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NYC Theater Reviews: "Beautiful: The Carole King Musical"; Frank Langella in "King Lear"
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 24 January 2014 22:46
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Beautiful
Book by Douglas McGrath; directed by Marc Bruni
Performances through October 5, 2014
King Lear
Written by William Shakespeare; directed by Angus Jackson
Performances through February 9, 2014
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| Mueller as King in Beautiful (photo by Joan Marcus) |
The new musical about Carole King, Beautiful, is strangely schizophrenic: unwilling (or unable) to commit to King’s own story—as if it wasn’t dramatic or “sexy” enough on its own—book writer Douglas McGrath juggles myriad gimmicks to keep the audience interested. We’re first introduced to Carole (a perfectly cast Jessie Mueller) playing piano and talking to us directly before launching into one of her loveliest heartbreak songs “So Far Away”; then, we see her as a 16-year-old writing songs at home.
Soon, King and lyricist/romantic partner Garry Goffin—whom she meets cutely at school—are writing hit tunes for rock’n’roll’s Tin Pan Alley at 1650 Broadway, led by impresario Don Kirschner. But instead of concentrating on King’s own career, which leads to her writing and recording 1970’s Tapestry, one of the seminal rock-era albums,Beautiful meanders through the ‘60s pop world, giving the duo’s friendly rivals, Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, an inordinate amount of stage time—including several of their tunes—while turning itself into a semi-jukebox a la Motown: The Musical, which co-opted the great soul singers, by presenting reasonable facsimiles of The Drifters, the Shirelles and Little Eva performing Goffin-King hits like “Some Kind of Wonderful,” “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” and “The Locomotion.”
This assembly-line parade of hits—only Neil Sedaka’s brief appearance chirping his mindless hit “Oh Carol” is done cleverly—bespeaks a show desperate to please its baby-boomer audience with recognizable hits rather than creating a compelling story musical. And, after a first act mainly given over to covers of covers of Goffin-King tunes (at least we don’t get fake Beatles doing “Chains” or—after intermission—ersatz Monkees doing “Pleasant Valley Sunday”), the second act hunkers down to tell King’s tale: her divorce from Goffin and eventual emergence from her performing shell to become one of the first high-profile solo singer-songwriters.
It all goes over painlessly enough. If set designer Derek McLane relies too heavily on the erector set blueprint of Next to Normal andNewsies, he still uses it adroitly; and if Josh Prince’s choreography is nothing special, Marc Bruni’s direction is adequately unfussy. Of the main performers, Jeb Brown makes an amusingly jaded Kirschner, while Anika Larsen’s Weil and Jarrod Specktor’s Mann are a plucky pair of sparring partners; too bad Jake Epstein (Goffin) and Liz Larsen (Carole’s mother) give platitudinous portrayals.
But Jessie Mueller’s Carole—when not on the sideline while others are in the spotlight—is the whole show. Although Mueller is saddled with a heroine simultaneously mousey and brainy, shy and self-deprecatingly witty—she spits out enough one-liners to make Carole a King of standup comedy—her soaring voice is front and center of a compromised musical biography.
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| Langella in King Lear (photo: Johan Persson) |
From Carole King to King Lear: Shakespeare’s greatest, bleakest tragedy has been done in New York City often in the past couple decades, but—whether the titular title role is taken by actors as varied as F. Murray Abraham, Kevin Kline, Sam Waterston, Derek Jacobi, even Christopher Plummer—I’ve yet to see a complete performance of one of the most difficult roles in the Shakespearean canon.
This is a king with three daughters, whose youngest, Cordelia, is obviously genuinely loving, while older Regan and Goneril are obviously not. But when he decides to divide his kingdom among them and only asks for “proof” of their love to get their share, the other two are phony while Cordelia is guilelessly truthful. Needless to say, Lear rages against her humility and banishes her, setting in motion a chain of events that will end with him and his daughters dead and his kingdom in shambles.
Shakespeare has Lear say that he is eighty years old, so the onset of senility is never far from the surface of this story of an old man driven to madness by his destruction of his own family. In Angus Jackson’s solid if unexciting staging, Frank Langella essays the title role, and if much of the time he seems too lucid, too in control to lose his grip on sanity as he nears death, he speaks the poetry clearly and with purpose. There are small touches—like the seemingly inadvertent stumble at the beginning that shows his dottering age—that are an actor’s knowing grace notes.
But there’s no sense of overarching tragedy because Langella is never moving, even while pityingly hugging the blinded Gloucester or reciting those five heartrending “nevers” over the body of his dead Cordelia (a wooden, charmless Isabella Laughland). Before that, when Langella literally drags the actress’s limp body to center stage for the death scene, it’s a moment of supreme absurdity: if Langella can’t carry her at his age, that’s fine, but treating the poor girl like a sack of potatoes mutes the poignancy of Lear’s final moments.
Supporting cast standouts are Catherine McCormack’s intelligent, elegant Goneril; Harry Melling’s touching, sweet-natured, uncampy Fool; and Denis Conway’s sympathetic Gloucester. Langella also gets to howl during a storm scene while being drenched in an impressive rain shower; it’s the show’s most striking visual effect that’s complemented by Oliver Boustead’s ingenious lighting. But this is another stage Lear that, like its faltering monarch, has only scattered moments of lucidity as it approaches its darker purpose.
Beautiful
Stephen Sondheim Theatre, 124 West 43rd Street, New York, NY
beautifulonbroadway.com
King Lear
BAM Harvey Theatre, 651 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, NY
bam.org
January '14 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 22 January 2014 01:38
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Blue Jasmine
(Sony)
Woody Allen’s latest is a minor drama whose jumping off-point is the Bernie Madoff scandal and looks at a Wall Street crook’s clueless wife who is unable to find solace in her sympathetic sister.
Woody’s script crudely carves up the haves and have nots; though there are fine performances—notably Alec Baldwin as the crooked hubby and Louis CK, Peter Sarsgaard and Andrew Dice Clay as various men in her life—Sally Hawkins is merely okay as the dutiful sister while Cate Blanchett as our heroine gives a mannered and frightfully overdone Judy Davis impersonation. (Typically, both got Oscar nominations.) Javier Aguirresarobe’s snazzy photography shimmers on Blu-ray; extras—rare for a Woody disc—comprise interviews and a press conference with the performers.
Charlie Countryman
(Millennium)
If watching Shia LaBeouf wander aimlessly around Bucharest is your idea of a good time, then by all means check out Fredrik Bond’s convoluted would-be thriller about a young American getting into trouble in Romania.
Otherwise—despite attractively gritty locales and the always persuasive Evan Rachel Wood as a Romanian cellist with a dark side—you’ve been warned: it’s 103 minutes you won’t get back. The hi-def transfer is first-rate; extras are deleted scenes and a behind the scenes featurette.
A Chorus Line
(Fox)
Director Richard Attenborough demonstrates that he has little affinity for musicals with this leaden 1985 filmization of the Broadway classic: Michael Bennett’s genius (he created, choreographed and directed the original) is sorely missing, and Marvin Hamlisch’s songs don’t come off well in such a contextless setting.
The inner lives of the dancers never come across despite plentiful close-ups: unfortunate ciphers include Michael Douglas, Terrence Mann and Audrey Landers. The Blu-ray transfer looks sharp.
The Doors—R-evolution
(Eagle Vision)
Strictly for Doors completists, this 72-minute compendium brings together a grab-bag of live performances, TV appearances and videos that include such staples as “Break on Through,” “Light My Fire” and “L.A. Woman” on programs as varied as American Bandstand and The Smothers Brothers.
It’s hilarious when the band lip-synchs “Hello, I Love You” to a bunch of sour foreigners on a German TV show. Jim Morrison worshippers will get more mileage, of course. The video quality varies widely, especially on hi-def; extras comprise a picture-in-picture commentary and additional music clips.
Nostalghia
(Kino Lorber)
Andrei Tarkovsky’s penultimate 1983 feature, another example of how this singular Russian director “moves with such naturalness through the room of dreams” (according to Ingmar Bergman), is—as always—saddled with a typically diffuse, and explicitly allegorical, narrative.
But—also as always—there are moments of visual poetry that only Tarkovsky (and his trusted cinematographer Giuseppe Lanci) could have conceived and shot, like the stunning climactic sequence of a self-immolation by near a symbolic statue. This important near-masterpiece, finally available in hi-def, looks ravishing on Blu-ray.
The Prey
(Cohen Media)
In Eric Valette’s white-knuckle thriller, a bank robber escapes from prison after discovering that his wife and daughter are in danger from a just-released ex-cellmate who might be a serial killer.
Plausibility and logic are in short supply, as are the number of on-target gunshots by an obviously inept police force: and don’t get me started on how our hero never is hurt despite death-defying leaps and falls. The cruelty is overdone—did our hero’s wife need to be offed?—but ignore such things and it’s an enjoyable ride. The Blu-ray images look fine; extras are a Valette interview and making-of featurette.
La Vie de Boheme
(Criterion Collection)
I’m no fan of Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki, whose combination of sentimentality and deadpan humor rarely jells: still, this bittersweet, comic 1992 film is among his finest. Although it retains his peculiar sensibility, there’s little of his overbearing condescension.
Coupled with wonderful B&W images and an engaged cast that sleepwalks less than usual, Boheme is a minor but distinct pleasure. The Blu-ray image is strong; extras are an interview with actor Andre Wilms and an on-set documentary, Where Is Musette?
The Year of the Cannibals
(Raro Video)
Forty-five years later, Liliana Cavani’s 1969 socialist allegory reeks of little more than righteous anger: her scenario of a society where hundreds of dead bodies are left to rot by the state, which also closes down efforts by our hero and heroine—named Tiresias and Antigone—to affect change.
Giulio Albonico’s routine color cinematography even makes the lovely Britt Ekland’s politically symbolic red hair aesthetically unappealing; Cavani’s ideas and direction are equally mediocre. The Blu-ray restoration looks good; lone extra is a new Cavani interview.
DVDs of the Week
Blue Caprice
(IFC)
In their fictionalized account of the Beltway Sniper attacks that terrorized the Washington DC area in 2002, director Alexandre Moors and writer R.F.I. Porto chillingly show how a deranged man and teen killed several people, focusing on a distorted “father-son” relationship that’s brilliantly enacted by Isaiah Washington and Tequan Richmond.
In their fictionalized account of the Beltway Sniper attacks that terrorized the Washington DC area in 2002, director Alexandre Moors and writer R.F.I. Porto chillingly show how a deranged man and teen killed several people, focusing on a distorted “father-son” relationship that’s brilliantly enacted by Isaiah Washington and Tequan Richmond.
The film moves past easy blame to create a complex psychological study of two normal males who turn into monsters. Extras include director/writer commentary, Deauville Film Festival press conference, behind the scenes featurette.
Orpheus Descending
The Portrait
(Warner Archive)
In the mid ‘90s, cable network TNT showed play adaptations made by good directors and solid casts, like these titles. Tennessee Williams’ Orpheus, with Vanessa Redgrave and Kevin Anderson in an illicit love affair directed by Sir Peter Hall, was made in 1990; the same trio did the play on Broadway the year before: Redgrave’s performance is less tortured, more free-flowing onscreen.
Tina Howe’s masterly 1982 play Painting Churches became 1993’s The Portrait: veteran Arthur Penn ably directs Gregory Peck and Lauren Bacall as a couple whose artist daughter (Gregory’s real life daughter Cecilia Peck) wants to paint them.
Rewind This
(Filmbuff)
This amiable journey through memory lane will appeal to film geeks and fanboys who look back wistfully at the glory days of Beta, VHS and the VCR, which changed Hollywood and movie viewing forever.
In a diverting 90 minutes, director Josh Johnson chronicles the video age, which also revolutionized the porn industry—the raincoat crowd could watch it at home—and even started the careers of moviemaking splatter masters and others. Lots of giggle-inducing clips are included, and copious extras include commentary, extra footage, interviews, even a music video.
Sundance Review: "Wetlands" Transcends Surface Vulgarity
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 20 January 2014 12:49
- Written by Matt Oakes
"Wetlands"
Directed by David Wnendt
Starring Carla Juri, Christoph Letkowski, Meret Becker, Axel Milberg, Marlen Kruse, Edgar Selge
Germany
109 Mins
Raunchy German picture Wetlands is graphic, poignant teen sexploration to squirm and cackle through. Helen is a young nympho with a passion for bodily fluids of all sorts and a serious case of hemorrhoids. When a shaving incident lands her in the hospital, she tries to pull a parent trap and get her divorced, and fundamentally estranged, parents back together.
January '14 Digital Week II
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 15 January 2014 14:09
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
The Following—Complete 1st Season
(Warners)
Kevin Williamson’s taut new series about FBI agents, led by unconventional Ryan Hardy (a properly grim-faced Kevin Bacon), who are tracking serial killer Joe Carroll, a man with acolytes a la Charles Manson, is filled with more grisly violence than warranted, which mitigates its dramatic effectiveness.
Still, superior acting and precise directing helps smooth over the writing’s deficiency throughout the 15 episodes. The hi-def image is very good; extras include commentaries, featurettes and deleted scenes.
Fruitvale Station
(Weinstein Co)
Based on a tragic true story, writer-director Ryan Coogler’s drama recounts the final day in the life of Oscar Grant, a young black man killed by police in an Oakland rapid transit station on New Year’s Day 2009.
With a maximum of insightful detail and minimal use of a soapbox, Coogler devastatingly shows how even a normal life takes on larger-than-life dimensions due to tragedy. Michael B. Jordan makes an unforgettable ordinary man, while Melonie Diaz and Octavia Spencer are both powerhouses as his girlfriend and mother. Even a coda of actual footage celebrating Grant’s life is tearful but never sentimental. The Blu-ray image looks fine; extras include interviews and Q&A.
Good Ol’ Freda
(Magnolia)
Ryan White’s documentary about Freda Kelly, a Liverpool teenager who became an unsung but invaluable member of the Beatles’ entourage—their fan club manager—might not be scintillating, but it will satisfy the eternal hunger of Fab Four fans for more scraps of info (no matter how trivial) about their heroes.
Freda herself is a no-nonsense presence, living up to her rep as a necessarily calm backbone for the “lads,” as she still calls them. The Blu-ray looks decent; extras include a White and Kelly commentary, deleted scenes, featurettes and Q&A.
(Weinstein Co)
This is History Writ Large with a Sledgehammer, but even with its unsubtlety and willingness to look at the big picture through eyes welled up with tears, it’s done with such a big heart that it’s difficult—but not impossible—to not be touched by the true story of a black Forrest Gump who served presidents for 34 years, and who witnessed Obama’s election.
Lee Daniels’ direction is, at best, undistinguished, but his cast—led by Forrest Whittaker in the title role and a granite-solid Oprah Winfrey as his wife—more than makes up for it. The hi-def transfer looks immaculate; extras include deleted scenes, featurettes, music video and gag reel.
Nightmare City
(Raro Video)
Umberto Lenzi’s 1980 zombie movie owes less to George Romero and more to the Italian horror genre, Giallo, that was so prevalent at the time; watching it now is an often risible exercise in unabashed silliness, as bad postsynching, often ludicrous acting and bloody makeup and even more dreadful plotting take center stage over real thrills.
Still, unfinicky undead fans will want to give this a look. The Blu-ray image is OK; lone extra is a Lenzi interview.
(Cohen Media)
Emanuele Crialese’s occasionally touching fable tackles a controversial theme (immigration) through the actions of a fishing family that helps two helpless victims out of the sea and becomes criminal abettors.
Although there’s the beauty of the waters around Sicily, the loveliest images are of that remarkable actress Donatella Finacchiaro’s eternally sad eyes, which speak volumes; Finacchiaro herself makes a formidable but gentle matriarch. The Blu-ray image looks luminous; lone extra is a making-of featurette.
20 Feet from Stardom
(Anchor Bay)
Unsung rock’n’roll backup singers are the subjects of Morgan Neville’s documentary that’s as soulful and moving as these artists (mostly women) sound when belting out a tune.
Interviews with many (but not all—this could easily have been three hours long instead of 90 minutes) of the subjects, including Darlene Love and Lisa Fischer, give a sense of how stardom might or might not be their ultimate but unrealized goal, while comments by the likes of Springsteen, Sting and Mick Jagger come off as superfluous. The Blu-ray looks excellent; extras include several deleted scenes, interviews, Q&A.
The Happy House
(First Run)
This eye-rolling attempt at an unnerving horror film demonstrates writer-director D.W. Young’s inability to conjure thrills that are not cheap or tawdry: his eponymous bed and breakfast is populated by characters not worth caring about or having any interest in.
I don’t know who’s the least likely inhabitant of this B&B—the dumb young couple, the goofy butterfly hunter, the wingnut inn owner or her dimwitted son. Either way, you’d be better off passing this up. Extras comprise deleted scenes and a Young short.
Joanna Lumley’s Greek Odyssey
Secrets of Ancient Egypt
(Athena)
Athena documentaries’ combination of scholarship and engaging style make dry subject matter come alive, like actress Joanna Lumley’s lively travelogue Odyssey, where—in four fascinating episodes—she travels throughout Greece to not only show off obvious tourist sites (Acropolis, Parthenon, Oracle at Delphi) but also finds time for off-the-beaten-path places like a village where inhabitants whistle to one another as a recognized language.
The three-part Egypt explores how the remnants of those ancient civilizations are providing, millennia later, exceptional areas for study by archeologists and other scientists; Egypt also includes a bonus program, Realm of the Dead.
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