REUNION

A reunion of eight members of the same company during the war, eight years later, enables an extensive reconnaissance of their lives up to this point, and beyond that, of the personal and social situations they represent. Jason, a successful lawyer, who is holding the party, is well married to Louise, but not altogether free of Emily, whose disorderly charms continue to attract him; Saul, who plays the horses, is about ready to settle down for the companionship which Lucille offers; Ad Manchester hides from his past in the anonymity of the Army; Morgan Aldridge is not quite equal to the singleminded devotion of his wife and cuts loose in bars; Homer Aswell has escaped from a Veterans Hospital and assumed the identity of his dead twin brother; Al Borelli works in a warehouse and has Nola to pull him up and quiet him down; Guy Sckmitt, a prosperous farmer, is not as well off in his marriage to Val who loves a second rate actor and second rate things; and Walter Brooks, a newspaperman, does not know that his older, and seemingly settled, wife has fallen in love with another man. The reunion itself, while it witnesses an act of violence, is the means by which these lives are reviewed- and the uneasy, unsteady character of the personal relationships is part of a wider syndrome in which a restive era, streaked by prejudice, opportunism, egotism, also has its sound track. A holding, if not lasting, job.