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May '14 Digital Week IV
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 27 May 2014 21:05
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
The Bridges of Madison County
(Warners)
This major miscalculation by director-star Clint Eastwood—whose turgid 135-minute adaptation (from 1995) of the popular Robert James Waller romance novel never escapes its sappy origins—has an opening sequence that may be the worst-acted and tone-deaf bit of one of his pre-Gran Torino movies.
Too bad Eastwood and Meryl Streep’s real rapport can’t overcome the sentimental melodramatics. The Blu-ray image looks decent; extras are an audio commentary, making-of featurette and music video.
(EuroArts)
A ballet about Charlie Chaplin’s life and films sounds promising, but Mario Schroder’s choreographically lazy vision—which contrasts Chaplin’s own music with Wagner, Schnittke, Brahms, Britten and Barber—traps the Little Tramp (a glorious Tyler Galster) by boxing in his signature movements with too much stage busyness.
Some wonderful moments make clear how balletic Chaplin’s physical comedy was, but after awhile the repetition becomes numbing. The Blu-ray image and sound is stellar.
Dan Curtis’ Dracula
(MPI)
Jack Palance takes on the Transylvanian count with a taste for blood and nubile young women in Dan Curtis’ straightforward, mostly uncampy take on Bram Stoker’s classic horror novel, which has a no-nonsense script by the great Richard Matheson.
Palance gives a controlled performance in a role usually hammed up to the nth degree in this skillfully old-fashioned entertainment. On Blu-ray, the movie looks good; extras include outtakes and interviews with Palance and Curtis.
Endless Love
(Universal)
Following Franco Zeffirelli’s 1981 bomb with Brooke Shields—also based on Scott Spencer’s novel—director-co-writer Shana Feste’s romance doesn’t try to be anything other than a watchable soap opera about a very attractive couple.
If the plot and the characters never stray from what’s expected out of this type of movie, the ultra-beautiful leads Gabriella Wilde and Alex Pettyfer (surprisingly, both are British) share a chemistry that goes a long way toward selling this even to those who might resist. The Blu-ray image is first-rate; extras are making-of featurette, extended ending, deleted scenes.
Gang War in Milan
(Raro)
In Umberto Lenzi’s fast-paced 1973 thriller, local pimp Toto stands up to the newest crime lord set on lording it all over his small-time operations in Milan, a city that’s as much a character as the men and their (usually naked) women.
The non-stop action—chases, showdowns and shootouts—keeps coming for 100 minutes, as Toto decides not to go down without a fight. The film’s grain is retained on Blu-ray to great effect; lone extra is an intro by Mike Malloy.
(Magnet)
Director Robert Chow shows off his talent for incredible action sequences and pacing in this caffeinated adventure about a demon hunter and his ultimate prize: Sun Wukong, the demon of all demons.
Although the story is cartoonish in the extreme, Chow keeps things animated in both senses with game performers, an astonishing eye for detail and computer effects work. The fantastic images look terrific on Blu-ray; extras comprise several making-of featurettes.
Stranger by the Lake
(Strand Releasing)
Despite obvious visual allure, this sun-dappled story about a killer among the clientele at a secluded beach where gay men pick up one another for anonymous sex meanders for nearly two hours; Alain Guiraudie’s crude direction and heavyhanded script and the indifferent acting make the hardcore segments seem like desperate attempts to deflect attention from the rest of the film’s innocuousness.
The Blu-ray image looks a little overexposed, but that may be Guiraudie’s intent; extras include a Guiraudie interview, two Guiraudie shorts, an alternate ending and deleted scenes.
The First World War—The Complete Series
(e one)
This ten-part series is a comprehensive look at the Great War, which made Europe a bloody battlefield for four years. By using much archival footage and the actual words from many of its participants gives greater, more personal meaning to many of the events, from the assassination in Sarajevo that sparked the conflict to the armistice that ended it.
If you count yourself a true history buff—as I do—then you should watch every minute of its ten hours.
God Loves Uganda
(First Run)
American evangelicals not only make life miserable for Americans, but now that they outsource themselves to the rest of the world—Uganda has become an anti-gay battlefield—other countries are facing their own deadly infection, as Roger Ross Williams’ enraging documentary shows.
Williams smartly allows both sides their say with no editorializing, so when a gay Ugandan activist ends up killed, no amount of commentary is needed to point out who the spiritual culprits are. Extras comprise deleted scenes and short films.
(Icarus)
A follow-up to his masterly The Miners’ Hymns, director Bill Morrison brilliantly marries archival footage he uncovered to a contemporary score by jazz guitarist Bill Frisell. Morrison’s ingenious editing and Frisell’s music provide stark beauty amid the misery of flooding that inundated the Mississippi delta in 1927.
Although there are dead moments—a Sears Roebuck catalog segment seems an attempt to pad the running time—Morrison illustrates a necessary reminder of man’s relationship to nature’s ravages.
Hitler and the Nazis
(Cinedigm)
This five-part, 4-1/2 hour documentary series—which recounts the horrible and lethal efficiency of Hitler and his henchmen, who caused the deaths of untold millions in European battlefields, concentration camps and ghettos—begins with Hitler’s inauspicious beginnings in rural Austria to his clever political wrangling that led him to become the infamous face of worldwide evil.
Narrated by Chris Andrews, Karl T. Hirsch’s series offers vintage footage and photographs, as well as eyewitness testimony from everyone from filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl to Jesse Owens’s widow and sister to vividly tell the story of the man and his horrific legacy.
(Film Movement)
In the “truth is stranger than fiction” department comes this story about a French-Jewish convert to Christianity who, after becoming a Cardinal, finds himself as Pope John Paul II’s right hand man in touchy Church matters relating to the Holocaust. Director Ilan Duran Cohen’s measured tone seems right for a film in which much of the drama is inside a title character (the powerful Laurent Lucas) still anguished about his decades-old conversion.
Cohen also accomplishes the feat of having actor Aurélien Recoing play John Paul with humor and even irreverence without it seeming sacrilegious. The lone extra is an amusing short, Kosher.
Pretty Peaches 2/Pretty Peaches 3
Deep Tango/Young Secretaries
(Vinegar Syndrome)
This quartet comes from porn’s “golden age” (‘70s & ‘80s), when X-rated movies had plots punctuated by—occasionally relevant—sex scenes. Peaches 2 (1987) has curvaceous superstar Tracey Adams, while Peaches 3 (1989) stars the always energetic Keisha.
The mid-‘70s flicks are pretentious (Deep apes Last Tango in Paris down to an opening scream echoing Marlon Brando’s from that film) and frivolous (Secretaries is as original as its title). Vinegar Syndrome keeps churning out vintage porn, an eye-opener to those who only know today’s “gonzo” style that the internet has made ubiquitous.
(MPI)
In 1971, Roman Polanski followed his pal race car driver Jackie Stewart for three days while he prepared for the Monte Carlo Grand Prix, and we get to see the famous athlete and the famous director in Stewart’s world, both on and off the race track.
Directed by Frank Simon, the film fascinatingly shows the two men together four decades ago and, at the end, today: an older and wiser Polanski and Stewart sit down to reminisce about the earlier footage, which comes off as a DVD bonus that’s become part of the film.
May '14 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 20 May 2014 23:42
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
The Big Red One
The Women
(Warners)
Samuel Fuller’s uneven but stark 1980 World War II drama, The Big Red One, gets its Blu-ray debut, sort of: the familiar 113-minute release cut is in (substandard) hi-def, while the reconstructed—and far more engrossing—162-minute director’s cut is only in standard def.
Based on Clare Booth Luce’s amusing play, George Cukor’s 1939 The Women has an exemplary starry cast—Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard and Joan Fontaine, for starters—which provides masterly comic timing throughout, and it looks fine on Blu. One extras comprise a Richard Schickel reconstructed version commentary, Fuller documentary, featurettes and alternate scenes;Women extras include documentaries, a cartoon and an alternate sequence.
The Color of Lies
(Cohen Media)
Claude Chabrol’s low-key, creepily effective 1999 Hitchcockian mystery—about a painter, accused of killing one of his young students, who might be cuckolded by his loving wife—works precisely because Chabrol gives substantial weight to the characters and their relationships, not just to solving the murders (the wife’s possible lover later turns up dead).
This shrewd thriller features sympathetic performances by Jacques Gamblin and Sandrine Bonnaire and tasty, well-used chamber music by Chabrol’s son Mathieu. The Blu-ray image is enticingly grainy; the lone extra is an audio commentary.
Countess Dracula
(Synapse)
One of the most listless Hammer horror flicks is Peter Sasdy’s 1971 snoozer, in which an elderly countess (Hungarian actress Ingrid Pitt) drinks the blood of virgins to keep her youth—but what happens when the supply of young women dries up? What could have been a wicked and sexy parody is instead played pretty much straight, dulling the effect.
Only the final scenes are campy fun; there’s also the lovely Lesley-Anne Down as the old lady’s nubile daughter. The hi-def transfer is attractive enough; extras include a Pitt audio interview and a Pitt career featurette.
(Eagle Rock)
Ronnie James Dio was the leather-lunged singer beloved by metal fans for his solo work and stints in Rainbow and post-Ozzy Black Sabbath, and this 1993 London concert shows off his top vocal form as his crack band romps through 19 tunes in a fast-paced 90 minutes.
Pretty much everything Dio fans want is here: “Holy Diver,” “The Last in Line,” “Rainbow in the Dark,” Rainbow’s “Man on the Silver Mountain” and Sabbath’s “Heaven and Hell and “Mob Rules.” The Blu-ray image is basically a standard-def video, but the sound is appropriately pummeling. The lone extra is a backstage featurette.
Like Someone in Love
(Criterion)
Following his Italy-set Certified Copy,Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami travels to Japan for this enigmatic drama about a student call girl, her mechanic boyfriend and her elderly client. When the boyfriend thinks the old man slept with her, he takes his revenge—or does he?
The not quite ambiguous final shot sums up the entire film: its supposed vagueness nods to a greater dramatic weight than this minor film by a major director has. The hi-def transfer is immaculate; the lone extra is a 45-minute on-set featurette.
(Warners)
The fourth and last season of Nikita, in which the world’s leggiest rogue assassin finds herself on the run after being framed for the assassination of the president at the end of season three, seems truncated, considering it’s only six episodes long: but it might also be the primary reason why the nonsensical plot twists are kept to a minimum.
But real fans shouldn’t complain either way, since Maggie Q continues to look absolutely fabulous in her form-fitting killing outfits. The Blu-ray image looks impeccable; too bad there are no extras to help wrap up the series.
Pompeii 3D
(Sony)
When Titanic and Gladiator inserted silly romance and stilted melodrama onto their elaborate historical frameworks, they were awarded Best Picture Oscars; Paul W.S. Anderson does the same with his trashily entertaining drama about the Vesuvius eruption of A.D. 79, which buried an entire Roman city under ash for two millennia, but I doubt he’ll be winning any Academy Award hardware for his efforts.
This CGI-filled spectacle doesn’t overshadow actors like Keifer Sutherland, Emily Browning and Carrie-Anne Moss, who help its 100 minutes pass by painlessly, while the final shots cleverly merge fiction and history. On Blu-ray, the film looks smashing in 3D and 2D; extras include an Anderson commentary, deleted scenes and several featurettes and interviews.
Back in Crime
(Kino Lorber)
If you can ignore the genre’s usual improbabilities, this time-traveling French policier is quietly riveting, mainly for the offbeat chemistry between haggard detective Jean-Hugues Anglade and psychiatrist Melanie Thierry, a beauty who may well be Michelle Pfeiffer’s Gallic daughter.
If director Germinal Alvarez can’t quite grasp the fantastical aspects of the plot (the script is by Alvarez and Nathalie Saugeon), he at least concentrates on the personal side of things, which is more compelling than the serial killer case anyhow.
The Biggest Bundle of Them All
Pennies from Heaven
Summer of ’42
(Warner Archive)
Despite Mediterranean locales and a cast including Vittorio de Sica, Victor Spinetti, Robert Wagner and the ever-beauteous Raquel Welch, 1967’s Biggest Bundle is a pale imitation of the jet-setting action-adventures it wants to parody. Herbert Ross’s 1981 Pennies from Heaven is not the equal of Dennis Potter’s original TV mini-series with Bob Hoskins, but it has undeniable charm and pathos thanks to Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters and the always underrated Jessica Harper.
Then there’s Summer of ’42, Robert Mulligan’s affecting 1971 exercise in nostalgia, which features Jennifer O’Neill as the most alluring yet innocent-looking beauty in movie history. Pennies includes a 2001 reunion of cast and crew and reviewer Peter Rainer’s commentary.
(First Run)
The premise—a female doctor has sex with patients in an apartment she keeps separately from her husband and young son—makes it sound like this is a soft-core Cinemax special: would that it was!
Instead, Nanouk Leopold—who takes his heroine at face value—has a clinical directorial style that turns what could have been a 95-minute jaunt into a slow crawl. On the plus side, actress Sandra Huller’s fiercely committed performance makes this contradictory woman empathetic if not exactly believable.
The Chambermaids/Honey Buns
(Impulse)
Jungle Blue
(Vinegar Syndrome)
Porn’s “golden age” of the 1970s—so-called because supposedly talented artists made good films that just happen to include wall-to-wall explicit sex—includes this trio of basically plotless flicks with hardcore sex scenes that are anything but “good.”
There’s 1974’s The Chambermaids, most notable for starring Andrea True, who later had a big hit single, “More More More”; 1973’s Honey Buns, which is completely innocuous; and 1978’s Jungle Blue, which intercuts its hardcore inserts with a nonsensical ape plot.
(Music Box)
This utterly absorbing 4-1/2 hour epic (made for German TV) examines how disastrous Nazi leadership annihilated the German people, literally and figuratively: of the five friends and siblings we meet at the beginning of the war and follow until its ignominious end, only three survive, each in various stages of emotional and physical duress.
Director Philipp Kadelbach and writer Stefan Kolditz explore Germany both on a huge canvas and in microcosm; if there are unavoidable touches of melodrama, this is still an unforgettable three-part war film. The lone extra is a 20-minute director and writer “master class.”
The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story
(Eagle Rock)
The strange story of Syd Barrett—songwriter-performer extraordinaire who founded Pink Floyd and whose mental illness forced him out of the band after its debut album—is recounted in this hour-long 2001 documentary by friends and fellow Floyd mates David Gilmour (who replaced Barrett), Nick Mason, Roger Waters and Richard Wright, who quite touchingly discuss his genius and sad demise (he died in 2006).
The first disc also includes the full Waters interview; a bonus disc comprises the full Gilmour, Mason and Wright interviews—did Waters demand to be separated from his former band mates?
(IFC Midnight)
Though not the female Fight Club, director Josh C. Waller’s single-minded movie about a group of kidnapped women forced to beat the crap out of one another to ensure that beloved family members are not killed doesn’t have the most original premise.
Too bad the mind-numbing repetition of bloody revenge—not to mention a tease of a not quite happy ending—desensitizes the viewer after awhile. Extras include commentary, cast/crew interviews, featurettes, deleted scenes with commentary, gag reel and short.
CDs of the Week
Alfredo Casella—Complete Music for Cello and Piano
(Brilliant Classics)
Mieczyslaw Weinberg—Chamber Music (CPO)
Passionate Diversions—A Celebration of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (Azica)
Three chamber music discs by a strong composing trio begins with Italian Alfredo Casella, whose career spanned the the first half of the 20th century; his music for cello and piano—beautifully played by cellist Andrea Favalessa and pianist Maria Semeraro—is irresistibly romantic.
Mieczyslaw Weinberg, a Polish-born Russian who died in 1996, wrote music in many genres that’s only finding deserved audiences on disc and in performance (his opera The Passenger will be heard in New York this summer); this disc of his characteristically and wrenchingly emotional music, like his Trio and Sonatina for Violin and Piano, is performed brilliantly by pianist Elisaveta Blumina and violinists Kolja Blacher and Erez Ofer, among others.
Finally, there’s Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, today’s preeminent American composer, whose music has a strong reliance on melody as a modernist bent works its way insinuatingly into all of her compositions. The three formidable works on this disc are written for and dedicated to the superb Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, which plays with its typical assertiveness, especially on 1987’s sprightly Trio, 2008’s trenchant Septet and a Quintet based on Schubert’s classic Trout Quintet.
May '14 Digital Week II
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 13 May 2014 21:40
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Blazing Saddles—40th Anniversary
(Warners)
Mel Brooks’ legendarily crude 1974 western has become a classic despite the fact that it probably has two misfired jokes for every one that hits: but its gleeful sendup of every cinematic cliché and racial stereotype in the book makes it one smart “dumb” comedy.
Even with Gene Wilder, Harvey Korman, Cleavon Little and Slim Pickens, Madeleine Kahn steals the movie—naturally—as the hilariously named Lili von Schtupp. The Blu-ray has the same sharp transfer from the previous release; extras are the same along with a new half-hour Brooks reminiscence.
Otello
(Decca)
Since she rarely performs in New York, it’s always a treat to watch (and listen to) Italian opera superstar Cecilia Bartoli in action: she’s still at the top of her game in these relative rarities by Giacomo Rossini, a comic romp and dark tragedy.
In Comte, Bartoli glitters as a Countess being wooed by a Count in disguise; in Otello—not the masterly Verdi opera—the soprano is heartbreaking as the innocent Desdemona. On Blu-ray, the hi-def transfers and sound are peerless.
Dave Clark Five—Glad All Over
(PBS)
In this (for many) eye- and ear-opening documentary, the meteoric career of one of the British Invasion’s unsung bands is recounted in interviews with Dave Clark, other band members, and fans/colleagues from Paul McCartney and Elton John to Freddie Mercury and Twiggy, along with endless snatches of tunes and videos.
Too much credence is given to the claim that they were as good as the Beatles or Stones, but this snapshot of rock’n’roll history is lively and well-told. The Blu-ray image looks quite good; another disc comprises two extra hours of interviews and performances.
Home of the Brave
(Olive Films)
These World War II-set dramas treat their soldier protagonists seriously, even if they diverge when it comes to dramatizing heroism or jingoism: 1942’s Tigers stars John Wayne as the macho commander of a group of daring American flyers who take to the air against their wily Japanese enemies.
1949’s clumsy but compelling Brave—from Arthur Laurents’ play—concerns a black soldier dealing with the army’s institutionalized racism while fighting the war in the Pacific. Both B&W films look stellar on Blu-ray.
Her
(Warners)
One of the most absurdly overrated films of recent vintage, Spike Jonze’s computer romance about a lonely, anti-social geek who (surprise!) falls in love with the voice of his operating system is so pleased with itself that it drones on for two stultifying hours, stretching its one-note premise far beyond its meager limit.
Joaquin Phoenix’s goofily-moustached, nerdy-glasses wearing protagonist would be more plausible if he wasn’t so patently and symbolically desperate for some sort of connection, just so that everything can fall neatly into place in Jonze’s leaky (but somehow Oscar-winning) screenplay. On Blu-ray, the movie’s visuals look snazzy; extras include shorts and featurettes.
(Criterion)
For the 70th anniversary of D-Day, this visceral reenactment of what it was like for Allied soldiers coming ashore amidst that day’s carnage is out on hi-def, courtesy of the Criterion Collection.
Stuart Cooper’s 1975 small-scale film might not have the impact of a Full Metal Jacket, but its immediacy draws the viewer in, thanks to gritty B&W photography by John Alcott (himself a Kubrick associate) and forceful performances by Brian Stirner in the lead and Julie Neesam as the girl. The hi-def transfer looks miraculously good; extras include a Cooper/Stirner commentary, Cooper short film and various pieces documenting the war and the footage used in the film.
The Wind and the Lion
(Warner Archive)
John Milius’s spirited 1975 yarn, which overcomes its reliance on Rudyard Kipling-esque adventure clichés, has Spanish locations standing in for Morocco—the tangy cinematography is by Billy Williams—and amusing performances as Sean Connery as the Berber pirate who kidnaps an American widow (an unfortunately dull Candice Bergen) and Brian Keith as a blustery President Theodore Roosevelt.
The Blu-ray image is strong; extras are a Milius commentary and vintage making-of featurette.
After Tiller
(Oscilloscope)
One of the most devastating documentaries I’ve seen, Martha Shane and Lana Wilson’s study of the only four doctors in America who perform late-term abortions following the cold-blooded murder of Dr. George Tiller doesn’t flinch from diving headfirst into the complexities of the abortion debate.
There is no demonizing or caricaturing either side as the emotionally drained doctors are seen doing what they must for women desperate enough to want the procedure to avoid an even worse fate. An extraordinary array of extras includes a Sundance Festival Q&A with directors and doctors; an interview with the directors and one with Dr. Susan Robinson; and a vintage Tiller interview.
Alexander Calder
(First Run)
One of the great sculptors of the 20thcentury, Alexander Calder created an entirely new medium, the mobile, and also created massive artworks that have been placed in public plazas throughout the world, as this smart, succinct 1998 PBS American Masters documentary shows.
This entertaining 60-minute summary of this truly unique artist features several historians, art critics and others (like his good friend Arthur Miller) discussing Calder in familiar yet awed terms.
(Sundance Selects)
Noah Chomsky’s challenging theories in linguistics and philosophy—among much else—are brought vividly to life in this often playful film by French director Michel Gondry. Gondry’s witty animated passages superbly make what might seem arcane and distant to some viewers stimulating and comprehensible.
Extras are an animated making-of featurette, an interview with Gondry, and a Docfest Q&A with Gondry and Chomsky.
Kennedy’s Brain
(MHZ Networks)
This taut, globe-trotting mini-series, based on the book by Swedish novelist Henning Mankell, was dubbed into German for the local TV market, which is how it’s presented on DVD somewhat confusingly.
An archeologist whose son turns up dead in Sweden tries to find out what happened and, when she discovers that he was uncovering dangerous information about corrupt government officials, goes to Cape Town and Mozambique to dig up more evidence and becomes embroiled in more mysterious doings.
(Warner Archive)
Although his narcissism blunts this look at the near Herculean task of raising money for new films, director James Toback shrewdly lets Alec Baldwin, Martin Scorsese, Bernardo Bertolucci and Roman Polanski discuss their own amusing travails in the movie business.
With the Cannes Film Festival as a backdrop, cinematic history drenches the movie despite Toback’’s usual crudeness—he foolishly hopes to get financing for a quasi-remake of Last Tango in Paris set in Iraq. The lone extra is Baldwin interviewing Toback.
NYC Theater Roundup: Brits Off Broadway 2014
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 13 May 2014 04:17
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Playing with Grown Ups
Written by Hannah Patterson; directed by Hannah Eidonow
Previews began April 29, 2014; closes May 18
The Love Song of Alfred J. Hitchcock
Written by David Rudkin; directed by Jack McNamara
Previews began May 1, 2014; closes May 25
It’s that time of year again: Brits Off Broadway, a staple of New York theater since 2005, returns, providing another chance to see an imported stable of talented writers, performers and directors bringing their shows from across the pond. Chief among these, of course, is the Stephen Joseph Theatre, where master playwright Alan Ayckbourn has plied his elevated trade for decades. This year, Ayckbourn brings three works here—two new plays and a double bill of one-acts—which open in June. Meanwhile, I caught two Brits stagings: one impressive, the other not.
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| Hughes and Jackson in Playing with Grown Ups (photo: Carol Rosegg) |
A concise comic drama, Playing with Grown Ups explores an increasingly common “new” reality: a wife in her late 30s can’t deal with her newborn. Joanna, literary historian who “resurrects” forgotten women writers, is married to Robert, who teaches film courses at the local university. Baby Lily has frazzled Joanna, making her unable to handle the routines of parenting: when Lily cries, needs to be fed or changed, Joanna goes berserk. So Robert inviting his colleague and close friend Jake—also Joanna’s former flame—to their place for dinner is not the best idea, especially since Jake brings his latest conquest: 17-year-old student Stella.
Playwright Hannah Patterson and director Hannah Eidinow might ratchet up the drama until its overwrought finale, which falls flat even if, as shown onstage, it’s about the only place the story and characters can go. But despite that miscue, Patterson writes precise, literate and amusing dialogue for these characters—although Stella is far too mature for her age (which is 16 in the script; is 17 more palatable for American puritans?)—and Eidinow directs persuasively.
Daisy Hughes plays Stella with a commanding winningness that makes believable her superiority to the three adults, played compassionately by Trudi Jackson (Joanna), Mark Rice-Oxley (Robert) and Alan Cox (Jake). Despite flaws, Playing with Grown Ups treats its adult subject matter with intelligence.
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| Miller in The Love Song of Alfred J. Hitchcock (photo: Carol Rosegg) |
As a fan of the Master of Suspense, I was predisposed to like The Love Song of Alfred J. Hitchcock. So it’s too bad David Rudkin’s underwhelming psychodrama regurgitates clichés about Hitch, from his overbearing mother to his problems with women in general.
Initially, Love Song promises drollness, as Martin Miller—who looks like Toronto mayor Rob Ford—gives an impersonation of Hitch, not a caricatured impression: he credibly approximates Hitch’s voice, gait and physicality. But since Rudkin merely skims over moments in Hitch’s life—equating a couple of them with Psycho and Strangers on a Train, complete with obvious musical and dialogue cues for those who miss the similarities—the show becomes painfully inert, despite director Jack McNamara’s attempts to enliven the proceedings.
It’s somewhat perverse trying to resurrect an original film director in the medium of theater. Although Hitchcock would have found a clever way around it, Rudkin and McNamara are unable to find a stage equivalent. The Love Song of Alfred J. Hitchcock—even the title’s allusion to T.S. Eliot’s poem Prufrock is a desperate bid to gild itself by association to a greater work of art—commits the cardinal sin of being dull, which Hitchcock’s best films never were.
Playing with Grown Ups
The Love Song of Alfred J. Hitchcock
59 E 59 Theaters, 59 East 59th Street, New York, NY
britsoffbroadway.com
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