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Film and the Arts
Theater Review—“The Beauty Queen of Leenane” at BAM
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 20 January 2017 22:42
- Written by Kevin Filipski
The Beauty Queen of Leenane
Written by Martin McDonagh; directed by Garry Hynes
Performances through February 5, 2017
 |
| Marie Mullen, Aisling O'Sullivan and Aaron Monaghan (photo: Stepehen Cummiskey) |
The world of playwright Martin McDonagh is more sardonic than malevolent, and his Tony-winning The Beauty Queen of Leenane, is also the most notable: he introduces characters who put one another through physical and emotional wringers, often nonsensically, sometimes amusingly: but, in the end, we don’t give a “feck” (to use his favorite epithet) about them.
Maureen, a 40-year-old spinster living with her aging mum Mag in their barebones home in the small Irish village of Leenane, rues wasting her prime years taking care of Mag instead of having her own life. One evening, she returns from a party with Pato, himself home from doing construction work in England; he spends the night, to Mag’s shock. Maureen pretends that they had great sex and are now a couple; but before Pato leaves for Boston, his letter imploring her to join him—which he has his younger brother Ray deliver to her—ends up in Mag’s hands, and Maureen’s plans for the future are again thwarted.
McDonagh writes lively dialogue, but he also likes a rigged game. These people have wit and clever retorts but are also underbrained: we are asked to swallow more improbabilities than we can keep track of. How have Maureen and Pato never gotten together in the decades before the party? Why is Ray so imbecile that he wouldn’t wait to track down Maureen to give her Pato’s letter instead of leaving it for Mag to open? Why would Mag dump a pot of her urine into the kitchen sink every morning without cleaning anything afterwards? And does Maureen’s long-ago mental breakdown have anything to do with the play’s sleight-of-hand ending, which suggests that some—if not all—of the preceding two-plus hours are her own imaginings?
Obviously all this is so that McDonagh can make a black comedy unconstrained by rules of logic: Ray, who earlier complained to Mag that Maureen kept his swingball that got into her yard when he was a child years ago, happens to find it on a shelf near the door when he visits Maureen at play’s end. The power plays and emotional blackmail the women perform on each other become enervating after awhile, which McDonagh himself senses: the sudden eruption of violence is the next step, however implausibly it’s dramatized.
Still, while watching it certainly holds interest, and that’s due to director Garry Hynes, sensitive to McDonagh’s rhythms, and her cast, which makes these shenanigans for the most part entertaining. Marty Rea (Pato) and Aaron Monaghan (Ray) are never believable as brothers but they have McDonagh’s rap down pat, especially Rea in Pato’s monologue that opens act two.
Marie Mullen—who won a Tony as Maureen in 1996—plays Mag with knowing derisiveness, even if she is a shade too broad in her portrayal. Best is Aisling O’Sullivan as a simply stunning Maureen: she makes this self-contradictory virgin/sadist plausibly vulnerable and even sympathetic. What she does with Maureen’s barking insults and moments of defeated silence is create a fatally wounded woman who far surpasses what McDonagh himself dreamed up on the page.
The Beauty Queen of Leenane
BAM Harvey Theatre,651 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, NY
bam.org
Broadway Review—“The Present” with Cate Blanchett
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 19 January 2017 03:07
- Written by Kevin Filipski
The Present
Adapted by Andrew Upton after Chekhov’s Platonov
Directed by John Crowley
Performances through March 19, 2017
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| Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxburgh in The Present (photo: Joan Marcus) |
A teenaged Anton Chekhov wrote an unwieldy, untitled play that was never produced during his lifetime. It resurfaced after his death and has been adapted by fine British writers like Michael Frayn and David Hare under the titles Wild Honey and Platonov, the latter the drama’s eponymous protagonist. Chekhov’s original runs over five hours in performance, and that we are spared an extra two hours of one of the few reasons to be thankful for Andrew Upton’s adaptation, pointlessly titled The Present, starring Upton’s wife, Cate Blanchett and a host of hard-working Australian performers from the Sydney Theater Company.
Still, that means that, for three hours, we are harangued by a fatiguing group of Russians gathering for a weekend in the country to celebrate widow Anna’s 40th birthday, including her stepson Sergei and his wife Sophia; Mikhail Platonov and his wife Sasha, and Nikolai and his girlfriend Maria. Mikhail, Sergei and Nikolai are lifelong friends, and Anna has been close to all of them: but she is closest to Mikhail, who also had a fling with Sophia years ago—a dalliance which seems about ready to continue—is looking to seduce Maria and (why not?) Anna herself.
Although it has the usual Chekhovian ingredients—including one of the most important, a loaded gun—the messy stew that is The Present isn’t entirely the original playwright’s fault, for his humanity occasionally peeks through the mishmash. Instead it’s Upton’s: the adaptation (which at least whittles the head count down to a more manageable baker’s dozen) is scuttled by an inability to make any sense of the many narrative and emotional layers the young Chekhov piled on. And updating the setting to late 1980s glasnost-era Russia, whose oligarchs have their own set of complications, doesn’t make things any clearer.
Director John Crowley does Upton no favors by ratcheting up the performances to the point where even an A-1 scenery chewer like Blanchett seems downright dour as Anna, perking up only when she holds a gun or flails around lewdly to the dance hit “What Is Love?” in a ridiculously pointless scene. Other music choices are also suspect: there are Clash songs blaring at the beginning and end of scenes, but why would these Russians listen to the Clash? Just because Mikhail hands Anna a cassette of the group’s London Calling album doesn’t justify the aural intrusions.
The opening moments, after the first-act curtain rises, are lively and amusing as these people wander onstage after they arrive for the weekend celebration. But it all quickly palls for the audience as endless discussions of life, love, betrayal—and even a certain American movie Mikhail saw—are indistinguishable and anything but illuminating.
In a solid cast of thirteen, Jacqueline McKenzie (Sophia) and Anna Bamford (Maria) score best as they nearly create full-blooded characterizations, while Blanchett and costar Richard Roxburgh—our erstwhile stars—give workmanlike but uninspired performances in roles they are too old for, especially Roxburgh, whose middle-aged Mikhail is never a convincingly irresistible 27-year-old heartthrob.
The Present
Barrymore Theatre,243 West 47th Street, New York, NY
thepresentbroadway.com
January '17 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 17 January 2017 13:28
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Dog Eat Dog
(RLJ)
(RLJ)
Paul Schrader has always been a humorless filmmaker, and his new flick’s attempts to be funny are so witless and ham-fisted that every single moment feels forced, false and amateurish.
Nicolas Cage and Willem Dafoe are reduced to doing little more than striking inept crook poses, so they can’t be blamed for Schrader’s failure to mine blackly comic gold out of the killings of various innocent people (hardy har har). The film looks great on Blu-ray; extras comprise a Schrader commentary, Cage introduction and Cage/Schrader Q&A.
(Criterion)
Reiner Werner Fassbinder’s 1975 melodrama about a working-class homosexual and how his lottery win affects his already lopsided relationship with his new middle-class lover (whose arrogant friends also take advantage of him) is, as usual with this prolific but painfully uneven director, a mishmash of well-observed moments and mediocre filler, not helped by indifferent acting.
Criterion’s hi-def transfer is excellent; extras include interviews both archival (Fassbinder and composer Peer Raben) and new (actor Harry Baer and an appreciation from filmmaker Ira Sachs).
New Orleans—Music in Exile
(MVD)
(MVD)
Because of Hurricane Katrina, one of New Orleans’ biggest industries—its wide-ranging and vital music scene—took a massive hit, as so many musicians and the places they played were displaced by the raging waters.
That its music scene rose anew (even as it temporarily relocated to other towns) is what director Robert Mugge’s entertaining and hopeful documentary is about, through interviews with and performances by local luminaries as Dr. John, Cyril Neville, Marcia Ball and Theresa Andersson. There’s a decent hi-def transfer; extras include featurettes and additional performances.
DVDs of the Week
Command and Control
(PBS)
(PBS)
In this gripping American Experience documentary, director Robert Kenner adroitly visualizes Eric Schlosser’s massive book recounting a near-disastrous nuclear accident in Arkansas in 1980, including interviews with many of the principals and nice use of a mixture of archival footage and re-enactments.
The DVD comprises two versions of the film: the two-hour version shown on PBS, and a 90-minute edit shown in theaters. Either way—though more so in its longer version—Command and Control is an unmissable (and scary) experience.
Dancer
Steve Cantor’s engaging portrait of Ukrainian dancer Sergei Polunin introduces us to one of the youngest stars of The Royal Ballet, a celebrity who now has millions of fans worldwide thanks to YouTube videos showing off his dexterous technique and astonishing agility.
Although a little thin at 80 minutes, it does delve into his difficult childhood (his parents are divorced) and how his decision to leave Ukraine to dance affected his extended family. Extras include 15 minutes of deleted scenes.
Spheres—Claremont Trio
(AMR)
Performing the chamber music of American composer Robert Paterson—whose work I was heretofore unfamiliar with—the Claremont Trio displays unflagging energy and tastefulness.
His two trios, 1995’s Sun and its 2015 follow-up, Moon, are wistful yet muscular works with a surfeit of melodic and harmonic ideas enchantingly realized by the Claremont’s members (Sun was recorded with its original pianist Donna Kwong; Moon with its new pianist Andrea Lam). Sisters Emily and Julia Bruskin play violin and cello, respectively, with exquisite sensitivity, and Julia teams with Lam and fellow cellist Karen Ouzounian for Paterson’s pinpoint Elegy.
January '17 Digital Week II
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 10 January 2017 23:50
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
The Accountant
(Warner Bros)
In this clever but contrived thriller, Ben Affleck plays an autistic CPA cooking the books for the mob who conveniently has martial arts and weapons training from his military father: so when he becomes the bad guys’ target, he is able to take lethal aim at them as well.
Affleck’s taciturn turn works well for his character, while Anna Kendrick contributes her usual amusing bit as a fellow accountant who joins him on the run. Too bad that after the halfway point, the convoluted plotting goes off the rails and turns a guilty pleasure into an aggressively dumb drama. The hi-def image is excellent; extras comprise several short featurettes.
(PBS)
Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s impassioned, polemical but pointed personal history of the past half-century of African American life—from the Civil and Voting Rights Acts to Black Lives Matter—consists of four one-hour segments chronicling those five decades in expansive and intimate ways.
Gates speaks with everyone from Eric Holder to Jesse Jackson alongside well-chosen footage that spells out the importance of so many of these events. There’s a superior hi-def transfer.
Girls—Complete 5th Season
(HBO)
I’ve never been a fan of Lena Dunham’s obnoxiously navel-gazing career, beginning with her inept debut film Tiny Furniture and continuing with the consistently resistible Girls.
There are decent performances by Allison Williams and Jemima Kirke as the two least annoying characters in the series, but that’s scant compensation for what continues to be egomania run amuck masquerading as an insightful comedy series. The hi-def transfer looks good; extras are featurettes and deleted/extended scenes.
The People vs. Fritz Bauer
(Cohen Media)
Dramatizing how West German prosecutor Fritz Bauer, in the late 1950s against considerable pushback, helped Israel’s Mossad track down and capture Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Argentina, this intelligent biopic is anchored by an unshowy bit of superlative acting by Burghart Klaussner as Bauer.
Director-cowriter Lars Kraume—who also slyly shows how the repressive sexual politics of the time could destroy careers—has fashioned an important and absorbing lesson about not-so-distant historical events that mustn’t be forgotten. The movie looks sharp and natural on Blu-ray; extras are deleted scenes and a making-of featurette.
DVD of the Week
Eero Saarinen—The Architect Who Saw the Future
(PBS)
Son of a noted architect himself, Eero Saarinen surpassed father Eliel’s talent with his own genius in this engrossing hour-long PBS American Masters episode, narrated by Eero’s own son Eric. Creating iconic structures like JFK Airport’s TWA terminal, Dulles Airport and the St. Louis Arch,
Saarinen’s individuality is on display throughout. But even in its longer version—which, unseen on TV, is included on DVD—this program only scratches the surface of what Eero accomplished in his lifetime. Four short featurettes are included as extras.
(Film Movement)
As writer-director, French actress Maïwenn makes intense films about passionate characters: following her previous feature, the hard-hitting drama Polisse, is an exquisitely intimate study of what must be one of the most dysfunctional relationships ever captured on film.
Overlong and with too many emotional and plot detours, My King nevertheless displays Maïwenn’s fierce talent behind the camera and the equally committed performance of Emmanuelle Bercot as a woman who can’t drop the man in her life (a one-note Vincent Cassel). Extras comprise outtakes, deleted scene and Maïwenn’s debut short, 2004’s I’m an Actrice, with the director herself in the lead.
CDs of the Week
Ginastera: One Hundred
(Oberlin Music)
Tania Stavreva: Rhythmic Movement
(TS)
The 2016 centenary of Argentine master Alberto Ginastera’s birth went by with nary a whimper, a shame considering the exceptional works he composed before his death in 1983. A few recordings nodded to the anniversary, like Sony’s re-issue of his opera Bormazo. But the best is Ginastera: One Hundred, which showcases top-flight soloists in first-rate performances of some of his most renowned compositions.
Yolanda Kondonassis (with Oberlin Orchestra) plays the Harp Concerto; Gil Shaham and sister Orli Shaham the violin-piano duet Pampeana No. 1; Jason Vieux, the Sonata for Guitar; and Orli Shaham, the set of solo piano pieces, Danzas Argentinas. As satisfying as this recording is, it’s too short: at 55 minutes, there was surely room for another substantial Ginastera work.
Bulgarian pianist Tania Stavreva also pays tribute to Ginastera on her new CD, Rhythmic Movement: excerpts from his piano music are thrillingly performed by this monstrously talented musician, who illuminates Ginastera with works that exploit the rhythmic aspect of the keyboard, including her own pieces and Bulgarian folk tunes. The final track, taken from the final movement of Ginastera’s Piano Sonata, has Stavreva and drummer Will Calhoun exploring rhythm in fascinating ways.
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