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Off-Broadway Reviews—Alan Ayckbourn’s “Hero’s Welcome” & “Confusions”; “Taming of the Shrew” in Central Park
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 23 June 2016 03:05
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Hero’s Welcome & Confusions
Written and directed by Alan Ayckbourn
Performances through July 3, 2016
The Taming of the Shrew
Written by William Shakespeare; directed by Phyllida Lloyd
Performances through June 26, 2016
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| Alan Ayckbourn's Confusions (photo: Tony Bartholomew) |
The titles of Alan Ayckbourn’s plays may seem simple, even obvious, but his usually one- or two-word titles, simultaneously descriptive and ironic, take on great import. The two plays brought to New York as the glittering centerpieces of the Brits Off Broadway Festival from Ayckbourn’s home base, the St. James Theatre in Scarborough, Yorkshire, are cases in point.
Confusions, a 1974 compendium of hilarious shorts, unaccountably has never previously been done in New York, while Hero’s Welcome is the latest—and 79th!—play by the prolific dramatist; both are written, directed and acted with utmost generosity, flair and seriousness of purpose.
Comprising five raucous one-acts—concerning, in order, a harried mom who treats adults as children, her playboy husband who puts the make on two young women at a bar, two couples who have dinner as a harried waiter tries to do his job, a disastrous town picnic that gets worse by the minute, and five people sitting on park benches trying to communicate with (or avoid) others—Confusions could be seen as a knee-slapping two hours of theater or a profoundly melancholy but humane comic portrait.
Either way it can’t fail to score, but the latter is Ayckbourn’s default position: no matter how archly his people act toward one another, how difficult the paces he puts them through, or how thoroughly messy their relationships are, there’s always a twinkle in the playwright’s eye that becomes a glimmer of hope for his assorted heroes and fools, lovers and fighters, narcissists and introverts, and everyone in between.
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| Alan Ayckbourn's Hero's Welcome (photo: Tony Bartholomew) |
That comic complexity comes to the fore in Hero’s Welcome, in which Ayckbourn explores with sublime subtlety the fallout when a man, 19 years after leaving acrimoniously, returns to his hometown as a war hero with a foreign wife in tow, hoping to shake up the staid townspeople, among whom are his former fiancée (whom he jilted at the altar, pregnant) and his former best friend.
And that’s just the start of the serious weight placed on the shoulders of these often weak-kneed characters; as always, Ayckbourn balances tragedy and comedy precariously but, in the long run, beautifully. He chides them, but always affectionately. Even when sordid revelations pile up—and physical ailments and death rear their heads—the play, amazingly, marches on to an ending that’s anything but blissful but which still shines with hopefulness about the future.
Ayckbourn directs both plays with precision and control on Michael Holt’s gloriously realized sets that comprise a quintet of playing areas for Confusions and three distinct homes for Hero’s Welcome, without nothing crammed onto 59 E 59’s small stage. The acting company is, unsurprisingly, beyond compare: Evelyn Hoskins sweetly plays the pivotal role of the hero’s young wife Madrababacascabuna (Baba for short) in Hero, while five wonderfully agile performers—Stephen Billington, Elizabeth Boag, Russell Dixon, Charlotte Harwood and Richard Stacey—enact several roles superbly in both plays.
It’s worth singling out Ayckbourn and performers for Confusions’ miniature masterpiece, Between Mouthfuls. The conceit—a pair of actors at each table are only heard speaking when the waiter comes within earshot—is ingenious but not show-offy; but the effortlessness of Billington, Boag, Dixon, Harwood and Stacey and Ayckbourn’s deft direction make this one-act among the most sheerly pleasurable twenty-plus minutes in all of my decades of theater going.
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| A scene from The Taming of the Shrew (photo: Joan Marcus) |
Along with The Merchant of Venice, it’s The Taming of the Shrew that’s the most problematic Shakespeare play: as the title spells out, it dramatizes an independent but wayward young woman being tamed by her superior husband. Of course, as with all Shakespeare, there’s plenty of room for re-interpretation and illumination, since the text is pregnant with the possibility of multiple readings.
But Phyllida Lloyd’s Delacorte Theater solution is to blow it up and graft unoriginal and unamusing business onto it to make it more “today,” like blaring 35-year-old Pat Benatar and Joan Jett songs and having a beauty pageant framing device that allows for a Donald Trump voice impression. It all shows off Lloyd’s cleverness at the expense of Shakespeare.
What goes on is a way to deal with the text’s sexism without confronting it outright. If that’s the case, however, why do the play at all? But political correctness can’t bury Shakespeare’s artistry and insight, especially if Kate’s final, brilliant if non-P.C. soliloquy of self-abasement in front of her husband Petrucchio is considered tongue in cheek—which Lloyd apparently does not subscribe to.
In any case, Lloyd has made a distaff Shrew that turns Shakespearean era all-male performance practice on its head without dealing with the sexism at the play’s core. Janet McTeer, flailing about like Bill Nighy in drag, hams mightily from the outset, scoring cheap if occasionally effective comic points. Much of the rest of the cast fades into one another with little distinctiveness, although Judy Gold steps out of character briefly for a funny if superfluous monologue as a 21st century male chauvinist, i.e., Donald Trump.
Finally (and happily), Cush Jumbo makes a seductively feminine Kate, even if Lloyd overdirects her to constantly stomp around the stage in anger, to ever-diminishing returns. Otherwise, she sounds, looks and acts exactly right. Here’s hoping Jumbo should get another chance to portray Kate in a real production of The Taming of the Shrew.
Hero’s Welcome & Confusions
Brits Off Broadway, 59 East 59th Street, New York, NY
59e59.org
The Taming of the Shrew
Delacorte Theater, Central Park, New York, NY
shakespeareinthepark.org
June '16 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 21 June 2016 04:13
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Cornbread, Earl and Me
If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium
I’ll Take Sweden
(Olive Films)
A low-key drama and two farcical travelogues are on deck this month, starting with 1974’s Cornbread, a sober study of mistaken identity transforming lives in a black Chicago neighborhood forever; the film gains immeasurably by quietly powerful acting by Moses Gunn, Laurence Fishburne and Rosalind Cash.
In 1969’s Belgium and 1965’s Sweden, various stars are touring the Old World: Belgium, featuring European Ian McShane, Senta Berger and Joan Collins, has a lovely performance by American Suzanne Pleshette, while Sweden—a middling Bob Hope vehicle—has a young Tuesday Weld as her most appealing. The films look better than ever on Blu-ray.
London Has Fallen
(Universal)
This action-packed sequel to Olympus Has Fallen reteams Aaron Eckhart as President and Gerard Butler as his most trusted secret service agent: now they are among world leaders overrun by a group of diabolical—and murderous—terrorists at a the British prime minister funeral in London.
Explosions and gunplay take up an inordinate amount of the movie’s 91-minute running time, but anyone in the mood for mindless action and a granite-like Butler—the rest of the cast, which includes Angela Bassett and Morgan Freeman, is largely wasted—then this will provide a brief thrill. The film looks superb on Blu; extras are two featurettes.
Midnight Special
(Warner Bros)
Writer-director Jeff Nichols’ sci-fi drama about a boy with supernatural powers and his father’s desperate attempts to keep him away from the authorities starts out intriguingly, but after a ridiculous scene in which the boy is kidnaped by thugs, the movie veers off the road and never recovers.
Soon Nichols completely loses control, culminating in a CGI-powered finale that’s staggering in its incoherence. Even the cast seems cowed: Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Sam Shepard, Kirsten Dunst and little Jaeden Lieberher give performances that look like they’re in different movies. The hi-def transfer is first-rate; extras are featurettes and interviews.
Power—Complete 2nd Season
(Starz/Anchor Bay)
The trappings and allure of legal and illicit power are on display throughout the unsubtle but entertaining second season of this 50 Cent-produced series, which follows its characters through the worlds of hip-hop, entertainment, illegal drugs and law enforcement with an increasingly jaundiced, even bemused eye.
Of course, there’s always time for a romp or two in bed, which the performers have become increasingly adept at, and blood is spilled at ever more regular intervals. The series’ 10 episodes have stellar high-def transfers; extras include several featurettes.
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
They Were Expendable
(Warner Archive)
This pair of films starring John Wayne and directed by John Ford represented the high-water mark of their collaborations, which extended from 1939’s Stagecoach to 1963’s Donovan’s Reef. 1945’s Expendable has Wayne as one of several seamen who fought the Japanese in the pacific following Pearl Harbor; though overlong, it brings to life the heroism of the everyday sailor.
1949’s Yellow Ribbon, by contrast, is one of the director-star combo’s most effective westerns, shot in picturesque Monument Valley and starring Wayne as a cavalry officer winding down his long and distinguished career. Both the B&W Expendable and color Yellow Ribbon (which won the Best Cinematography Oscar) have great hi-def transfers; Ribbon extras are Ford’s home movies.
DVDs of the Week
Fear of 13
We Monsters
(First Run)
In Fear of 13, convicted killer Nick Yarris makes what for him is a sane, rational decision: to get off death row and be executed. Utilizing Errol Morris’s well-worn devices of reenactments and interviews, director David Sington nevertheless creates a chilling study of mortality.
German director Sebastian Ko examines morality in We Monsters, as divorced parents of a teenage girl—who insists she killed the friend who disappeared when they were alone—decide to protect her at all costs. This frighteningly realistic scenario is acted to perfection by Mehdi Nebbou (dad), Ulrike C. Tscharre (mom) and Janina Fautz (daughter) under Ko’s persuasive direction. The lone extra on 13 is Sington and Yarris’s Q&A.
Going Away
(Cohen Media Group)
French actress Louise Bourgoin sinks her teeth into one of those meaty but messy roles actresses love: a tattooed, independent single mother with sundry problems who will do anything for her young son. Her chemistry with Pierre Rochefort as the teacher who finds himself watching over the boy—and, by extension, the mother—one weekend, keeps Nicole Garcia’s otherwise routine 2013 romance afloat; young Mathias Brezot also contributes nicely as the son.
Off-Broadway Reviews—“Indian Summer,” “Radiant Vermin”
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 16 June 2016 11:15
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Indian Summer
Written by Gregory S. Moss; directed by Carolyn Cantor
Performances through June 26, 2016
Radiant Vermin
Written by Philip Ridley; directed by David Mercatali
Performances through July 3, 2016
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| Owen Campbell and Elise Kibler in Indian Summer (photo: Joan Marcus) |
Of course Indian Summer is set on a beach: that it’s a beach on Rhode Island, the smallest of our 50 states, is Gregory S. Moss’s conceit. Our teenage hero is Daniel, one of the “summer people” staying with his widowed grandfather George for the summer—or until his erstwhile mother returns from wherever she went after dropping him off. He is befriended by cute 17-year-old local girl Izzy—after initially insulting her Sicilian heritage; Izzy’s 27-year-old boyfriend Jeremy is not only the personification of “musclehead” but also a man desperate to hold onto his girl by any means necessary.
Despite his lunkheadedness, Jeremy notices that Daniel and Izzy are becoming quite friendly and compatible, despite their initial antagonism. If Moss can’t quite make his almost love triangle plausible, he has a knack for gentle observation and the occasional wistful moment, like the lovely scene that opens Act II: Daniel and Izzy, after spending the entire night (platonically) on the beach, sit in the sand and discuss what they would say if they ran into each other here ten years from now.
The next scene, of Jeremy pathetically enlisting Daniel to help him plan to propose to Izzy—which Daniel goes along with because he’s absolutely sure Izzy will turn Jeremy down flat—also adeptly blends equal parts humor, heartbreak and sentiment. But the elephant in the room is George our erstwhile narrator, who late in the play has Izzy wear his dead wife’s dress and talk to him as if she were his wife. The resulting scene, unlike the two preceding it, isn’t memorably melancholic or sweet, but instead downright creepy.
Still, Moss writes nicely turned conversational dialogue and Carolyn Cantor directs straightforwardly on Dane Laffrey’s sandbox of a set in which the actors frolic for 90 minutes. Jonathan Hadary might be a bit too obvious as George, but Joe Tippett brings feeling to Jeremy’s ripped abs and Owen Campbell makes a properly pimply and confused Daniel.
But Elise Kibler carries the play on her shoulders as Izzy, a tough yet tender, raw but romantic young heroine. Playing the only character interacting with the others, Kibler gives a nuanced and persuasive performance that elevates Indian Summer past its sentimental leanings to achieve an overarching melancholy like watching the last sunset on the beach at the end of summer.
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| Scarlett Alice Johnson and Sean Michael Verey in Radiant Vermin (photo: Carol Rosegg) |
With Radiant Vermin, Philip Ridley has made an fitfully amusing black comedy that acidly looks at the new normal: middle-class couple Ollie and Jill—in their attempt at upward mobility in a society that no longer easily allows it—discovers a sure-fire way to become and remain affluent: (gulp) murder.
Ridley has gleeful fun with how his couple goes about its diabolical plan, which takes on greater urgency when Jill gets pregnant. But there’s not much underneath the surface, and introducing a mysterious real estate agent who may have something to do with their doings is something intriguing that’s been left unexplored.
Despite the shrillness—one ridiculously overwrought sequence has the couple acting out a dinner party from hell that seems to last forever, and with few chuckles—the actors do their very best to keep it afloat. Sean Michael Verey, an amusingly hangdog Ollie, has thick glasses framing a rubbery face of sheer ingenuity, while Scarlett Alice Johnson makes an absolutely winning Jill: she more than complements her costar by bringing needed heart to the proceedings, of which director David Mercatali should have made better use.
Indian Summer
Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
playwrightshorizons.org
Radiant Vermin
Brits Off Broadway, 59 East 59th Street, NY
59e59.org
June '16 Digital Week II
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 14 June 2016 00:08
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Le Amiche
(Criterion)
Although one of his lesser works, this 1955 melodrama was an important stepping stone for Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni on his way to cinematic maturity: this study of young women and their relationship troubles hints at his later mastery in L’Avventura and L’Eclisse, for example.
Unsurprisingly, Criterion’s transfer of this brooding black-and-white drama is stellar, but its extras are lacking: there’s a relatively mundane conversation on Antonioni between two scholars and a slightly more informative interview with another scholar.
(Intervision)
Director Francisco Lara Polop’s 1984 soft-core flick, while it has a certain cache among that era’s B-movie cognoscenti, is merely a competently made, indifferently acted tale of an comely heiress who’s been kidnapped by a band of lesbian terrorists.
Nice location shooting and Jewel Shepard’s endearing pseudo-Marilyn Monroe bimbo as our eponymous heroine make it watchable, along with ample—but by no means explicit—nudity and sex scenes. There’s a decent hi-def transfer.
Every Thing Will Be Fine
(IFC)
German director Wim Wenders has made some clunkers, but his latest, impossibly pretentious exercise in dramatic ponderousness leaps to the top of that list. James Franco sleepwalks through the movie as a writer whose life is altered by a fatal car accident, while Rachel McAdams, Marie-Josee Croze and ever-sullen Charlotte Gainsbourg suffer quietly at his side.
It seems like Terrence Malick-lite, but even Malick’s failures like To the Wonder (also with poor McAdams) had lustrous visuals and eclectic music on the soundtrack to compensate. Not so Wenders: Alexandre Desplat’s diverting score notwithstanding, Wenders’ usual impeccable control deserts him, shooting this in 3D for no discernable reason. It all looks fine on Blu; extras are interviews with cast (but not Franco) and Wenders and behind-the-scenes footage.
(PBS)
In the second season of this offbeat detective series, Reverend Sidney Chambers and inspector Geordie Keating consolidate their personal and professional relationships as they investigate another bizarre series of crimes.
If the plots are less than original, it doesn’t matter because the real reason to watch is the chemistry between James Norton and Robson Green, who invest their parts with as much authenticity and even humor as possible under the circumstances. The hi-def transfer is quite good; extras include featurettes and interviews.
Under the Sun of Satan
(Cohen Film Collection)
Maurice Pialat’s magnificent 1987 chamber film is an intimate character study of a failing priest with a dark side and the young woman who may be his salvation—or damnation.
Based on a novel by Georges Bernardos (whose work was also the basis of Robert Bresson’s Mouchette and Diary of a Country Priest), Pialat’s masterpiece has absorbing performances by Gerard Depardieu, Sandrine Bonnaire and Pialat himself as an older priest who gives Depardieu guidance. The film’s grainy hi-def transfer is illuminating; substantial extras—a second disc’s worth—comprise new and vintage interviews, along with an hour of deleted scenes and on-set footage.
(Magnolia)
In Tobias Lindholm’s powerful drama, parts of a Danish soldier’s life are shown in straightforward yet subtle detail: as he leads his men through horrible firefights, his absence from his family back home forces his wife to raise their children alone; later, he is put before a civilian tribunal after he is accused of war crimes for calling an air strike that kills innocent children. Not in the least didactic,
Lindholm’s film is a raging inferno of emotion and adrenaline, culminating in a courtroom sequence remarkable for its nuanced and compelling view of all sides. Pilou Asbæk—so good in the TV series Borgen—is brilliant as our hero, and Tuva Novotny matches him scene for scene as his wife. The hi-def transfer is first-rate; the paucity of extras includes brief servicemen and -women’s reactions, short making-of and Lindholm interview.
DVDs of the Week
A French Village—Complete 3rdSeason
(MHZ)
With the war on for several years now, the inhabitants of the Nazi-controlled village of Villeneuve must contend with a new wrinkle: the rounding up of Jews in the local school.
The endless greys of wartime have rarely been examined so thoroughly and even entertainingly as in this series, and the cumulative dramatic impact of its third season is enormous. Once again, the acting is superlative from top to bottom, with standouts Robin Renucci as the town’s decent mayor and Audrey Fleurot as his unfaithful wife.
(Icarus)
Belgian director Chantal Akerman’s suicide last fall came directly following the death of her beloved mother, and her poignant if meandering final documentary explores that relationship in depth. Natalia was a Holocaust survivor who was always Chantal’s reservoir of strength, shown in the many conversations between them, whether in person or via Skype.
Although the film, like so many others of Akerman, wears out its welcome before it ends, its tragic real-life epilogue gives it a gravitas missing from much of her oeuvre.
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