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NYC Theater Roundup—Ayckbourn Ensemble & Shakespeare in the Park
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 18 June 2014 22:58
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Farcicals
Time of My Life
Written & directed by Alan Ayckbourn
Performances through June 29, 2014
Much Ado About Nothing
Written by William Shakespeare; directed by Jack O’Brien
Performances through July 6, 2014
When We Were Young and Unafraid
Written by Sarah Treem; directed by Pam MacKinnon
Performances through August 10, 2014
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| The cast of Farcicals (photo: Andrew Higgins) |
The Ayckbourn Ensemble continues its too-short stay during this year’s Brits Off Broadway with two more glittering productions, written and directed by one of our supreme masters, Alan Ayckbourn.Farcicals, comprising two uproarious new one-acts, is sheer entertainment, while Time of My Life—a 1992 play which the words tragicomedy and dramedy do not do it justice—is an incisive study of family dynamics structured ingeniously (as always) by the playwright.
Time starts at a dinner party celebrating Laura’s 54th birthday at a favorite local haunt: in attendance are her husband Gerry, their oldest son Glyn, his wife Stephanie, their youngest—and Mom’s favorite—son Adam and his new girlfriend, Maureen. Over two acts, Ayckbourn moves around among Laura and Gerry after the party, Adam and Maureen weeks earlier and Glyn and Stephanie months later, all of them at the same restaurant presided over by waiters of varying degrees of ineptitude and brazenness…or both.
These precisely written scenes, which open avenues of clarity to the heart of these couples’ relationships, are never obscured by the playwright’s time-shifting structure, thanks to his own ingenious directing which shows how even the smallest events cause huge implications, whether marriage, divorce or death caused by imbibing too much alcohol at a birthday dinner. It’s unfair to single anyone out in the exemplary cast, so hats off to Rachel Caffey (Maureen), Russell Dixon (Gerry), Sarah Parks (Laura), Emily Pithon (Laura), Ben Porters (waiters), James Powell (Adam) and Richard Stacey (Glyn).
By its very title, Farcicals is less heady stuff, but these one-acts about two couples’ marital difficulties show off Ayckbourn’s sharply funny writing, even in door-slamming farce. As one-liners and pratfalls combine for irresistible lunacy, Ayckbourn shrewdly directs the captivating quartet of Elizabeth Boag, Bill Champion, Sarah Stanley and Kim Wall, all giving brilliantly broad performances that ensure Farcicals is more than just a mere diversion.
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| Rabe and Mendes in Much Ado About Nothing (photo: Joan Marcus) |
The current Shakespeare in the Park offering, Much Ado About Nothing, may be the best-directed show I’ve seen in Central Park. That might be faint praise, but Jack O’Brien’s agile and frisky staging of that most pleasing of Shakespeare’s star-crossed romantic comedies—which pivots on those eternally dueling wits Beatrice and Benedick, whose supposed loathing for each other masks their finally requited love—provides nearly three hours of outdoor enchantment.
O’Brien’s visually luscious staging comprises John Lee Beatty’s charming unit set of an Italian villa, Jane Greenwood’s zippy costumes and Jeff Croiter’s elegant lighting, which work wonders complementing the play’s melodiously musical poetry. Even O’Brien’s additions—opening in Italian before seguing to the Bard’s English, having characters magically moving a wall—don’t detract from the zesty comic atmosphere.
Much of the acting is impressive, especially Ismelia Mendes’ immensely appealing Hero (Beatrice’s cousin) and John Glover’s powerfully-spoken Leonato (Beatrice’s uncle), while Brian Stokes Mitchell’s charismatic Don Pedro smartly gets a song to sing and John Pankow’s bumbling cop Dogberry is amusingly hammy without going overboard. My lone quibble is our B&B: Hamish Linklater’s adequate Benedick has little chemistry with Lily Rabe’s Beatrice, who incessantly barks out her lines whether they are meant to be insulting, apologetic or thoughtful. Happily, there are enough compensations to make this a lively and engaging Much Ado.
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| Kazan and Jones in When We Were Young and Unafraid (photo: Joan Marcus) |
In Sarah Treem’s ambitious but fatally unfocused When We Were Young and Unafraid, middle-aged Agnes runs a bed and breakfast on an isolated island near Seattle, which doubles as a safe house for battered women, with her burgeoning feminist 16-year-old daughter Penny. New arrivals are Mary Anne, a fleeing young wife—beaten badly with a swollen lip and nasty cut underneath her right eye—and Hannah, a black militant feminist who spouts clichéd jargon about oppression and tries to get Agnes to break free from her shackles.
Treem’s hackneyed plot, cartoonish caricatures and trite dialogue bring her play time and again to a screeching halt. By setting it in 1972, Treem gives herself license to discuss feminism ad nauseum and even has Agnes misspeak and say “Ozarks” instead of “Ozone,” if only to show how new the latter term was, apparently. (Similarly, Mary Anne asks Penny if she has a rubber, not a condom.) Then there’s a new court case, “Roe vs. Wade”: when Hannah says that perhaps this means “The times are changing,” Agnes ruefully retorts “They’ll change back” with heavy-handed dramatic irony, calculated to make audience members gasp at such amazing prescience.
For once, that able director Pam Mackinnon is hamstrung by the growing preposterousness. That none of the relationships is believable from the outset forces several fine performers—Cherry Jones (Agnes), Zoe Kazan (Mary Anne), Cherise Boothe (Hannah), Morgan Saylor (Penny)—to awkwardly try (and ultimately fail) to get a handle on the sketchy characters Treem has provided.
Farcicals
Time of My Life
59 E 59 Theaters, 59 East 59th Street, New York, NY
britsoffbroadway.com
Much Ado About Nothing
Delacorte Theatre, Central Park, New York, NY
shakespeareinthepark.org
When We Were Young and Unafraid
Manhattan Theatre Club, 131 West 55th Street, New York, NY
manhattantheatreclub.com
June '14 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 17 June 2014 22:55
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Amen.
Capital
(Cohen Media)
Costa-Gavras’ handsomely mounted Amen. (2002), which dramatizes the complicity between Nazis and the Catholic Church for Holocaust, remains compelling the director’s despite heavy-handed treatment of his weighty subject matter.
Contrarily, Costa-Gavras’ latest, Capital, adroitly handles a fast-moving story that takes the pulse of our fixed 21st century global economy. Both films have superlative hi-def transfers; Amen extra is an hour-long BBC program about Pope Pius XII; Capital extras are cast/director interviews.
(Cinema Guild)
Here’s why labels like Cinema Guild are needed: to resurrect films viewers like me have never heard of, like French director Dominique Benicheti’s revelatory 1973 documentary about a blacksmith and his wife’s daily existence on a rural farm.
Beautifully photographed over a period of five years, Benicheti’s 90-minute film finds poetry in the everyday, with no narration or music to make its points; everything is contained in the images, which look ravishing in this restored hi-def transfer.
The Lego Movie
(Warners)
If this immensely clever visual explosion made with the famous kids’ construction toy was a short, it would have been spectacular, but directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller can’t leave well enough alone, cramming their movie with visual and verbal puns to try (but fail) to become a Yellow Submarine for a new generation.
Though dumb ideas end up winning out over imaginative visuals, there’s enough diversion for unfinicky viewers. The Blu-ray image looks amazing in 3D and 2D; plentiful extras include commentary, deleted scenes and several featurettes.
Longmire—Complete 1st & 2ndSeasons
Seattle Seahawks—Road to XLVIII
DVDs of the Week
James Thurber—The Life and Hard Times
Wallander 3
(Warner Archive)
In this decent if underwhelming police drama, a widowed small town sheriff (Robert Taylor) battles his own demons, fighting crime while rebuilding his life with the help of his adult daughter Cady (Cassidy Freeman), whose relationship with a deputy complicates hers with her father.
Both seasons comprise 23 episodes on six discs; the hi-def image makes Wyoming locations look fantastic, while extras include featurettes and extended episodes.
Omar
(Adopt/Kino)
Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad’s Oscar-nominated follow-up to his Oscar-nominated Paradise Now(about suicide bombers) shows a young Arab in the occupied territories in love with his best friend’s sister who finds himself in trouble when caught following the shooting of an Israeli soldier.
Although Abu-Assad moves ingeniously among the genres of romance, melodrama and political thriller, he never reaches the mesmerizing heights of his earlier feature, despite accomplished writing, directing and acting by his entire cast. The Blu-ray looks tremendous.
(Cinedigm)
For fans of the latest NFL team to win its first Super Bowl championship, this two-disc set includes in their entirety the three playoff games that the Seahawks won to clinch the title: the divisional game vs. New Orleans, the NFC championship game vs. the 49ers and finally the Big Game against Denver and the hated Peyton Manning, whom they destroyed, 43-8.
Every snap, every play and every down are here, all in eye-popping hi-def, which looks even better than the HD feed of the Super Bowl on television.
Tim’s Vermeer
(Sony Classics)
Penn & Teller’s friend, inventor Tim Jenison, infatuated with Johannes Vermeer’s extraordinarily detailed paintings, used artist David Hockney’s book about Old Masters and optics as a jumping-off point to invents a mirror to create his own painting, thinking this might be what Vermeer did 400 years earlier. This fascinatingly daft journey into obsession and artistic genius doubles as a primer that shows how 21st century techniques can illuminate 17th century art.
Teller directs cleverly, Penn narrates hilariously, and Tim is an entertaining guide. On Blu-ray, the colors of Vermeer’s (and Tim’s) palette explode onscreen; extras are hours of deleted and extended scenes, Toronto Film Festival Q&A and audio commentary by Penn, Teller, Jenison and producer Farley Zeigler.
Adult World
(IFC)
This amusing rom-com, which opens with a struggling poetess (the always adorable Emma Roberts) attempting suicide, is director Scott Coffey’s alternately biting and banal exploration of another aimless, entitled 20-something.
But unlike in those Lena Dunham-Greta Gerwig-Joe Swanberg snoozers, Coffey actually writes characters that are sympathetic and credible. His setting (a porn store in rundown Syracuse) grounds it in reality, and Roberts is complemented by a sharp-edged John Cusack as a half-crazed poet whom she adores. Extras comprise deleted and extended scenes.
Dr. Kildare—Complete 3rd Season
Kung Fu: The Legend Continues—Complete 1st Season
(Warner Archive)
Kildare, the entertaining drama series that made Richard Chamberlain a star, about an idealistic young doctor in a large hospital run by Dr. Gillespie (played by Raymond Massey), ran for five seasons, from 1961-5: the third season comprises 34 episodes—on nine discs in this set—an amount unheard of today.
In the first season of Legend, a turgid Kung Fu spinoff (1992-3), David Carradine returns as the grandson of the original kung fu master; all 22 episodes are included on six discs.
Paul Bowles—The Cage Door Is Always Open
Top Hat—Harold Ross and the Making of The New Yorker
(First Run)
Three influential 20th century American cultural figures receive informative documentary overviews, starting with a 45-minute doc about humorist James Thurber and a 55-minute doc about New Yorker magazine founder Harold Ross.
Daniel Young’s 90-minute doc about Bowles, based on an interview the composer-author gave before his death in 1999, much more substantially delves into his relationships with men, Morocco and his wife Jane, and his composing and writing, including his shattering novel The Sheltering Sky.
Red Shoe Diaries—The Movie
Red Shoe Diaries—TV Series
(Koch Lorber)
Zalman King was synonymous with soft-focus soft-core late-night cable fare, most famously these Diaries, which introduced David Duchovny to a pre-X-Files audience.
The original movie comprises 105 minutes of Duchovny sulking in between scenes of his hot wife (the amazing Brigitte Bako) carrying on with a nameless construction worker, while the series’ 13 episodes gives us more Duchovny doing not much while women (Joan Severance and Maryam D’Abo among them) and other men (including Steven Bauer and a pre-Friends Matt LeBlanc) enjoy dirty fun. The series includes a King intro.
(MHz)
In the latest adventures of Swedish novelist Henning Mankell’s famous creation, the irascible detective and his colleagues solve crimes that culminate in murder and backstabbing within the department.
Krister Henriksson is always a towering presence, even in the final episode, when Wallander can no longer keep his growing Alzheimer’s a secret. Endlessly watchable but resistant to binge-watching by its subtlety, this is one cop show that needs to be savored, not devoured. Extras include interviews and featurettes.
CD of the Week
Jane Antonia Cornish—Duende
(Delos)
This disc of chamber music by 39-year-old Jane Antonia Cornish is crammed with precision and passion in the writing and the playing: the compositions—Duende, a piano trio; In Luce, a string quartet; and Clair-Obscur for violin and piano—might be an acquired taste, their mainly mournful movements punctuated by bursts of staccato dissonance.
But the courageous Cornish is following her own muse, refusing to make her music more accessible but less personal.
June '14 Digital Week II
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 11 June 2014 14:04
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Alan Partridge
(Magnolia)
There’s a slight whiff of desperation in this big screen version of the radio and TV character co-created and enacted by Steve Coogan, a daffy and narcissistic DJ who finds himself face to face with a disgruntled fellow DJ (Colm Meaney, wasted) who takes hostages at the station after his firing.
Coogan is always a delight, but this sitcom stretched to 90 minutes has padding galore, along with a rather distasteful reliance on cheap laughs about a most serious situation. The Blu-ray image is excellent; extras comprise several on-set featurettes.
(BBC)
In the third season of creator/writer Heidi Thomas’s compelling series—set in a poor section of East London in the 1950s—the midwives have to find a new location when Nonnatus House is slated to be demolished, while a polio outbreak threatens the well-being of mothers and newborns alike.
Although I am still in shock seeing the once-sexy and lovely Jenny Agutter (American Werewolf in London) as a middle-aged nun, she remains a terrific actress, as are Jessica Raine and Miranda Hart as the other leads. The hi-def transfer looks great; extras include cast and crew interviews.
L’Eclisse
(Criterion Collection)
Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1962 expressionist masterpiece—like his earlier L’Avventura, this helped rewrite the rules of narrative filmmaking—returns in this glorious hi-def transfer from Criterion, which accentuates the brilliance of Antonioni’s B&W compositions, shot luminously by Gianni di Venanzo.
The stolid presence of Monica Vitti, Alain Delon and Francisco Rabal underlines Antonioni’s moody take on modern alienation; extras include Richard Pena’s informative commentary, 22-minute featurette Elements of Landscape and an essential documentary about the director, 2001’s Michelangelo Antonioni: The Eye That Changed Cinema.
(Cinedigm)
This low-key drama about brothers dealing with one’s involvement in a hit-and-run accident should be much more emotionally involving, making it a definite disappointment from co-directors Alan and Gabriel Polsky and writers Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster.
Despite Mike Smith’s animated illustrations and fine actors like Emile Hirsch, Dakota Fanning and Steven Dorff, the downbeat film never approaches profundity or illumination. The Blu-ray image looks fine; the lone extra is a featurette.
Son of God
(Fox)
Re-edited from footage shot for the TV mini-series The Bible, this latest cinematic life of Christ has authentic-looking locations, a great-looking Jesus in Diogo Morgado and a calculated balance of violence and piety that avoids The Passion of the Christ’s excessive gore.
This slow-moving epic, although it occasionally rouses itself to competence, never frees itself of Biblical film clichés. The Blu-ray image looks first-rate; extras include interviews and behind the scenes featurettes, including one in Spanish.
(Cinedigm)
The fourth collaboration between director Godferey Reggio and composer Philip Glass (which now includes director Joe Kane), this mesmerizing collage of imagery set to repetitive minimalist music comprises 79 shots in black and white of the world, people and a beguiling gorilla from the Bronx Zoo.
It doesn’t mean anything—at least to me—but there are some who consider it deep and meaningful, so your mileage may vary. The hi-def transfer looks splendid; extras include interviews with Reggio, Glass, Kane and Steven Soderbergh, the film’s “presenter.”
The Who—Quadrophenia: Live in London
(UMe)
Last summer, Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey reunited for a hard-hitting run-through of the band’s classic 1973 rock opera: highlights are a visceral “5:15” (featuring a John Entwistle bass solo on film) and a powerful “Love Reign O’er Me,” where Daltrey proves he can still belt it out, even if he can’t reach those elusive high notes any more.
Townshend is in fine form, as is bassist Pino Palladino: too bad his thumping bass-playing is rarely shown. The Blu-ray image looks superb, and the surround sound is hard-hitting; extras are another six songs, including blistering versions of “Who Are You” and “You Better You Bet.”
The Bridge—Series 1
(MHZ Networks)
In yet another first-rate European police series that puts American counterparts to shame (which usually just ape the original idea anyway), a corpse is discovered in the middle of a bridge that links Denmark and Sweden, and both departments must work together to solve a crime that becomes increasingly sinister as more is uncovered.
With a stellar cast headed by Sofia Helin and Kim Bodnia as the detectives, and with intricate scripts by creator Hans Rosenfeldt, The Bridge grabs you by the throat immediately and doesn’t let go for 10 one-hour episodes. The lone extra is a 15-minute making-of.
Graceland—Complete 1st Season
(Fox)
A raw FBI agent’s dream job—to be assigned to a beach house and work with other undercover agents, including his idol—is not what it seems, particularly when he must investigate his hero in this watchable drama which has flair if not much creativity.
The attractive young cast led by Aaron Tveit (rookie) and Daniel Sunjata (legend) helps matters immeasurably; the three-disc set includes all 12 episodes and extras comprising deleted scenes, a gag reel and a featurette.
(Adopt)
With his unmistakably craggy face and gravelly voice, Harry Dean Stanton has breathed fresh life into over 170 movies, including six by David Lynch and the classic Paris Texas, directed by Wim Wenders and written by Sam Shepard.
All three men appear in Sophie Huber’s endearing documentary about Stanton, which at 80 minutes seems far too short—especially since there are many film clips—but there’s also too much emphasis on Stanton’s singing and music-making: I prefer his acting by a country mile.
Pretty Little Liars—Complete 4th Season
(Warners)
Aria, Emily, Hanna and Spencer—if you know those four names, then you’ve already watched the fourth season of this still-diverting series about the quartet of young ladies whose sleuthing—and propensity for telling the biggest of whoppers—is given another opportunity when they find themselves drawn into yet another murder mystery.
The five-disc set includes all 24 episodes of this nail-biter of a season; bonus features include three on-set featurettes with interviews, a recap episode and unaired scenes.
(Warner Archive)
For her first HBO comedy special, comedienne Sarah Silverman does it her way, of course: in front of an audience of 39 people, Sarah hilariously riffs on everything from sex and religion to government and pornography, giving them her unique and provocative spin.
Even though her ability to shock has been somewhat muted by the fact that we all know something shocking’s coming, she still manages to provide 60 minutes of laugh-out-loud, thought-provoking material.
NYC Theater Roundup—Ayckbourn’s ‘Arrivals & Departures’ & Wohl’s ‘American Hero’
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 09 June 2014 22:59
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Arrivals & Departures
Written & directed by Alan Ayckbourn
Previews began May 29, 2014; closes June 29
American Hero
Written by Bess Wohl; directed by Leigh Silverman
Previews began May 12, 2014; closes June 15
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| Champion and Boag in Arrivals & Departures (photo: Andrew Higgens) |
Our most dazzling theatrical prestidigitator is back: British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, celebrating his 75th birthday with his 78th play (!!!), returns to Brits Off Broadway with three new productions. First up is Arrivals & Departures, another tightly structured comedy that morphs almost imperceptibly into tragedy thanks to one of Ayckbourn’s most brilliant sleights-of-hand.
What begins as a farcical run-through of the SSDO (Strategic Simulated Distractions Operations) unit’s attempt to capture an elusive terrorist in a London train terminal soon becomes something else entirely; as always with Ayckbourn, it happens gradually.
The plot focuses on soldier Ez, a rather humorless young woman, who must guard a civilian witness being brought down from Yorkshire, a blabbering middle-aged ticket warden named Barry. At first their relationship comprises his annoying blather and her endless ways to avoid him. But Ayckbourn’s deft use of flashbacks and repetition deepens these characters psychologically and dramatically (and comedically, of course).
Ayckbourn’s first act flashbacks of events in Ez’s life occur as the terminal scenes are enacted, then in the second act, mirror images of those same terminal scenes are reenacted, interspersed with flashbacks of Barry’s past. Having the same dialogue repeated in the second act cunningly fleshes out Ez and Barry, since hearing it again allows the audience to comprehend it with more information at its disposal.
Arrivals & Departures might not be one of Ayckbourn’s very greatest plays, but it’s enormously entertaining and thought-provoking, especially as it’s been so breezily directed by its author and persuasively enacted by his entire cast of 13, playing 32 (!!!) roles. Even small roles of undercover agents practicing the terrorist snatch and grab are finely etched, and Bill Champion’s Quentin, ringmaster over the botched SSDO proceedings, is officiously hilarious.
Masterly is the only way to describe the performances of Elizabeth Boag and Kim Wall, who bring hilarity, gravity and humanity to the stage. Boag’s Ez goes through minute but discernible changes over the course of the play; the subtle gestures, movements and vocal inflections mark Boag as an actress to reckon with. Barry could easily have been turned into a caricature, but Wall’s tics, mannerisms and stutter-stops while talking—which is most of the time—transform this ordinary bloke into an extraordinary creation.
And with that, the Ayckbourn mini-festival is off to a magnificent start.
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| O'Connell and Graynor in American Hero (photo: Joan Marcus) |
A trio of fast food workers—single mom, downsized corporate exec and young woman—tries to keep a failing sandwich shop franchise work against all odds in Bess Wohl’s American Hero, a timely but trite comic fable for the new economy.
Soon after owner Bob hires them and opens the place, supplies cease arriving and Bob stops dropping in, so the trio eventually has to resort to wits and all-American ingenuity to keep the store going. But despite a few funny and pointed moments, Wohl’s play never makes the comedic failure of the shop compelling or plausible: it just happens. That might be true to life, but here it doesn’t make for a satisfying drama or comedy.
Leigh Silverman’s clever staging showcases a fine acting quartet, with Daoud Heidami as an amusing Bob, irate customers and even a fantasy sandwich; while Erin Wilhelm and Jerry O’Connell are believable as, respectively, the nerdy and needy Sheri and the desperately slumming Ted. Then there’s Ari Graynor, an underrated but formidable comedienne whose Jamie is sexy and shrewd. But American Hero never overcomes its own built-in limitations.
Arrivals & Departures
59 E 59 Theaters, 59 East 59th Street, New York, NY
britsoffbroadway.com
American Hero
Second Stage Uptown, 76th Street & Broadway, New York, NY
2st.com
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