STAGE REVIEW : ‘Custer’s Last Band’ Retreats Into Mythology

Some theater mavens wonder from time to time whatever happens to all those new plays that get readings and development money from South Coast Repertory and then disappear, never to be heard from again.

Well, some don’t die, they just go to college.

Part of the booty enjoyed by Abe Polsky for winning South Coast Rep’s 1991 California Play Competition with his “Custer’s Last Band” was a staged reading of the play with a top-flight cast (Jon Vickery played Custer). But it was Jon Bastian’s “Noah Johnson Had a Whore,” the second-place finisher, that went on to a full production.

SCR passed on its own winner. An odd decision, at the time. No more. Polsky has taken his work of speculative history to Cypress College for its first full staging, with his sister-in-law, Diane Polsky directing some earnest student actors, none of them top-flight.

The frequently dull playing of the play’s intriguing situation--how Custer’s regimental band resisted the general’s mad scheme to attack Sitting Bull at Little Bighorn--can cloud a full judgment of the play. But as it is, even with a stage full of Vickerys wouldn’t ignite “Custer’s Last Band” into the explosive clash of art and war it wants to be.

The play, inadvertently or not, is more about the clash of myth and history. The Custer legend has filled bookshelves as he has become a prime target for critics of the American war against the Indians, as well as a figure of mystery. Polsky is only the latest writer to wonder why and how a leading Civil War general would attack a far superior Indian force. For a while, Polsky seems to be taking after Thomas Berger, whose “Little Big Man” toyed with history and turned Custer into a cartoonish beast of imperialist savagery. Yet Polsky also is interested in the details, such as how generals liked to have music bands march into battle with the troops, or how Custer shared his enemies’ liking for burning sage.

But even a brief review of the record of the Little Bighorn disaster shows that the play just adds to the myth. Polsky’s setting, an encampment on a bluff with a view of the huge Sioux force below, is fantasy: Custer’s army actually moved day and night with little rest before attacking. Christopher Fording’s set, a huge army and U.S. flag covering the ground and forming two tents, is a fine stroke of symbolism and the show’s best feature, but this was an army with no tents. Eric Schwartz’ Custer cuts a powerful figure with a vainglorious air, but it’s an image out of old schoolhouse books, complete with long hair and a sword Custer didn’t have.

Must the playwright sacrifice artistic license for history’s record? No, but since recent Custeriana (there is such a thing) such as Evan S. Connell’s “Son of the Morning Star” has striven to demystify Little Bighorn, it seems odd that Polsky would want to create new myths, especially when some of the facts are so naturally theatrical. It’s interesting, for example, that Custer seemed not to know at all that he was up against as many as 9,000 Indians, or that some officers under him bore him intense grudges.

But the deepest problem with “Custer’s Last Band” is that if Polsky wants to make myth, he needs to make it more electric. He’s stuck somewhere between a larger-than-life spectacle and an intimate conflict between an ambitious general and a humble bandleader named--like his cohorts, for his instrument--Cornet (Blake Coomb). Cornet’s character also is stuck, uncompellingly written, and Coomb can’t navigate the play’s final fantasy, Cornet’s climactic revolt against Custer.

Still, Coomb, Schwartz and Ernest E. Jackson as a mutinous scout are dynamos compared to the rest of the halting cast. Polsky, who enjoys dramatizing incredible bits of Americana, surely had a strong sense of what he had with his Donner Party play, “Devour the Snow,” which had an acclaimed premiere at the old American Theatre Arts in Hollywood in 1978. Recreating Custer’s last hours must be a kick for the Cypress students, but it’s hard to see how this well-intentioned but finally moribund take on the new work can help Polsky solve its problems.

‘Custer’s Last Band’

A Cypress College production of a play by Abe Polsky, directed by Diane Polsky. With Eric Schwartz, Blake Coomb, Ernest E. Jackson, Christian Conrad, Terry Lee Tebbetts, James Alexander, Todd Reidy, Edward Eien, Mark Nakagawa, Bruce Hart, Stephen Shanahan, Cy Brown. Set design: Christopher Fording. Lighting design: Trey Franklin. Sound design: Marc Hadley. Costume design: Jenni-Lynn McMillin. Continues Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday at 3 p.m. at the Cypress College Studio Theatre, 9200 Valley View St., Cypress. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes. $7. (714) 821-6320.