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Off-Broadway Reviews: "The Tribute Artist," "Transport"

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Tuesday, 25 February 2014 23:35; Written by Kevin Filipski

The Tribute Artist

Written by Charles Busch, directed by Carl Andress

Performances through March 30, 2014

Transport

Book by Thomas Keneally, music & lyrics by Larry Kirwanh, directed by Tony Walton

Performances through April 6, 2014

Halston, Harris and playwright Busch in The Tribute Artist
(photo: James Leynse)

Cross-dresser extraordinaire Charles Busch conjures a clever concept for his latest farce, The Tribute Artist: he plays Jimmy, a drag queen pretending to be his elderly landlady Adriana after the widow unexpectedly dies in her beautifully appointed Greenwich Village apartment, where he is staying. With help from his good friend Rita, a lesbian real-estate agent, Jimmy hopes to sell the place for millions before anyone catches on to the ruse.

But unexpected hijinks ensue. Adriana’s niece Christina, with her transgender teen kid Oliver sin tow, shows up, insisting she’s the rightful heir when her “aunt” dies; they are joined by Rodney, an ex-tryst of Adriana’s whom Oliver finds on Facebook and invites over. And that’s just the tip of a very convoluted iceberg.

Busch is a veteran comic writer whose dialogue often has bite (or at least bark), and the inherent silliness of the situation is always a given. It’s unfortunate, then, that he so often takes the path of least resistance, like a lazy series of jokes about drag queens and desperately alluding to campy old Hollywood movies to increasingly less funny effect.

The clotted plot (which I only summarized) hinders the humor from flowing smoothly; indeed, scenes extend beyond their miniscule life by frantic overexplanations that do nothing but add to the running time, so Busch ends up turns his own play into a drag, if anyone remembers the other meaning of that word.

Anna Louizos’ gorgeous set suggests a multi-million-dollar piece of Village property and Gregory Gale’s costumes are delightful. Carl Andress directs as broadly as Busch writes, and if Busch has done this role countless times, he can still deliver one-liners and double entendres like no one else.

Julie Halston, as Jimmy’s sidekick Rita, hams too much even in this muggable context; contrast her with Mary Bacon’s Christina, a small-town mom trying to handle the Big Apple. Bacon’s skillful, subtle portrayal garners more credible laughs as well as sympathy. Cynthia Harris (Adriana), Keira Keeley (Oliver) and Jonathan Walker (Rodney) round out an ensemble that nearly saves The Tribute Artist from itself.

The cast of Transport (photo: Carol Rosegg)

Thomas Keneally—whose fine books The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith and Schindler’s List became classic films directed by Fred Schepisi and Steven Spielberg, respectively—has impeccable credentials as an historian, specializing in his own country, Australia.

So his book for the musical Transport—which follows the travails of mid-19^th century Irish women who, convicted of various crimes, were shipped off to the penal colony of New South Wales (not yet Australia) to help propagate the species with male convicts already there—seems a can’t-miss proposition.

But Keneally’s book isn’t up to the task, mainly because a musical isn’t the right form: history book, novel or film—either fiction or documentary—would better encompass such tragedy. Collaborators Keneally, composer Larry Kirwan and director Tony Walton are unable to develop the epic scale of human misery and, conversely, humane uplift with sufficient artistry.

We are left with fragments of a superior show about women banding together to defiantly survive a hellish voyage and a merciless captain’s mistreatment. (Males like a priest and doctor are more sympathetically sketched: but the captain has a last-minute change of heart.) The Irish Rep’s cramped stage allows a sense of the cruel treatment and shoddy conditions to come through, but with only four women to stand in for hundreds onboard, the story’s vast scope is trivialized.

Walton’s savvy direction and set design can’t overcome Kirwan’s songs—blustery ballads, romantic duets and a jig or two to nod toward Irish music—which include platitudinous lyrics of the Moon-June variety. A game septet of actors, especially the intensely focused and beautiful-voiced Jessica Grove, does its best to keep Transport from running aground.

The Tribute Artist

59 E 59 Theatre, 59 East 59^th Street, New York, NY

primarystages.org

Transport

Irish Rep, 132 West 22^nd Street, New York, NY

irishrep.org

Off-Broadway Review: Donald Margulies' "Dinner with Friends"

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Saturday, 22 February 2014 05:37; Written by Kevin Filipski

Dinner with Friends

Written by Donald Margulies, directed by Pam Mackinnon

Performances through April 13, 2014

Pettie, Burns, Shamos and Hinkle in Dinner with Friends
(photo: Jeremy Daniel)

Donald Margulies’ marvelous Dinner with Friends is such a psychologically and dramatically acute play that—despite its 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and rave reviews for its New York premiere—it appears to be less than the sum of its parts. Margulies’ artful construction of his tragicomic drama about how the disintegration of one marriage leads to soul searching in another fits together so smartly that it comes off (to some, anyway) as a mere clever conceit. But this remarkable play is anything but, as the Roundabout’s unmissable revival demonstratively shows.

Married couples Gabe & Karen and Tom & Beth have been best friends for 12 years, since the former couple set up the latter during a Martha’s Vineyard weekend. The play begins as Beth blurts out to her two friends after a scrumptious dinner that Tom—missing since he’s away on business—wants a divorce because he’s screwing a stewardess. (Turns out she’s a travel agent.) After he discovers that Beth spilled the beans without him there to defend himself, Tom goes to their house late that night to tell his side of the story because, as he says, Beth—who spoke first—now has the upper hand: he’s right, as Karen’s disgust at his arrival shows.

The play covers a lot of narrative ground in two hours—even showing that fateful Vineyard introduction to begin Act 2—but its magnificence stems from its covering (and uncovering) fertile psychological terrain in such a natural and unforced way that it might appear facile to the undiscriminating.

The dialogue among these four heartrendingly real people (always a Margulies strength) is penetrating, poignant and often priceless in its humor. Take this tart exchange when Karen reacts negatively to Beth’s news that she is getting remarried…too soon, for Karen’s taste.

KAREN: I spent years trying to get away from my family and my last ten doing everything I could to make a family of my own. I thought if I could choose my family this time, if I could make my friends my family.

BETH: Congratulations. The family you’ve chosen is just as fucked up as the one you were born into.

Or Gabe and Karen discussing Tom’s revelation that Beth was cheating early in their marriage.

KAREN: We saw them practically every weekend in those days, when would she have had time to have an affair?

GABE: I don’t know—during the week?

Margulies’ ability to create three-dimensional characters—also on display in Collected Stories and The Model Apartment to Brooklyn Boyand Time Stands Still—is second to none. And in director Pam Mackinnon’s keenly-observed staging—greatly assisted by Allen Moyer’s superlative sets, whose fragmented look underscores what these two relationships are becoming—the cast is unsurpassable. Darren Pettie’s Tom adroitly treads a fine line between unredeemable and believably contradictory; as Beth, Heather Burns gives a textbook lesson in delicately playing a wife unmoored from her husband: no tics or mannerisms, just a naturalness that’s as becoming as it is affecting.

Marin Hinkle, as Karen, expertly navigates the landmines which appear as her well-ordered world buckles when her friends break up, forcing her to reevaluate her own marriage. And Jeremy Shamos’ Gabe is a subtle psychological portrait of a man who—as Karen tellingly notes—doesn’t say much. Whether silent or speaking, Shamos gives an honest glimpse of a husband who realizes that, while his marriage might not be perfect, it’s his life and he’ll try and make it work.

Donald Margulies is a peerless observer with fresh insight into familiar subjects, and Dinner with Friends is a particularly rich mine of discovery for his characters—and for us.

Dinner with Friends

Laura Pels Theatre, 111 West 46^th Street, New York, NY

roundabouttheatre.org

"Pompeii" Is a Blunderous Marvel

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Friday, 21 February 2014 23:12; Written by Matt Oakes

"Pompeii"
Directed by Paul WS Anderson
Starring Kit Harrington, Emily Browning, Kiefer Sutherland, Jared Harris, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Jessica Lucas, Carrie-Anne Moss
Action, Adventure, "Drama"
98 Mins
PG-13

If you're willing to overlook an awful script, torpid acting and cheeseball direction, Pompeii packs the requisite fireworks and dimwitted gumption to glide through its 100 minute screen time. Told with the panache of an envious porno production assistant, Pompeii is the equivalent of a kid hopped up on candy trying to recount the events of Gladiator but getting a handful of plot points confused with Armageddon. It's a disaster of wonderful proportion and, quite simply, a blunderous marvel to behold.

Director Paul WS Anderson's chutzpah is a blunted sword that he wields like it's Excalibur, hacking through logic like Theon Greyjoy taking off Sir Rodrick's head. (If that one went over your head, let's just say it's a mess.) There's nothing necessarily redeeming about the self-serious way the material is approached except the beautiful irony of it all. It's the perfect storm of narrative retardation unaware of the extent of its disability. At least the poor thing isn't sentient enough to know it's severe limitations. Rather than bring it out to pasture though, we're stuck playing the schoolyard bullies who circle and laugh. At least pointing and mocking here is acceptable.

No one deserves our disapproving derision more than swooning stars Emily Browning and Kit Harrington who make use of their screen time ogling one another; eye fucking like its Jr. Prom all over again. Doe-eyed and bitterly boring, each takes their acting lessons from the book of Stares and Glares 101. Their chemistry is always overshadowed by the mountain in the distance, a spark to the raging conflagrations surrounding them. Their romance, a dog shit hue of puppy love.

Certifiable shame that it is, Harrington can't survive outside the confines of Game of Thrones, a magical realm where he's nothing short of awkwardly charming. Armed with a sword and shambling in sandals, Harrington's Milo is the gladiator's version of rebel without a cause. "Are you not entertained?" his character plagiarizes, but with the snarky attitude of a hipster teen. No John Snow, we're not. Stick to your side of the Fire and Ice equation. No matter what ridiculous number of abdomen muscles you've packed on, things just work out better when you're buried in furs and adventuring in a perma-snowstorm.

Browning on the other hand is all kinds of bad news bears. She's supposed to be brave and rebellious as Cassia but comes off as a little girl playing princess. She's a vacuum of talent, a worm hole of thespianism, a black thumb for film. Does everything she touches wilt into a bouquet of poison oak or does she just have an agent with a grudge against her? Seriously, the girl hasn't touched a good project with a ten foot pole and Pompeii is no exception. Seeing her on the receiving end of a half-dozen bitch slaps is as magical as things get.

Dishing out those slaps is Kiefer Sutherland's General Corvus, a poorly acted douche of a man who we meet at the top of the story slicin' and dicin' through Milo mum's windpipe who later, quite conveniently, stews a bit of a rapey crush on Cassia. Apparently suffering from a knack of amnesia, Anderson forget to include the bit where Corvus stumbles across the fountain of youth. How else can you explain the fact that Corvus hasn't aged a day in 17 years? There's no way the people making this behemoth could have just forgotten a detail like that. RIGHT?!!

Then again, the script does seem like the result of a late night session the writers spent with a bong, a bag of Doritos and a Gladiator DVD. Seriously, there are lengthy scenes airlifted directly from Gladiator. It's one thing to homage and another entirely to play something off as your own work. Let me give you a particularly face-palming example: During a prominent gladiator showcase, the slavemaster attempts to recreate a Roman massacre from recent past where a slew of barbarians were slaughtered like caged chickens. Milo and friends are primed for the pointy end of a skewering stick, but wait! the enslaved gladiators band together to overcome momentous odds, defying the will of their superiors and winning the goodwill of the people. Sound familiar? I guess at the very least, they're ripping off some solid stuff.

The only other character of note, Atticus, is also the one we're left pining for more time with. As a African gladiator brute, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje is immensely watchable and the easy star of the show. His is the only character we don't want swallowed up by a wall of lava, the only one we're hoping won't be sworded to death. Spoiler: both happen.

Throughout the affairs, Mr. Anderson doesn't ever let us forget that there's a volcano involved and with CG technology what it is now, Mt. Vesuvius is clearly a main character (or at least the one we're supposed to play the most attention to). It must feel robbed then that it didn't even get an IMDB billing. If CG characters were eligible for a share of their awards gold, old 'Suv' would be a clear early frontrunner.

Watching the computer generated Mt. Vesuvius blow is destruction porn at its most bukakesque. Gobs of moltenus rock spew from the hot top like a 12-year old Paul WS Anderson discovering his manhood. If this is his take on a pissing content, he proudly strikes a pose and demeans your fifth grade science experience. Baking soda and vinegar ought to be ashamed.

Writer team Janet Scott Batchler (Batman Forever), Lee Batchler (Batman Forever) and Michael Robert Scott (Sherlock Holmes) are the lack of brains behind Anderson's unwieldy brawn, the Tonto to his rebooted Lone Ranger, the brain dead Himmler to his logic-genociding Hitler. Theirs is the glory of this spirited romp through seven levels of screenwriting purgatory. "King logos is dead, long live computer graphics!" they collectively chant. Together, they have ushered in a nuclear meltdown of a story, ineffaceably half-witted and boldly dopey.

A hotpot of narrative no-no's hyped up on its own garishness and blinded by the Hot Pocket consumerism driving the thing, Pompeii is a disaster of a disaster movie in the best of ways. The cart is miles before the horse as this movie is no more than an excuse to see a volcano go boom-boom. Like a toddler experimenting with an Easy Bake Oven, Pompeii is majorly overcooked, a hot mess of epic proportion. But Anderson's is the rare and wonderful movie that transcends the expression "it's so bad, it's good". It's literally a masterclass on the topic. One could write a thesis on how Pompeii proves Paul WS Anderson is the new Ed Wood and likely walk away with a honors degree. Simply put, I loved and hated it in equal measure. It was so dumb that I applauded.

C-

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February '14 Digital Week III

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Tuesday, 18 February 2014 02:14; Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week

Afternoon Delight

(Cinedigm)

What could have been a plot comprising familiar clichés—frustrated wife meets stripper whom she tries to help, only to ruin her own—is instead, in director Jill Soloway’s sure hands, an unnerving study of people dealing with personal disappointment.

The movie ends too predictably, but prior to that, Soloway and her cast—Kathryn Hahn, Juno Temple, Josh Radnor and Jane Lynch—have made a worthwhile adult drama full of painful humor. The Blu-ray looks first-rate; extras are a commentary and deleted scenes.

The Best Man Holiday

(Universal)

Director Malcolm D. Lee demonstrates that Tyler Perry doesn’t have a monopoly on soulful saccharine: this reunion of beloved characters is smartly filled with likable performers (Saana Lathan, Terrence Howard, Nia Long) who keep the soap opera silliness from getting completely out of hand.

But several false endings and an eye-rolling NFL game sequence make it tough to take it seriously, even if it obviously pleased a lot of people—so your mileage may vary. The Blu-ray image looks fine; extras include Lee commentary, gag reel, extended/deleted scenes, making-of featurette.

Gravity

(Warners)

A dazzling technical achievement—special effects, sound design and photography combine for a hell of a popcorn movie—this 91-minute rollercoaster ride keeps you on the edge of your seat from start to finish.

But this thin drama about astronauts in danger in outer space is, despite Sandra Bullock’s committed performance, not nearly the game changer critics, audiences and the Academy would have you believe: director Alfonso Cuaron cleverly visualizing his conceit, but when talk turns to Best Picture and Best Director, I ask: huh? The hi-def image is excellent; extras include hours of featurettes. (release date February 25)

Killing Kennedy

(Fox)

Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard’s best-seller spawned this routine recreation of what led JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald to that fateful November day in Dallas.

Although Rob Lowe’s Jack and Ginnifer Goodwin’s Jackie are caricatures, Will Rothhaar’s Oswald and Michelle Trachtenberg’s Marina Oswald are credible portrayals that are the most authentic thing about this by-the-numbers reenactment. The hi-def transfer looks good; extras include interviews and a making-of featurette.

DVDs of the Week

The Cheshire Murders

Glickman

(HBO/Warner Archive)

Kate Davis and David Heilbroner’s chilling documentary Cheshire Murders devastatingly shows how a horrific multiple murder destroyed and tore apart more than one family; logical questions are asked, like did the police response exacerbate the situation, and will the death penalty give closure or bring back the victims? (We know the answers.)

Glickman, James Freedman’s affectionate documentary, tells the fascinating life story of Marty Glickman, the Jewish track star who was barred from competing in the 1936 Berlin Olympics who later became a beloved Knicks and Giants broadcaster.

Classic English Literature Collection—Volume 2

(PBS)

This mega-box set collects four adaptations of great English books that are distinguished by fine performances and handsome production values: an intense Jodhi May dominates Henry James’ eerie Turn of the Screw; Rafe Spall and Elizabeth McGovern star in E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View; Freddie Fox takes the title role in Charles Dickens’ unfinished last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood; and Billie Piper is an outstanding Fanny in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park.

These great-looking and accomplished films might be conventional but are well worth watching. Extras comprise a selection of memorabilia that includes the four authors’ illustrations and hand-written letters.

The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology

(Zeitgeist)

Slovene psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek’s provocative filmic analysis, shown in The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, returns in this follow-up, which comprises singular readings of everything from The Sound of Music to A Clockwork Orange.

However, that director Sophie Fiennes has to go out of her way to have him in amusing settings like in front of the mirror in Taxi Driver or the boat from Jaws is a sign that his thought-provoking theses can’t support a 135-minute long film: their hit-or-miss quality eventually wears thin. The lone extra is a 30-minue Fiennes and Žižek Q&A.

Pussy Riot—A Punk Prayer

(Cinedigm)

There are less obvious ways to get a Russian dictator’s attention, but protest punk group Pussy Riot skipped any subtlety by making its blatant anti-Putin statement in a Moscow church, virtually guaranteeing their imprisonment (two members got two years for “hooliganism”—another had her sentence commuted and two other members left the country).

This straightforward documentary, which follows the trials, is interesting without being very illuminating. Extras include interviews.

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