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Film and the Arts
Off-Broadway Review—Athol Fugard’s “’Master Harold’…and the Boys”
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 11 November 2016 20:35
- Written by Kevin Filipski
“Master Harold”…and the Boys
Written and directed by Athol Fugard
Performances through December 4, 2016
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| Sahr Ngaujah, Leon Addison Brown and Noah Robbins in "Master Harold"...and the Boys (photo: Joan Marcus) |
Unfortunately, “Master Harold”…and the Boys, Athol Fugard’s 1982 play about apartheid—the South African racist system which crumbled in 1994 with the election of President Nelson Mandela—is not dated: the current off-Broadway revival, warmly directed by the author himself, shows that it’s as unnervingly relevant as ever.
It’s Port Elizabeth in 1950. “Master Harold” is Hally, a 17-year-old who drops into the tea room his parents own one rainy afternoon after school, where two 40-ish black employees, Sam and Willie, clean and ready the still-empty place. Fugard shrewdly explores the power dynamics of these relationships—Sam and Willie are equals but Sam, more worldly, is the wiser one, while Hally is friendly with both men, but especially so with Sam, who is a kind of father figure: a kite-flying episode when Hally was a small boy is recalled by both of them.
Gradually—amid discussions of Hally’s homework and the Sam and Willie’s love of ballroom dancing—Hally’s own messy family life (sickly father and put-upon mother weigh on him) rears its head, causing Hally to end up lashing out at his unseen parents and then at Sam after the older man asks him not to say something about them he might regret. In a fit of supreme pique and unmitigated rage, Hally spits in Sam’s face.
The tension in this quietly devastating drama is built slowly and skillfully by Fugard the writer and director to that precise moment when Hally, Sam and Willie realize that their friendship has been forever altered, both by these seemingly quotidian events and by the strictures already locked in place by apartheid.
It’s all shown in painful and penetrating detail through the powerhouse performances of Sahr Ngaujah as Willie and especially Leon Addison Brown as Sam—Noah Robbins’ Hally, though persuasive, is less formidable—which allow Fugard’s percolating drama to sear itself into our very souls, dramatizing a bygone era of racism that remains, most distressingly, in near-perfect alignment with our nation’s own current political predicament.
“Master Harold”…and the Boys
Signature Theatre, 480 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
signaturetheatre.org
Off-Broadway Review—Richard Nelson’s “Women of a Certain Age”
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 10 November 2016 23:43
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Women of a Certain Age
Written and directed by Richard Nelson
Performances through December 4, 2016
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| Mary Ann Plunkett, Patricia Maxwell, Amy Warrren and Jay O. Sanders in Women of a Certain Age (photo: Joan Marcus) |
Leave it to Richard Nelson to write so elegantly about the most inelegant era in our country’s recent history. The third play of Nelson’s Gabriel Family trilogy, Women of a Certain Age,finds the family (82-year-old matriarch Patricia, her daughter Joyce, son George, his wife Hannah and their dead brother Thomas’s wives, number one Karen and number three—and widow—Mary) gathered at the long-time Rhinebeck, NY family home this past Election Night, November 8, which is when I saw it.
For 100 minutes, these six people discuss many things, including their sense of loss—Thomas’s death a year earlier, the family house going up for sale, Patricia now in an assisted-living center—and their hope for the future—George and Hannah’s college-age son voting for the first time and the possibility of the first female president—all while preparing a meal that was the Gabriel kids’ favorite from an old Betty Crocker cookbook.
In my previous reviews of the Gabriel plays, I may have downplayed the importance of food in these seminal works: Nelson’s characters sit in the kitchen in all three plays, preparing and cooking an actual meal, which the actors do as believably and entertainingly as they embody these rational, relentlessly normal people. When the Shepard’s pie comes out of the oven, piping hot, the actors leave the stage, one by one, as the family prepares to eat in the dining room and the play ends.
It all seems simple, even simplistic, in summary, but Nelson’s exquisitely detailed writing—his often funny and pointed dialogue takes mundanity to new heights of poetic realism—and deft directing are joined by the flawless performances of Roberta Maxwell (Patricia), Jay O. Sanders (George), Lynn Hawley (Hannah), Amy Warren (Joyce), Meg Gibson (Karin) and Mary Ann Plunkett (Mary) to make this intimate but expansive play help in the healing that our divided nation will be needing come January 20.
Women of a Certain Age
The Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, New York, NY
publictheater.org
November '16 Digital Week II
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 08 November 2016 13:47
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
The Durrells in Corfu—Complete 1st Season
(PBS)
In this breezily entertaining Masterpiece series, a widow, Louisa, and her four unruly children decide to leave stuffy old England for the Greek island of Corfu: unsurprisingly, drama and romance ensue as the five of them adjust to a very different way of living.
Despite its soap opera contrivances, Durrells is quite involving, thanks to glorious Mediterranean locations and persuasive acting, especially by Keeley Hawes, who invests Louisa with the three-dimensionality of a character in a great novel. The hi-def transfer is excellent; extras include making-of featurettes.
Einstein on the Beach
(Opus Arte)
I might be in the minority, but I find this 4-1/2 hour “opera” by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson to be one of the most enervating and sleep-inducing pieces of musical theater I’ve ever experienced: but if you’re on the Glass/Wilson wavelength, this 2014 Paris production will do very nicely—with the added bonus of pausing it whenever the many musical and dramatic repetitions rear their heads.
The performers (both dancers and singers) are remarkable in their ability to sing and move in unison, so there is that. The hi-def video and audio are first-rate.
Indian Summers—Complete 2nd Season
(PBS)
As the friction between the Indians and their British occupiers grows more tense by the moment, the second season of this conventionalM asterpiece series creeps up and shakes viewers out of your complacency, as the violence becomes more common both politically and personally, with often fatal consequences.
The splendid acting includes Julia Walters as a magnificently malevolent matron, and Jemima West, Amber Rose Revah and Fiona Glascott as women who, despite their second-class status, find that their own actions make for a kind of historic change. The Blu-ray transfer is stunning; extras include a 45-minute making-of featurette.
The Initiation
(Arrow)
Daphne Zuniga plays dual roles—a panicky college student with awful nightmares and her twin sister—in this moderately scary 1984 horror entry about a few sorority pledges and their boyfriends locked in a store at night with a murderous mental-hospital escapee around.
Director Larry Stewart repeats his formula killings—bludgeonings with an axe or garden tools—but a game cast (which includes Vera Miles and vivacious Hunter Tylo, under the name Deborah Morehart) keeps things percolating for a watchable 95 minutes. The hi-def transfer is good and grainy; extras include interviews, commentary and extended scene.
Motley Crue—The End
(Eagle Rock)
After three decades of playing schlocky cock-rock, Motley Crue said goodbye at a recent L.A. concert, pulling out all the visual stops that overpower their wan hard rock that, shockingly, many of their fans consider the crème de la crème of heavy music.
Mainly it’s the elaborate drum setup for Tommy Lee, which during his solo moves him up, down, around and upside down (he was already doing it in 1987, when I saw them, only without cutting-edge technology); singer Vince Neil, guitarist Mick Mars and bassist Nikki Sixx are adequate, and familiar tunes like “Girls Girls Girls” and “Doctor Feelgood” keep thousands of fans sated. Hi-def video and audio are first-rate; extras comprise band interviews.
Private Property
(Cinelicious)
This tense low-budget 1960 thriller pits two psychotic criminals (Corey Allen and Warren Oates) against a young married woman who obliviously allows them into her Southern California mansion while her husband’s away.
Shot on location at director Leslie Stevens’ own home, the terrorizing is forced at times, but Oates and Allen are especially effective villains and actress Kate Manx (Stevens’ wife) is full of a vivid aliveness that makes this creepy tale credible—tragically, she killed herself three years later. The film has been restored and the tangy B&W photography looks crisp in hi-def; lone extra is a new interview with technical consultant Alexander Singer.
DVDs of the Week
Indian Point
Among the Believers
(First Run)
Ivy Meeropol’s documentary Indian Point is a sober and even-handed look at supporters and protestors of the Indian Point nuclear plant—only 35 miles from New York City—in the wake of Japan’s Fukishima disaster. Though both sides make their points (for the most part) non-hysterically, all evidence points to an ongoing danger for all of us living nearby.
Hemal Trivedi and Mohammed Ali Nagvi's documentary Among the Believers trenchantly explores the never-ending War on Terror by showing the frightening indoctrination of children at the Red Mosque, a Pakistani fundamentalist organization; its matter-of-factness is its most chilling feature. Both discs’ extras comprise deleted scenes.
Saving Mes Aynak
(Icarus)
In Afghanistan, a priceless ancient place of archeological treasures—some 5,000 or more years old—is in danger of being destroyed by a Chinese company, who wants to harvest copper from directly underneath it.
Director Brent E. Huffman urgently chronicles the efforts of a local archeologist as he races against time, the Chinese and—of course—the Taliban to try and save a huge chunk of Afghan and Buddhist history from being obliterated. Extras are deleted scenes.
CD of the Week
Frank Martin—Ein Totentanz zu Basel im Jahre 1943
(CPO)
Swiss composer Frank Martin wrote this piece for choir, percussion and massive orchestral forces during World War II for a staged drama featuring Death as a sympathetic character; since it’s visual as well as musical, this CD provides only half the work. But thanks to a vivid, persuasive performance by the superb choristers, pummeling percussionists and first-rate orchestral musicians conducted by Bastiaan Blomhert, this recording gives of a flavor of the entire work, an interesting oddity from the most sophisticated of 20th century composers.
Off-Broadway Reviews—Adam Bock’s “A Life” with David Hyde Pierce; A.R. Gurney’s “Two Class Acts”
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 07 November 2016 16:15
- Written by Kevin Filipski
A Life
Written by Adam Bock; directed by Anne Kaufman
Performances through December 4, 2016
Two Class Acts: Ajax & Squash
Written by A.R. Gurney; directed by Stafford Arima
Performances through November 14, 2016
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| David Hyde Pierce in A Life (photo: Joan Marcus) |
I don’t know what suggested Adam Bock’s best play, 2011’s A Small Fire, a brutally incisive tragic drama laced with humor about a middle-aged working woman, wife and mother who loses her senses one by one. His new play, A Life—partly inspired by the deaths of his parents in short order a few years ago—is a less successful mish-mash that combines touching moments with a lesser grasp on what seems far more personal material.
A Life introduces Nate Martin, a middle-aged gay man in New York City going through his latest breakup. For more than 20 minutes, Martin regales the audience with a humorous monologue about his own failed relationships, complete with explanations of how astrology has become a big part of his life. After this, Bock brings in Nate’s best friend Curtis, then—after a tragedy strikes Nate—a few civil servants, either callous or sympathetic, and his sister Lois. The play ends with a shorter Nate monologue where he explains how he’s made peace with the twists and turns of his life.
Despite its title and scant 75-minute running time, A Life is a cut-and-paste job of things its author wanted to put into a play, and it’s neither as imaginative or insightful as it wants to be. Bock himself said that he wanted to write a long monologue for a middle-aged gay man like himself, and figured that, since he likes astrology, that would be the topic—so into the play it goes. Also, a sudden and shocking plot development is more interesting for how the audience uncomfortably registers it than for what actually happens onstage.
Then there’s an uncaring medical examiner so disengaged from what she’s supposed to be doing that she even takes a personal phone call to discuss frivolous matters with a friend; Bock balances her with a more humane female partner and by two more characters (also female) who work in the city morgue.
Overall, a few lines of dialogue sing and zing, but too much is heavily weighed down by dramatic irony, which smothers Nate even more than the grave plot twist Bock shovels him into. Anne Kaufman’s tactful directing and Laura Jellinek’s cleverly realized set help somewhat, and David Hyde Pierce is the perfect actor to bring Nate to vivid life, which is more than can be said for A Life.
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| Rodney Richardson and Dan Amboyer in Squash (photo: Joan Marcus) |
Still prolific at age 86, A.R. Gurney has, for his latest offering at the Flea Theater—the last at the company’s current location before it moves to new digs soon—written a pair of academia-related plays, Ajax and Squash, under the clever rubric Two Class Acts.
Too bad both of these modest one-act plays are merely agreeable. Ajax follows the initial antagonism and eventual relationship between a Greek lit professor and her precocious male student, whose modernized version of Sophocles’s tragedyAjax shakes up the classroom by transposing the action to today’s fraught political climate. Despite likeable performances by Rachel Lin (teacher) and Chris Tabet (student) and clever use of the Flea’s smallest space—audience members are seated at classroom desks—Gurney’s Ajax feels half-baked and, even more damagingly, half-witted.
Squash is marginally more engaging. Professor Dan Proctor is initially irritated, then intrigued, by his student Gerald’s pronounced sexual interest in him. (Gerald first glimpses Dan’s naked body in the school locker room after a game of squash.) Gurney makes some amusing jokes at the characters’ expense, but, after allowing Dan to explore his confused sexuality for awhile, hotfoots it back to heterosexual safety, with nothing apparently lost—or gained.
If Gurney doesn’t go deeply enough, his actors do, especially Dan Amboyer, who makes Dan’s wavering sympathetic (and funny). Stafford Arima directs with a light touch, which helps Gurney’s civilized but superficial writing.
A Life
Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
playwrightshorizons.org
Two Class Acts: Ajax & Squash
The Flea Theater, 41 White Street, New York, NY
theflea.org
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