actors have pulled off one of the Open Festival’s major surprises: a pulsing, hallucinatory production of the Vietnam War play “Tracers,” at Cal State Northridge’s Campus Theater.

DiFusco created the play with other Vietnam veterans 10 years ago and has staged it with actor-vets for years. But he had to dig deeper this time because he was directing people young enough to go to war themselves. The result is a hand grenade of a show, featuring some remarkably convincing grunts.

DiFusco himself plays the drill sergeant who eats up his recruits. The seven other actors in this Cal State production animate an ensemble of evocative, humorously profane performances.

The cast’s kinetic body language, its rock ‘n’ roll cadences (to throbbing period rock classics) are primal stuff. One mime-enacted scene, the “blanket party,” in which soldiers gather up pieces of cadavers for body bags, is almost sculptural.

Even less playable segments of oral history (bordello and jungle stories, postwar traumas) jump at you from players who mature on stage (Scott Conte, Steven Faughn, Carlton Pleasant, Wayne Haas, Alberto Ibarra, Michael Scheer and Dean Young).

Smoke and fire effects punctuate David Flad’s lighting and Dennie Miller’s sandbagged set design.

At 18111 Nordoff St., Northridge, Thursdays through Saturdays,8 p.m., Sundays, 5 p.m., through Sept. 30. $3.50-$7.50. (818) 885-3093.