What Rocky vs. Hannity delivered most successfully was volume, both on stage and in outbursts from the sold-out crowd.

In fact, it was the volume of the cheers and boos from theater seats that made the whole event, a debate about the tragedy of lost lives in the Iraq war, play like a comedy.

On stage, the performers stuck to their well-established personas. Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson showed off the litigation style he performs at every protest rally, while talk show host Sean Hannity delivered zingers and personal jabs with practiced ease.

In presentation style, Hannity won points for his stage presence, casually strolling the boards in his conservatively styled costume: white shirt, striped tie and gray charcoal suit. Used to playing to a partisan crowd, Hannity couldn't resist interrupting his own windup to dismiss the hecklers in the audience - "Notice how liberals are not tolerant of other's free speech?"

Hannity's practiced ease in delivering personal attacks against his opponent, from using his given name "Ross" with the venom of an insult to continuing to charge Anderson as a "part-time mayor, full-time protester," quickly tired the crowd. Less successful was his claim that the night's event wasn't about politics.

In contrast, what Anderson showed off was his own doggedness, appearing more dedicated to making it through his PowerPoint slides, studded with quotes from official documents and President Bush sound bites, than selling a precisely targeted argument. Anderson, also dressed in a gray suit, his sparked with a blue shirt, played to his side of the stage as dearly as he clung to his outline.

As a performer, Anderson couldn't shake his own passionate earnestness. He not only didn't play to the hometown crowd, he blamed them for interruptions that caused him to run out of time. Incredibly, he even returned to the slides and the script in the question-and-answer portion of the event.

The poignancy of the night's event came in the form of dueling slides of tragedy from war-torn Iraq, with both debaters offering stories of American military families mourning the loss of their sons and daughters.

After all the pre-show hype, the performance seemed more about ego, and all the volume made the night's dialogues painfully difficult to hear.

In the end, moderator Ken Verdoia got off the best lines, terming himself in a hopeless position, joking about throwing away the debate's timepiece.

ellenf@sltrib.com