Today's theatergoers may be forgiven if they're a bit fuzzy on the thrust of David Rabe's 1976 play Streamers, since it hasn't had a major revival since winning a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play. Thanks to a crack director, Scott Ellis, and a sizzling cast, the Huntington Theatre's first-rate rendition makes you wonder why this play has yet to be anointed into the big-marquee canon.

Although it's the third entry in Rabe's Vietnam-themed triptych of early works -- it was preceded by 1971's The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and 1972's Sticks and Bones -- Streamers, which is set in 1965, does not appear to be inextricably linked to that particular conflict. That accounts for the p[...]