Kevin's April '11 Digital Week I

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Tuesday, 05 April 2011 05:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week
Complete Sherlock Holmes Collection
(MPI)
All 14 films that Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce made as Arthur Conan Doyle's master detective Sherlock Holmes and sidekick Dr. Watson are in this five-disc set, from the 1939 classic The Hound of the Baskervilles to 1946’s Dressed to Kill. A dozen of the films have been restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, and the results are stunning: the deep blacks and blinding whites are complemented by natural graininess.

Not all the movies are up to snuff, which isn't surprising, since they made on average two films each year. But Rathbone and Bruce are never less than compelling onscreen, and with six audio commentaries, archival Doyle footage and an interview with UCLA's Robert Gitt, this is one of the best "classic film" Blu-ray releases yet.

Read more: Kevin's April '11 Digital Week I

Theater Review: "The Whipping Man"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 04 April 2011 05:00

Written by Lucy Komisar

Written by Matthew Lopez
Directed by Doug Hughes
Set by Jean Lee Beatty
Starring Jay Wilkison, André Braugher, André Holland

This is an unlikely melodramatic potboiler about American slavery and a Jewish family in Richmond, Virginia, that turned its slaves into believers. It’s an unlikely premise in spite of historical documentation, but you no sooner get to the point of accepting one unlikely premise, than playwright Matthew Lopez throws you another. The play is full of action and mystery, secrets and surprises, but is somehow unsatisfying.

The essential story is that the slave-holding DeLeon family was Jewish and they converted their slaves to the religion. We must take it on faith that this happened.

It’s 1865 and General Lee has surrendered at Appomattox. Caleb (Jay Wilkison) is a Confederate soldier who drags himself back to the family mansion -- now blackened and ruined by fire -- with a bullet in his leg. His horse has died on arrival. First mystery: why didn’t he get medical care when he was wounded?

The loyal black servant Simon (André Braugher) is soon joined by the bitter John (André Holland). The power relations change. Simon, who is quite generous under the circumstances, says to Caleb, "All these things you’re telling me to do you need to be asking."

Simon saves Caleb’s life by cutting off his gangrenous leg. It’s a rather gruesome moment. John (André Holland) helps hold the patient down. And slowly, the play’s ironies are revealed.

John is methodically looting deserted houses, carrying back chairs and china, a couple of eggs, whiskey (useful for the leg amputation). Lopez depicts him as quite an unusual slave: he ran an underground book distribution that father DeLeon stopped. Now he just wants to go to New York. (An early black intellectual?)

Simon is waiting for the return of his wife and daughter, who departed in the midst of the conflict while he was in hiding. Dressed in the servant’s uniform striped shirt and vest, he wants to stay and continue to work for the family. He doesn’t see much economic alternative.

As a black Jew, Simon presides over Sabbath blessings, lighting candles and saying a prayer over the meal. Now it’s April, and Simon wants to make a Passover dinner, which of course celebrates the Israelites‛ flight to freedom from Egyptian slavery. As he can’t read, he says the words from memory.

John gripes about the celebration of freeing Jewish slaves in the context of the blacks’ experience. But Simon transposes Father Abraham to Abraham Lincoln, who has just been shot. He is described as "the American Moses" who "led us from bondage but was not able to enter the promised land."

So John agrees, "Let’s celebrate the freeing of the slaves," and as befits an underground book distributor -- but really, straining credulity -- "Maybe I’ll write a book like Frederick Douglass."

When John inquires, "Were we Jews or slaves, children of Israel or heathen?" Simon replies, "We were treated better than other slaves." And Caleb says his father had slaves whipped only when necessary. Whew!

It turns out John is bitter because, although the boys were raised almost as brothers, when DeLeon took him to "the whipping man" (antebellum outsourcing) for some infraction, Caleb took the whip and got in some licks of his own.

But Caleb, like his father and other Southern whites, had conflicted relations with blacks, and that involves a secret which makes him concerned about Simon’s family.

The real problem with the play is that it is hokey, a made-for-TV movie, piling one dramatic action on top of another in a way that presents only a caricature of the social and psychological conflicts and relations of the time.

The very strong André Braugher as Simon is painfully moving, but Wilkison doesn’t have much presence as Caleb. Holland, wry and comical in his cynicism, displays the right level of anger and emotion as John.

The staging by Doug Hughes is excellent. The set by Jean Lee Beatty is beautifully naturalistic and eerie.
 
The Whipping Man
Manhattan Theatre Club
Stage 1 at City Center
131 W 55th Street
New York City
212-581-1212
Opened Feb 1, 2011; closes Apr 10, 2011

For more by Lucy Komisar, visit thekomisarscoop.com.

Theater Review - "Succeeding" in Spades

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 04 April 2011 05:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
Book by Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert
Lyrics and music by Frank Loesser
Directed and choreographed by Rob Ashford
Starring Daniel Radcliffe, John Larroquette, Tammy Blanchard, Christopher J. Hanke, Mary Faber, Ellen Harvey, Rose Hemingway, Michael Park

Celebrating the golden anniversary of its premiere, Frank Loesser’s classic musical How to Succeed in Business Without Trying returns for its second Broadway revival, following the fitfully entertaining 1995 production starring Matthew Broderick and then little-known actress Megan Mullally. Currently, Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe, sings and dances in Rob Ashford’s glittery staging, which satisfies like good old-fashioned Broadway musicals should.

Radcliffe is window washer J. Pierrepont Finch, whose how-to business book (narrated by none other than Anderson Cooper, who takes over from Walter Cronkite in previous productions) lets him climb the corporate ladder in no time, becoming a junior executive under the wing of World Wide Wickets president J.B. Biggley (a snarkily funny John Larroquette), and catching the eye—and heart—of secretary Rosemary (a smashing Broadway debut by Rose Hemingway).

Finch’s remarkable rise mirrors the show’s jaundiced, acidic look at the corporate world, even if some of the book’s jokes are now dated groaners. That Ashford has kept the story and songs as is makes for some uncomfortable moments, since the women are either secretaries or dutiful homemakers whose husbands are out there succeeding or failing in business, trying or not.

How to Succeed—so obviously of its time in its winking wit and Loesser’s tuneful songs—may be more Mad Men-inspired work from Ashford (who helmed the similarly early ’60s-themed Promises Promises last season), but I’ve never seen that show, so I can’t comment. In any case, Derek McLane’s gargantuan set of interlocking cubes looks like honeycombs in an imposing beehive, certainly befitting this insular world of backstabbers within a largely thriving community. Catherine Zuber’s bold period costumes and Howell Binkley’s masterly lighting design give the production added visual zest.

Ashford’s distinctive flair for physically demanding choreography is watchable even when the dance steps don’t always mesh with the songs, like his staging the tongue-in-cheek “Coffee Break” with one employee getting the last cup o’joe as the rest fight their way to swipe it away. The rah-rah “Grand Old Ivy” weirdly brings on dancers in old-time football uniforms to recreate a game with Finch and Biggley. Even the infectious “Brotherhood of Men,” while far too assiduous in its overworked moves, nevertheless is a boisterous and blissful finale.

Happily, Ashford’s choreographic busyness neither distracts nor detracts from the material, and the inspired performers follow suit. Christopher J. Hanke’s inept villain Bud Frump, the boss’ nephew, is a terrific comic foil, while Tammy Blanchard’s Hedy LaRue is a voluptuously irresistible dame. Jane Faber’s secretary Smitty, Ellen Harvey’s executive assistant Miss Jones and Michael Park’s manager Bert Bratt richly enliven stock parts comedically and musically.

John Larroquette is a sensational Biggley who’s both charismatic and hilarious, and the same goes for Rose Hemingway, whose Rosemary—meltingly lovely and resolute—does the pre-feminist anthem “Happy to Keep His Dinner Warm” perfectly, i.e., without irony or campiness.

Not a natural singer or dancer, the 19-year-old Radcliffe hoofs and warbles effectively just the same; that he’s an accomplished stage actor—as anyone who saw Equus on Broadway knows—makes him a perfect Finch. Happily, Radcliffe’s success helps How to… succeed once again.

How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
Performances began February 26, 2011
Al Hirschfeld Theatre
302 West 45th Street, New York NY
howtosucceedbroadway.com