On the whole, audiences will like this performance. It is a tremendous book, lively, constantly moving, and the Matunuck cast does well by it.

The Newport Playhouse presents ``Epitaph For George Dillon'' by John Osborne and Anthony Creighton, directed by Wallace Gray.

The cast:

The angriest young man in Newport last night was at the Playhouse, where ``Epitaph for George Dillon'' opened as the jazz festival closed.

For the hero of this work by John Osborne and Anthony Creighton is a chap embittered by more than the lack of beer during a jam session. He's mad at a world he did not make.

Furthermore, he's something of a scoundrel, an artist whose mind and feelings are all finger-tips. This is in contrast to the family with whom he boards. They not only think and feel cliches but live cliches as well.

It is into this household, one eroded by irritations that have tortured the souls out of its people, that George Dillon enters at the beginning of the play.

An unsuccessful playwright and actor, he has faith only in himself and in a talent he is not sure exists. By the end of the third act, the artist is dead but the body lingers on, a shell among other shells.

Not altogether a successful play, ``Epitaph for George Dillon'' overcomes through sheer vitality and power what in a lesser work might be crippling. It is awfully talky, for instance, and not all of the talk is terribly impressive. But it strikes sparks on occasion and their light causes all else to be forgotten.