Before you know it, cinematic allusions are flying
everywhere, there are two rival gangs both dressed in house
remover's coveralls, we're chasing three Macguffins, and
quite a lot of blood is shed. Or, "claret is spilled," in
the lingo of the film, which is salted with rhyming slang.
Don't worry: the only time that subtitles are called for is
for a shaggy dog story told by a bartender, and even then
the subtitles provide their own jokes.
The violence has an over-the-top, cartoony quality: think
Wile E. Coyote with an assault rifle. Meanwhile,
writer/director Ritchie takes every cheesy movie device in
the film school textbook -- over- and under-cranking, split
screen, freeze frame -- and makes it fresh. The dialog is
clever, with rhythms that suggest Swingers; the sight
gags are inventive; the plot points are concealed and
conserved; the deadpan line readings are gems of perfect
comic timing; there are lots of little details: watch the
upper-class twit at the ironing board, pressing his drug
money. Look out, America: the invasion by Cool Britannia is
about to begin.
The Turn of the Screw, adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher
from the novel by Henry James, directed by Kathy Feininger,
Round House Theatre, Silver Spring, Maryland
Delicate, subtle direction of James's sexy,
enigmatic ghost story. A stunningly minimal set: only half a
banistered staircase and one green velvet armchair.
Minimalism in the casting too: Marty Lodge plays four roles
and provides verbal sound patterns; he does a good job of
playing background piano with just his hands and the
well-placed ba-da-dum; while Jane Beard plays the governess
who sees the ghosts of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel.
I read the play as the Victorian discovery that the child
is a distinct personality. How frightening that can be to an
adult!
This is a theatrical quickie, coming in at less than 75
minutes. Nevertheless, it's a talky adaptation, but what can
you do? And perhaps there were one too many gobos in the
crepuscular lighting design.
![[]](../../images/graphics/newCross.gif)
Winter Series, The Washington Ballet, Terrace Theatre,
Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington
A pleasant evening. "Sketches," choreographed
by John Goding, with music from Johannes Brahms' Second
Symphony, features dense groupings and lush, claret-colored
costumes, but seemed to run out of ideas in the middle of
the second half. Choo-San Goh's austere "Synonyms," danced
to movements of Benjamin Britten's First String Quartet, is
delightful. I remember poses held firmly for long counts.
The dance unfolds as if the figures on an ancient Greek
ceramic had come to life. Next came Stephen Greenston's
tender, loving pas de deux from "We Are Here" and his
"Impresiones." This last piece is a feisty bit of work
accompanied by Andean folk songs, and an opportunity for the
company to let its hair down, literally. Lilla Seber in
"Oppressed" left a particularly fine impression.
I spent the weekend in New York and brought back with me
a head cold and blisters on my feet. While I was there, I
saw four plays, two of which had no intermissions, four
fully or partially naked bodies, and two onstage water
effects.
Electra, by Sophocles, adapted by Frank McGuiness,
directed by David Leveaux, Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York
A very powerful performance by Zoë
Wanamaker as Sophocles's bloody heroine, and everyone else
wisely stays out of the way. Wanamaker scuttles about
barefoot on a set covered in earth, a man's trenchcoat of
some puke-brown color dragging behind her. She is strong
enough that she can be turned upstage, or read her lines
directly into the earth where she is scrabbling a makeshift
grave, and still dominate. At times her voice is a strangled
cry, at others a plaintive sing-song.
An elemental set, with the masking curtains taken out so
that the lighting grid is exposed. The pre-show "music" is
an insistent industrial rumble, and once we're in our seats,
there's no polite house-to-half dipping of the lights. No:
the lights and music go out abruptly, and the play begins.
The closing image of the play is equally striking: a
constant drip of water from the flies turns to blood as it
falls on Electra's classically masked face.
Pat Carroll as Chorus made much less of an impression
than I was expecting. There are actually three Chorus
members, but only Carroll has lines, leaving the other two
women with not much to do but cringe, circle downstage to
keep focus on the speaking players, and collect discarded
props.
The Ethel Barrymore is one of those old theatres built
when everyone was only 5' 8" tall.
Killer Joe, by Tracy
Letts, directed by Wilson Milam, Soho Playhouse, New York
Texas trailer-park losers hire a hit man and
hope to escape their shabby lives. I liked the rhythms of
this play. Sometimes two and three speakers overlap lines,
and sometimes there are awkward Plains-sized silences. In
the theatre's cramped space that has no lighting grid above
the stage, the set was creatively lit, using a lot of FOH
instruments and practicals: floor lamps in the living room,
over-the-sink lights in the kitchen.
Mike Shannon's whiny Chris is good, and Fairuza Balk fits
in well, too, in her first New York stage work, though I
wish she'd cheat out a little on her monologues. I was
dissatisfied with the ending: nothing but murderous mayhem
with kitchen utensils.
The Beauty Queen of Leenane, by Martin McDonagh,
directed by Garry Hynes, Walter Kerr Theatre, New York
Good work by Kate Burton and Anna Manahan as
a lonely 40-year-old virgin in rural Ireland and her
clinging mother. This is a well-constructed play, perhaps
too well-constructed, too pat. I think it helps to be
familiar with the rest of McDonagh's stories: I can see
these people popping up in other plays.
I saw the understudy play Ray, and sometimes his
motivation felt misplaced, as if he were on the wrong foot.
Award nominations are in order for the squeaky rocking chair
and the chamber pot.
The restored Walter Kerr is beautiful, and there's room
for my knees (and elbows!).
Wit, by Margaret Edson, directed by Derek Anson
Jones, Union Square Theatre, New York
Kathleen Chalfant plays tart-tongued Vivian
Bearing, Ph.D., specialist in the Holy Sonnets of John
Donne, who is dying of ovarian cancer. This is a comedy,
more or less.
Bearing is both narrator and player in this story, which
makes it possible for her to die in the end, yet continue
the narrative. Her acerbic asides (she characterizes a
sweetly tearful scene between Bearing and her duty nurse,
who share a popsicle, as "maudlin") are one of the play's
strong points.
Paula Pizzi as nurse Susie very fun, perfectly perky.
Surprisingly weak is Helen Stenborg as Bearing's mentor. If
the sound designer produced some clichés, the
lighting designer redeems him with a wonderful poisonous
institutional green effect on the hospital curtains that
divide the set.
I also visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I saw two
nice little shows stuffed into the claustrophic cul-de-sacs
at either end of the Levine Court in the American Wing.
3 feb '99
The Hours, a novel by Michael Cunningham
Told as three interlocking stories, this is a
riff on Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and feminist
themes of the self. The narratives concern a lapsed
bohemian, Clarissa Vaughan (nicknamed Mrs. Dalloway by her
platonic friend Richard); a frustrated housewife of the
40's; and a fictionalized version of Virginia Woolf herself.
Luminous, sensitive to the nuance of the moment, very
enjoyable.
Gut Symmetries, a novel by Jeanette Winterson
I'm a fan of Winterson's moody, sensual
prose. But I didn't find a lot here to enjoy. The love
triangle at the center of the story seems like territory
better explored in other books. The alchemical backdrop is
superfluous, and some of the physics feels anecdotal and
tacked-on.
All my friends are nattering on about Shakespeare in
Love, directed by John Madden. It's good for a few
chuckles and a few tears. Most of the heart-breaking stuff,
however, was written by the real Shakespeare. Neil Jordan's
In Dreams is suitably scary, and Hurlyburly
(Anthony Drazan, from David Rabe's screenplay) is suitably
smarmy. Ken Loach is sticking to his guns with My Name Is
Joe. A Simple Plan is the best thing that I've
seen from Sam Raimi, but it's still missable.
The one true winner out of the recent batch of movies is
The Thin Red Line, directed by Terence Malick. This
is not your father's war movie (or your fraternity
brother's, for that matter). It's not even much of an
anti-war movie. It is a seduction: I think of the opening
island paradise sequence, the rivers of grass that the
soldiers wade through. It takes a skillful director to use
voiceover effectively. Malick goes beyond that, abusing the
device, with ambiguous, dreamy thoughts that seem to drift
from one character to another. Big name actors reduced to
comically brief cameos -- the movie makes you ask yourself,
who's in charge here?
Ah, the new Psycho from Gus Van Sant. A brass
rubbing that mainly serves to highlight some bits of the
original: the bird outside Marion's apartment window, the
subtle use of sound that lets us hear the voices in Norman's
head. I thought the movie was okay, but then, Julianne Moore
could sit and listen to her Walkman for two hours and I'd
enjoy it.
"The Goldberg Variations," performed and choreographed by
Mark Haim, with musical accompaniment by Andre Gribou,
Terrace Theatre, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts,
Washington
An entertaining 80-minute solo piece, in two
parts, danced to the well-known air and 30 variations
composed by J. S. Bach. Haim has a great integrity, a
profound belief in his own body and its strengths.
4 jan '99
The Corner, nonfiction by David Simon and Edward
Burns
A fascinating, horrifying report on the drug
culture of today's inner city, specifically the streets of
West Baltimore; (Simon's reporting inspired the TV series
Homicide: Life on the Street); reading this book was
like watching a train wreck. It is a shock to find tender
photographic portraits of the key figures at the center of
the volume. You know in the bones of your head that it its
inevitable that some of these people will die by the end of
the book.
At the movies, I thought Waking Ned Devine was a
bit too twee, and I felt vaguely let down by Arlington
Road. Hilary and Jackie was solid work from Emily
Watson and one of my favorite actors, Rachel Griffiths.
8 dec '98
I was pleasantly surprised by The Impostors: I
howled at all the actorly schtick; I was bowled over by Hope
Davis and Lili Taylor, both cast against type; and my jaw
dropped at the opening tea-and-bread shot -- an echo of the
crystal-pure omelette take at the end of Big Night.
the chorister's c ||| pedantic nuthatch
©1999
David L. Gorsline.
All rights reserved.
