Wars come and go, but the regulated idiocy of Army life remains one of the most popular sources of slapstick. The current offering at the Wilbur, a farce written by James B. Allardice and staged by Ezra "Henry Aldrich" Stone deals with the complicated plots and pratfalls of the men in the orderly room of an armored training company during the war.

All the famous Army types are present, and all of them are beautiful played. The overworked and woman-ridden First Sergeant wants, desperately to get away from his morning reports and into combat. A baboon-like, whistle-blowing platoon sergeant wants to know the purpose of overnight passes, because "any fool knows it takes more than a coupla hours to make any decent broad." The company commander suffers terribly because his wife, who plays bridge with the adjutant's wife, always knows what is going to happen before he does. The eternal yardbird, the eager second lieutenant, the PX floozie and the latrine lawyer are all old stuff to anecdote audiences, but "At War With The Army" presents them with such freshman and realism that they come to life again. Even the jokes, aged as they may be, are still pretty consistently funny.

The plot, which revolves around the really worn-out pregnancy motif and the First Sergeant's schemes to get transferred overseas, is fortunately incidental. The main humor is in the minor incidents, such as the colonel's inspection of the orderly room, and the men's desperate stampede to get under cover at 5:15 to avoid having to salute as the flag is lowered.

Donald Oenslager's single set, the dismal orderly room, is so startlingly realistic that anyone who had experiences roughly like those shown in the play can't help remembering that they weren't so very funny when they really happened. Nevertheless, the final test of a comedy is the audience reaction. At the Wilbur, they were rolling in the aisles.