Clearcut

Playwright Shengold debuts with a shaggy, steamy '70s ménage à trois in a Pacific Northwest logging town. Chainsaw-wielding "shake-rat" Earley Ritter (he clears and sells stump chips) finds a rare companionship with a young hitchhiker from Berkeley, Reed Alton, despite their differences in background and logging experience. Earley is a big mountain-man loner who lives in a bus parked in the woods, while Reed is a skinny, smart-alecky rich-boy novice pining for his sometime girlfriend, Zan, whom they set off to look for in a tree-planting camp. Zany, shapely Zan comes on to manly Earley and comforts Reed, holding them both in thrall, and pretty soon the three are getting intimate in Earley's hippie bus. During the week, the two men labor side by side at the exhausting work of clearing stumps; joined by their worship of Zan, they become lovers. When an outsider witnesses these hot-house shenanigans, violence erupts and Zan flees to save her own skin, leaving the men to face a tragic fate atop Washington's Mount Olympus. Shengold's characters are richly three-dimensional, and plenty of authentic era detail makes for a ripping read. Agent, Phyllis Wender . (Aug.)