PLAYED AT ITS BEST, Bertolt Brecht's work has the beauty and finesse of a perfectly constructed essay. Its proclaimed intention to be an entertainment of ideas emphasizes its immediacy and relevance; its values cannot be dismissed as belonging to a dramatized world unto itself. The current production of Brecht's A Man's A Man comes off as a fine set of paragraphs missing their conclusion, and Brecht's moral purpose is lost in the disunity. A sardonic comedy deeply involved with modern man's anonymity, it loses its own identity. Much is lively and comic in this production. And, at appropriate moments, its serious concerns glower through. Unfortunately, the sum of these very fine fragments is a dubious and unfinished total.

A Man's A Man is a kind of army recruiting poster turned on its head. Galy Gay (Mace Rosenstein), a man who just can't say no to anything, leaves his hut to buy a fish and gets sidetracked for life. He runs into a trio of British privates, who act like manic Boy Scouts with switchblades hidden in their pockets (in fact, a butter knife serves). They develop great career plans for him when a buddy of theirs disappears during a group burglary. Galy's not much of a soldier, but what's the difference, one man's like the next and all are adaptable. "Throw him in a puddle and he'll grow webs between his fingers in two days," they say of him. They swindle and abuse him, and before Galy quite sees where he's landed, he's wearing another man's dogtags. Always perfectly polite and equally bewildered, Galy loses his name and its personality unassumes a new one.

Galy's transformation is thrust upon hits because the soldiers fear annihilation by their brutish sergeant, Bloody Five, whom pleasure is in others' punishment. Though his bluster and machismo parody his he-man style, Bloody Five is in truth as cruel as his nickname. His power overwhelms everyone but the camp follower, Widow Begbick. She knows the weakness intrinsic to all men especially strong ones, and eventually triggers Five's disgrace. Bloody Five's bravura balances Galy's passive foolishness. As surely as the latter metamorphoses into the army beast, the former weakens and falls. It's grim stuff of which to make laughter, and the comedy does become pretty sinister. Brecht mines the parallel veins of humor and despair, and the production succeeds in emulating him--almost.

The opening night audience seemed a bit hesitant starting up its curtain call applause, as if it had expected more--with good reason. The last scene of A Man had been cut out. By ending with Bloody Five's self-inflicted castration the production itself is emasculated. Brecht intended to show the interchangeability of the human war machine's parts, the disquieting ease with which Galy Gay is dissolved and re-assembled. Galy Gay's conversion into the assertive war machine. Jeratah Jip, is hinted at by Galy's request for more rice--but, at curtain fall that hasn't even become a demand. The declarative introduction to the production's last scene tells us to expect the fall of one power and the rise of the new, but the play stops dead without fulfilling its prediction.

THE BLAMI MUST LIE with director Don Bacon. His deterion a questionable practice in most cases and disastrous in this one, cuts the core out of Brecht's thesis. His decision is doubly unfortunate since all along the performance promises so much. With the Brecht he has used, Bacon has built a solid well paced show. The acting is more than competent and the blocking works unobtrusively and well. The elaborately eccentric set makes funny noises and spouts smoke on cue what more could you want. As well as reflecting the characters the costumes are comic statements in themselves. The show suffers from rusty lighting changes but that's about all. To catch the artificial quality of the play Bacon gambles and wins on an overtly melodramatic style. The knowing asides to the audience and the occasional mannered poses capture the farcical element in Brecht's satire without undermining its bitter intent.

The student actors all give serviceable portrayals and even better they seem to understand what Brecht has them saying. Mace Rosenstein turns out a suitably naive and accepting Galy but has no chance to show his evolution. As Bloody Five, Tim Manna struts and bellows, though in his efforts to growl, his lines occasionally garble. Marty Shofner, Richard Bertelson, and Steve Craddock make a good Three Stooges team, and their casual violence fits their uniforms. By avoiding Widow Begbick's slattern stereotype, Claudia Carter does Brecht's characterization one better. Parkman Howe, as a monk cum con artist, skitters away with his part of the show. He turns that original missing private into a God then, with religio-carnival patter, fobs him off on the masses. One wishes Brecht had written him more.

A Man's A Man is mostly delightful, and on laughs alone deserves consideration. The ensemble didn't apologize for its wonderfully histrionic shenanigans and didn't need to. The players have a good sense of timing, they pull every comic suggestion from their lines, they have been placed well by their director, and their play is too short. Eleven-odd years ago the Loeb introduced A Man's A Man to America. The play's return at Eliot House is worthy of at least two hurrahs, but the applause would be louder and longer if the production had finished its business.