David L. Gorsline: Reviews

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 00:51:51 GMT

Well, there's still a lot of stuff in boxes to be unpacked, and not all the curtains have been hung, but I think that we can declare A Honey of an Anklet officially open.

Sun, 25 Jun 2006 21:16:56 GMT

Hirshhorn Museum staff were still calibrating proximity alarms and no-go zones for the newly opened "Anselm Kiefer: Heaven and Earth," or at least let us hope so. At times I heard three different alarms shrilling in my ears.

Kiefer is, for me, a fascination and a puzzle I might never solve. I fall back on echoes and comparisons: born in the last months of the Second World War, Kiefer's work suggests to me the cartoony visual play of fellow German Sigmar Polke and the smudged squeegee colors of Gerhard Richter, especially in Landscape with Head (1973), with its drawn-in sightlines and deliberate violations of pictorial conventions.

Kiefer's later canvasses, heavily impastoed and bearing attached contraptions, bring to mind Robert Rauschenberg's combines projected through Mark Rothko's gloom. And the turbulent, frothing power of his paint surface is the match for any 19th-century Romantic seascape.

A sculpture like The Secret Life of Plants (2001), which consists of lead plates assembled into something very like a gigantic book and painted with star charts, at once reminds us of Richard Serra's toxic, heavy, dangerous slabs; Joseph Cornell's maps of the stars; and any number of catalog-obsessed cataloging outsider artists. This same piece is painted with dots of black, each surrounded by a faded smudge of orange; these read as bullet holes to one reviewer, but look to me like poppies, offering both oblivion and remembrance of war dead.

The most enigmatic piece is the stunning Meteorites (1998/2005), also sculpture: a rain of boulders has smashed through a towering bookcase holding massive codices with leaves of lead, and the heavenly hail lies scattered across the gallery floor. The piece inspires more shock and awe than any simple maneuvering of troops.

For pieces like The Hierarchy of Angels (1985-87), the screws that hold the piece together are plainly visible; some bits of rigging are attached, others seem to be tying stones to the sky. It's as if Kiefer had read Tony Kusher's staging notes for another work that trades in the mystical, brutal realm of monumental eternity, Angels in America. Kushner writes, "The moments of magic... are to be fully realized, as bits of wonderful theatrical illusion—which means it's OK if the wires show, and maybe it's good that they do, but the magic should at the same time be thoroughly amazing."

Sun, 25 Jun 2006 20:16:50 GMT

The Other River: Ripples and Vibes from DC's Southside, by Karen Zacarías and Patrick Crowley, directed by Jennifer L. Nelson, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company at THEARC (Town Hall Arts & Recreation Campus), Washington

Woolly showcases stories by community residents and a spiffy new performance space in D.C.'s 8th Ward. Songs and linked sketches draw a picture of life in the neighborhoods south of the Anacostia River, of a people with limited resources but deep reserves of pride.

Production values are modest (the show gets a lot of mileage out of a front door-stoop unit and a section of chain link fence with a hole torn in it). Scene transitions could do with some tightening. Some oversized masks do great job of representing the changing racial makeup of Metro ridership as one travels through the system. The a cappella voices, music directed by James Foster Jr., sound great.

The stories' resolutions may seem uniformly upbeat to more jaded viewers, but this is the show the community wants to tell itself; this is a community weary of cynicism, one that cannot afford the luxury of irony.

The cast is built from Equity actors, students at the SEED school, and other community residents and professonal actors. Standouts include Vaughn Michael as Mr. Rucker, a local sparkplug who opens an organic grocery, and Maya Lynne Robinson as Latarsha, a trash-talking youngster with all the scene-stealing lines. She works at Benetton because "I speak fluent White Girl."

Mon, 19 Jun 2006 00:26:57 GMT

The Faculty Room, by Bridget Carpenter, directed by Howard Shalwitz, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

The Faculty Room, Carpenter's "dark comedy," takes place in the teachers' lounge of a Madison-Feurey High School, serving "an ugly small suburb in an ugly small town somewhere in the middle of the United States of America." Most of the story is carried by Carver (fresh-faced Michael Russotto), who is newly transferred into the school to teach world history and is more transparent than he thinks; Adam (wisecracking Ethan T. Bowen), cynical teacher of English who hasn't covered up all his own bruises; and Zoe (edgy Megan Anderson), drama instructor who is following Adam down the hard-bitten path. There are pranks, an unfortunate Halloween party, sexual hijinks generally not spoken of, a student book club for a series of novels in the "Left Behind" genre, an apocalyptic school spirit day celebration, and a miracle.

Woolly newcomer Bowen shines as Adam: imagine Hawkeye Pierce teaching in a high school with metal detectors at every entrance, abusing multiple substances, and yet teaching with passion. (It doesn't hurt that Carpenter gives him the best lines.) And Anderson continues to astonish as Zoe, swinging from hip confidence to binge-eating despair (Twinkies stuffed with corn chips?!).

Michael Kraskin submits another winner of a sound design: when the bell rings and the halls fill with students, it sounds like the intestines of hell. And Jennifer Sheetz dresses the set with all the "ancient inexplicable teacher shit" called for in Carpenter's script: three framed presidential portraits; a smashed wall clock; a battered plush mascot costume (Go Cardinals!); two No Smoking signs and a huge ashtray overflowing with butts; an out-of-commission overhead projector; and a Holocaust of broken chairs and surplus handouts crammed in the corner behind a storage locker—all the detritus of discarded good intentions.

Sun, 18 Jun 2006 23:19:55 GMT

Michael Apted introduces digital video technology in the latest installment of his septennial documentary series, 49 Up. As his subjects move into the age that they're becoming grandparents, Apted shows them to be more than a little weary of the periodic intrusion his camera makes into their lives, what John calls the "little pill of poison" that he has to swallow every seven years.

Sat, 17 Jun 2006 11:58:54 GMT

A Murder, A Mystery & A Marriage: A Mark Twain Melodrama, book and lyrics by Aaron Posner, music by James Sugg, directed by Aaron Posner, Round House Theatre, Bethesda, Maryland

The opening song tells you that you're about to hear a tall tale, and not to make too much of it. If you take that attitude, you'll enjoy Posner and Sugg's amiable bluegrass potboiler draped over the bones of Mark Twain's posthumously published story. The plot is one of the basic ones: boy loves girl in small town (a nineteenth-century Deer Lick, Mo.); is framed for murder by a mysterious stranger (who is either from France or Kansas); and is saved in the last reel so that he can marry girl. In this post-modern, self-referential show, the last-minute salvation is a message from Sheriff Rostenkowski from the next county (played by an audience member recruited by the stage manager [Cary Louise Gillett] at intermission) who comes bearing a "wanted" poster with the face of the mysterious Kansan (Scott Greer). If the "mystery" of the title is reduced to a couple of vague references about "the thing" in the past of boy (Hugh Gregory, played by the athletic Ben Dibble), at least the fourth-wall-breaking antics provide an ad-lib means for boy's mom (the underused Sherri L. Edelen) to deal with a bite of peach pie that's gone down the wrong pipe.

As director, Posner keeps things clipping along (the evening clocks in at under two hours) with an onstage costume change in the middle of a last-minute chase scene. He ends one of girl's songs (Mary Gray, sung by Erin Weaver) by having her pulled offstage riding the wheeled bench that she's been sitting on, without waiting for applause. Likewise, composer Posner is economical, reprising the love duet as a song of despair; giving a solo line to the bloody murder victim in the second act opener; using a tango throughout for the French man of mystery's music; and writing a killer minimalist jalilhouse blues solo for Hugh.

Does the book try to wring too much comedy out of the wordplay in "I love Hugh"? Perhaps so.

Weaver maintains breath support, whether she's being slung about by Greer in a tango or scooped into Dibble's arms. And Dan Manning, whose characters function as narrator, supplements Jay Ansill's four-piece acoustic band. He plays a mean harmonica, guitar, triangle, and mandolin.

Sat, 17 Jun 2006 11:58:27 GMT

7x7: Women, Washington Ballet, England Studio Theater, Washington

Septime Webre's squad takes on seven short, spiky pieces by women choreographers. Company poster girl Michele Jimenez dances a farewell (she is joining the Dutch National Ballet in the fall) in Helen Pickett's "Trio in White." Studio company members Giselle Alvarez, Corey Landolt, and Jade Payette show promise in "Stearc," set by Jessica Lang on a passage from Béla Bartók''s fourth string quartet. The angular dance is full of splits and floor-slaps, and features the company's well-loved black chairs. Susan Shields' double duet "Uncertain Song," scored by a selection from Marie-Joseph Canteloube's song cycle of the Auvergne, is by far the most lyrical and romantic piece of the evening, calling for some deceptively demanding partnering work for Jared Nelson and Alvarao Palau.

The closing dances of the evening, Jodie Gates's "Minor Loop" and Julia Adam's "Pillow Talk," are the most light-hearted of the evening. The Gates piece watches Brianne Bland and Jason Hartley crawling out of bed in the morning, reluctant to face the day, while Adam's offering takes place after bedtime as four sleepy dancers are trying to get some shuteye. Adam uses a loopy mashup of the "Zorba" theme and "The Orange Blossom Special" for her music; Gates is less well-served by interpolating electronica into a work by Joseph Haydn.

Sun, 14 May 2006 23:49:20 GMT

The Bach/Beatles Project, Washington Ballet, Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater, Washington

The evening-long project matches Septime Webre's State of Wonder, a new ballet set on J. S. Bach's enticing Goldberg Variations, with Trey McIntyre's Always, No Sometimes, a premiere set on a suite of songs (good, bad, and indifferent) by The Beatles.

Webre has the more daunting task: to find 32 different choreographic colors for Bach's collection of keyboard pieces—an air, 30 variations on that air, and a restatement. He goes about by dividing the work roughly into thirds, with three separate costume plots and a different keyboard playing the music. The first third, danced to the canonical recordings by Glenn Gould, stresses athleticism. Men and women alike wear boy shorts and the dancing is very fast indeed. But some of the variations are so brief that a dance gets going and then it's over: the momentum is lost. The middle third sets live harpsichord accompaniment (by Scott Detra) against a more sensual dancing: the costumes are drapey, with the men in bare chests and long skirts with lots of fullness. The final third could be called a return to elegance: the women finally get up on their pointes and wear long gowns with ballerina skirts, and the live music comes from a cool piano played by Ralitza Patcheva. Variation 25, with pairs work by Michele Jimenez and Luis Torres, is a beautiful ache.

Unfortunately, the piece as a whole gives off an unfinished, unsharp feeling. Variation 27 was not danced, and Webre struggles to make each variation distinct. His trick of making a passage be about rolling something into place (in this case, a keyboardist on a platform) , used so effectively in his Carmina Burana, here just looks like filler.

McIntyre does better with his task of writing for the Beatles songs (though there was some post-press rearrangement of material here as well). Three pairs dance a spirited "Ballad of John and Yoko," Jason Hartley and Jonathan Jordan dance one of their several fine duets of the evening to "Got to Get You into My Life," and McIntyre finds a range of expression to match the episodic "A Day in the Life," the evening's closer.

Thu, 11 May 2006 02:38:26 GMT

United 93: from the absolute ordinariness of a day in September, to utter mayhem, with a minimum of pathos.

Thu, 13 Apr 2006 13:27:02 GMT

Rian Johnson's first feature is Brick, an accomplished neo-neo-pomo-noir that plays out in a present-day San Clemente, Calif. high school, being nealry equal parts The Big Sleep, Twin Peaks, and Rebel without a Cause. In Johnson's world, a high school drug dealer is chauffeured in a Chevy Astro, a Marlowesque secondary school shamus takes calls from a phone booth, and clueless adults take the place of Chandler's feckless police. His eye for the photographed image is assured, and he can tell a story with a lot of the action happening outside the frame. Nathan Johnson and Larry Seymour's electic score adds the right offbeat note.

And I'd love to know who's responsible for the sly Gilbert and Sullivan quotation.

Sun, 02 Apr 2006 20:04:05 GMT

Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater, Washington

The company brings three pieces spanning the career of the experimental choreographer Cunningham, and they reveal how consistent his aesthetic has been over the period. Presented last but created first, Sounddance (1975, restaged 2003) achieves its effect by accumulation. Once the last of the ten dancers has entered, through a pouchy backdrop upstage, we realize that to this point, no one has exited. And shortly thereafter, the company forms a line and then one by one exits through the same backdrop, leaving Robert Swinston, who began the piece alone, to close it. A squorky electronic score by David Tudor keeps things moving.

Fabrications (1987, restaged 2002) is the "prettiest" of the pieces, if one may be forgiven that word. The arms are held softly, there are numerous circle patterns on the floor, and the mood is light. Emanuel Dimas de Melo Pimenta's Short Waves, performed by Takehisa Kosugi, is a soaring wash of sound overlaid with AM radio crosstalk.

The evening leads off with the newest composition, Views on Stage (2004). The avant garde elements— skirts and halters worn by both men and women, Cunningham's signature disconnect between music and movement—cannot obscure the fact that there is a lot of classical vocabulary in his work. Like Lego bricks squeezed together in near-impossible configurations, we see pointed toes, port de bras arms (even if severely arced, with flat hands), poses in attitude, a flash of partnering. John Cage's ASLSP and Music for Two provide the perfect accompaniment for this piece. The huge gaps between notes in ASLSP ([As SLow(ly) and Soft(ly) as Possible], a 1985 composition for piano or organ solo) allow coughs from the audience to escape into the air, a pertussive percussion that becomes part of the music.

Seriously, there is one audience member—must be a subscriber, I always hear the cough from the same place in the middle of the orchestra—whose singular whooping hack should be recorded by the Smithsonian.

Sun, 26 Mar 2006 17:36:17 GMT

There's a special place at the center of the Hirshhorn's exhibition of photographs by Hiroshi Sugimoto (b. 1948): in a darkened arc of the museum, thirteen of Sugimoto's large (3'x4') black and white seascapes are hung. They're mounted directly on the wall without matting, and each is lit precisely with a shuttered spotlight so that it seems to float in the darkness.

The composition of each of the seascapes, from locations around the world, is the same: dark water below, pale sky above, the horizon line exactly cutting the image in halves. The water is calm but never completely still; it is scumbled with ripples but not frothed with whitecaps. Sometimes the horizon is smudged with fog, or an overcast sun throws blurry highlights on the water.

Benches are generously provided in the gallery, set well away from the photographs. As viewers pass by the images, it's as if we were in a monochrome aquarium. Or a chapel of Mark Rothkos in silver halide.

Mon, 20 Mar 2006 16:11:23 GMT

The Corcoran Gallery of Art is exhibiting a retrospective of the works of Californian Robert Bechtle. Bechtle can be pigeonholed into the Photorealist school of painting—early in his career he began projecting photographic slides onto the large-scale canvases that he was painting—but there is a slight softness in his work that he doesn't share with artists like Richard Estes. As Charles Ray says in a catalog essay, he lacks "the surface glamour and optical dazzle" of other practitioners. Bechtle's effects with reflections are subtler, sometimes even murky, as in Portero Table (1994).

Instead, what he's usually going for are stunning yet understated geometrical effects. Bechtle acknowledges the influence of Richard Diebenkorn and a common interest in "strange interlockings of diagonals, edges." This is particularly noticeable in '67 Chrysler (1973), one of his large portraits of mundane American automobiles parked in a driveway or on the street. By carefully composing, selecting, and cropping the photographic image of a streetside 4-door, Bechtle divides the canvas with two strong verticals, dividing it into a triptych—an echo of his work from the 1960s that reliaced on multiple canvas panels. The vertical on the right side of the painting, reading top to bottom, consists of the corner of a house, the edge of a fence, a handrail (a tricky bit of perspective there), the B-pillar of the Chrysler, the seam of the doors, and a wiggly crack in the foreground pavement.

Indeed, along with a fondness for the flat, staring white sun on a stucco wall, the painter shows a weakness for the muted shadings of oil stains and skidmarks on asphalt.

Although working literally from photographs, Bechtle edits out details that don't suit his compositional purposes. Thus we see, in a comparison of the photographic source for '63 Bel Air (1973) and the finished painting, he has removed shrubbery and a Christmas decoration, but has retained "distracting" electrical lines entering the frame from above, as well as the identifiability of the car's license plate number. We also see in a work from the 1990s that he has combined two exposures of an interior scene so that the details of the room are legible (a self-portrait on a couch) along with the view through the sun-shot window (a Volvo positioned at a rakish angle).

Bechtle's other great subject is the casual snapshot of a suburban family group. Even though we can read a story and relationships in these paintings, nevertheless the strongest element often is the geometry, as in the displaced webbing of a piece of lawn furniture in Watsonville Chairs (1976).

Other, later works in the exhibition suggest the mechanical architecture of Charles Sheeler (Twentieth and Texas [1995]), the melancholy sidelong light of Edward Hopper, and nineteenth-century impressionism, particularly another view of the same intersection that is shot through with patches of peach and azure color (Texas Street Intersection [2000]).

Mon, 27 Feb 2006 13:10:59 GMT

The Velvet Sky, by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, directed by Rebecca Bayla Taichman, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

Woolly does scrims and footlights! And bunraku-style puppets! A mechanical flying beast is one of the first elements we see in this nightmarish fantasy, the story of suburban Andrew Palmer's (Matthew Stadelman) overnight escapades in downtown New York on the eve of his thirteenth birthday. The more troublesome emotional journey, however, is for his (perhaps pathologically protective) mother Bethany, who ultimately comes to acceptance that our children grow up, but they are never completely safe. Jeanine Serralles makes some gutsy choices for her D.C. area stage debut as Bethany, appearing in baggy eyes and insomniac hair (she hasn't slept since her boy was born). And versatile Dawn Ursula returns to Woolly in ensemble roles, including a wicked turn as a lonely museum docent who's a little too eager to help Andrew's father Warren (Will Gartshore) find his son. With its multiple midnight exits from cosy suburban comfort, the play owes a debt to Craig Lucas's similarly picaresque Reckless.

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 16:22:52 GMT

Ah, the Sixties. It was a time of pink-print minidresses and experimental film-making, as celebrated by Joseph McElroy's Lookout Cartridge. In 1968, William Greaves assembled a film crew, three handheld cameras, a couple of Nagras, and various other equipment and turned them loose on location near 68th Street and Central Park West on a project with the working title of Over the Cliff. With several pairs of actors, he shot auditions and rehearsals of a 10-minute scene of marital conflict, fraught with sensitive subject matter and (perhaps intentionally) stilted dialogue. He assigned a cameraman to follow whatever else was going on in the Park at the time: mounted policemen checking the team's permits, wannabe bystanders, a gate-crashing homeless guy. Barely in control of the process (we hear him utter statements like "Roland is in charge of all the equipment in the mornings"), Greaves suffered his crew to assemble after hours to deconstruct his authorial process. It's a bit like Walter Murch's analogy to the game of Negative Twenty Questions as a way of understanding the making of movies. Greaves then edited this mess together, using double and triple split-screens à la Timecode, into something called Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One. One of the most entertaining things about this movie is asking for it at the box office. Rereleased thanks to Steven Soderbergh, the film poses this question: is this a brilliant mockumentary, or is this self-indulgent malarkey?

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 15:49:35 GMT

Midwives, by Dana Yeaton, adapted from the novel by Chris Bohjalian, directed by Mark Ramont, Round House Theatre, Bethesda, Maryland

Round House's season of adaptations continues with the story of Sibyl Danforth, a lay midwife in remote Vermont. Retired early from this career and undergoing her own medical treatment for cancer, Sibyl (played by MaryBeth Wise) revisits in memory the events surrounding one of her last cases: the home birth of parents Charlotte and Asa Bedford. When Charlotte (Kimberly Parker Green) experiences complications to her extended labor and the Bedford house is cut off by a sudden ice storm, Sibyl (believing that Charlotte has died) executes a procedure of last resort, an impromptu Caesarean section with a kitchen knife. It is ~~Charlotte's~~ Sibyl's ruminations—did I do everything I could for Charlotte? had she expired or did I kill her?—that provide the engine of this story.

Flashbacks to the fatal morning are interlayered with testimony from Sibyl's manslaughter trial (at which she was acquitted), and it's a neat touch that Charlotte speaks the words of the trial judge, her voice amplified with a body mic. But, in some patches in Act 2, the script labors to escape the static courtroom scenes.

James Kronzer's set is up to his high standards: a warm-toned room framed by a scrim serves as the only playing area. It's backed by a cold tangle of bare trees rimed by ice, which is revealed at the act break. A nifty device (magnetic?) magically pivots a hospital bed into multiple positions without the visible intervention of crew. Martin Desjardins' deceptively tricky sound design (lots of actors coming on and off mic within a scene) includes a pitch-perfect rendition of freezing rain.

Among the cast, Stephanie Burden as Sibyl's daughter Connie (an obstetrics medical student) seems more comfortable, oddly, in her flashback scenes when she's playing a youngster than when she's playing her natural age. Lynn Steinmetz gives us a salty hospital nurse who's seen it all, medically and otherwise. And Rana Kay triples as a hippie mother and client of Sibyl's, a fast-talking gumshoe, and Sibyl's mousy and devout apprentice Anne Austin.

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 14:03:03 GMT

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Kennedy Center Opera House, Washington

The Aileys are most successful when the choreography calls for a loose, improvisational "can-you-top-this" vibe, as in the "San Sebastian" section of Billy Wilson's The Winter in Lisbon (1992), set to Latin jazz tunes by Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Fishman. That groove is also at work in the second section of Love Stories (2004) (Jamison/Battle/Harris), made in honor of Ailey. Everybody, on stage and in the house, has fun with the following section, which uses a remix of young Stevie Wonder's "Fingertips:" it's a lyrical spazz-out.

Ailey's own Witness (1986), a solo for Renee Robinson and scored by a traditional spiritual sung by Jessye Norman, is difficult to get a read on. The piece is lit, in part, by votive candles arranged across the stage; the mood is elegiac. The opening sections are so iconic, such a recapitulation of modern dance in the 20th century, as to be almost parody. Then later, in the closing section, as all of the preceding accompanying music is mashed together, the dancer repeats the phrases. Is she a portrait of perseverance, enduring in the brutal world? Or does she descend into introspective madness?

Probably the most interesting piece on the program is Acceptance in Surrender (2005), with choreography by Hope Boykin, Abdur-Rahim Jackson, and Matthew Rushing and music by Philip Hamilton. Lit by Al Crawford at low levels of raking light, the piece shares some qualities with David Parsons' Caught, also in the company's repertory. It's a languid, abstract dance for three men and one woman, a soul walking into the light for the first and last time.

Wed, 08 Feb 2006 12:40:24 GMT

If the artistic insights revealed in Daniel Anker's Music from the Inside Out (booked for a short run at Landmark's E Street Cinema) aren't particularly profound, the snips of music woven into the documentary are at times thrilling. The 2004 film asks members of the Philadelphia Orchestra, in interviews and just by following them around, what it's like to be a professional musician in one of the top Western-tradition orchestras of the world. As you might expect of people whose art is non-verbal, some of the spoken responses are rather pedestrian, and you won't learn anything new about participating in a group undertaking—be it theater, square dance, or softball. The mass interviews are particularly stultifying. However, co-producer and timpanist Don Liuzzi's interview passages are quite engaging.

No, what's fun about this movie is observing the many ways that these musicians find ways to make and hear music everywhere, all the time. We listen to first-chair trombonist Nitzam moonlighting in a salsa combo, and violinist Zach cutting loose with "Orange Blossom Special" in a bluegrass band. The traveling symphonists find street musicians: someone playing a glass harmonica, an accordionist playing Vivaldi in Cologne. Concertmaster David Kim (who gave up a faltering solo career to join the orchestra) leads a retreat in which participants listen to the sounds of nature and the spaces between the sounds. And there are stirring clips from the Orchestra's repertory: works by Beethoven, Stravinsky, Brahms, a haunting contemporary piece by Chinese composer Tan Dun, "Concerto for String Orchestra and Pipa."

Mon, 06 Feb 2006 17:19:42 GMT

After a credits roll that unspools like a police teletype, the first dialogue that we hear in Michael Haneke's Caché [Hidden] is "Alors? [Well?]" The emotional temperature rarely rises above that simmer in this subtle and chilling psychological thriller/mystery that takes place in the leafy 13th arrondissement confines of the rue Brillat-Savarin.

A person or persons unknown is sending silent videotapes of Georges and Anne going about their lives, sometimes accompanied by a childishly-drawn scene of violence. The tapes are banal, static, like the blandest of establishing shots in a second-rate movie—and yet, with no more than that, not even background music, Haneke spins up the tension into something oddly beautiful. Certain other shots, among them flashbacks into Georges's ill-advised past, extend the lashed-to-the-tripod esthetic: a refreshment for eyes glazed by too many handheld shots in other movies.

It's not important who's accountable for the tapes. The damage done to Georges (the ever-haunted Daniel Auteuil) is completely self-inflicted. He lies to his wife, he shirks responsibility, he fails to report a crime to the police, and thus he digs his own grave of despair.

Georges is a talk-show host on a program that reviews recent books. We see him edit an interview sequence to sharpen it, to point up the controversy. In much the same way, we see him edit and suppress childhood memories to suit his present needs. In a way, the film recalls the great movies from the 1960s and later about the technology of looking, Blow up and The Conversation. No matter how dispassionate and objective the camera or the microphone may seem to be, there is always a redactor who decides what shall be recorded.

Mon, 30 Jan 2006 12:46:28 GMT

Felicity Huffman pulls off a tour de force of physicality as Bree, a pre-operative transgendered waitress and telemarketer, in Transamerica. A road picture in narrative form, this indie film follows Bree as she finds a way to integrate her past and future lives. The people she meets on the way have a whiff of the gothic, but the sequence with Calvin Many Goats, a Navajo farmer (played with understated grace by Graham Greene), is a refreshing pause. The script is serviceable; we did enjoy the remark of a hustling drifter who explained that he was a "level 4 vegan: I don't eat anything that casts a shadow."

Sun, 22 Jan 2006 14:32:47 GMT

I've read somewhere that Otto Preminger considered Where the Sidewalk Ends (seen as part of the AFI Silver's retrospective) to be less than his best work. Still, there are a number of wonderful details in this noir from 1950: Ruth Donnelly's irascible matchmaker Martha, owner of the local dive cafe; the belted blanket coat that Gene Tierney wears; the nasal inhalers that top bad guy Gary Merrill (as Tommy Scalise) whiffs in nearly every one of his scenes. In a textbook example of noir doubling, a bandage above the cheek of Ken Paine (Craig Stevens) later reappears as a bandage on the chin of Det. Sgt. Mark Dixon (Dana Andrews), the film's protagonist and Paine's first-act killer.

There's a nifty sequence (that also sets up a small plot point) in a parking garage that is equipped with an elevator for autos. The camera is positioned in the elevator cab, facing out. In one continuous take, the gangsters drive their buggy into the elevator, tires squealing; the doors close; the elevator ascends several floors; and the mugs lurch the car out of the elevator. Props to cinematographer Joseph LaShelle, who worked with Preminger on several other projects.

Tue, 20 Dec 2005 17:14:46 GMT

Someone Who'll Watch Over Me, by Frank McGuinness, directed by Juanita Rockwell, Everyman Theatre, Baltimore

Frank McGuinness's play, recently closed at Everyman, is a study of three men held hostage by unseen captors in a city in the Middle East. They are chained to the walls of a prison cell improvised from an abandoned bath house. Though specified, the city (Beirut) matters not; their nationalities (Irish, American, and English) matter not. The play is about what a man will do to save his sanity, to keep his soul intact, when confronted by the blind violence of fate. Ostensibly a drama, the play owes as much to the comic role-playing antics of Lum and Abner, Bill and Ted, and Vladmir and Estragon—because as Edward, Adam, and Michael learn, the best tactic for dealing with this impossible, desperate situation is to laugh.

Aubrey Deeker is electric in the role of Edward, the Irishman. He is bawdy, hyperkinetic, using every physical means at his disposal. He is set off well by Jefferson A. Russell as Adam, the stolid, athletic American who is barely keeping himself together, and Richard Pilcher as Michael, the fastidious Englishman.

Production elements, under the helm of director Juanita Rockwell, are strong. Colin K. Bills's lights brown out at unexpected moments, the representation of a planned or unplanned power cut by the jailers. Milagros Ponce de León's set features two puddles of water at a low spot in the cracked tile floor (the water is replenished by a technician at intermission). The weighty chains that bind the men function nearly as a fourth character, as they resound loudly against a hollow built-up section of the set. Rockwell and her cast know how to find comedy in a look, in the subtle art of timing a take or a word. A fearsome, effective production.

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 13:54:10 GMT

A Year with Frog and Toad, music by Robert Reale, book and lyrics by Willie Reale, based on the books by Arnold Lobel, directed by Nick Olcott, Round House Theatre, Bethesda, Maryland

The Reales serve up an endearing light musical entertainment based on the gentle children's stories by Arnold Lobel from the 1970s and 1980s (not, for those of us still wedged into the Victorian era, the superficially similar stories of Kenneth Grahame). Will Gartshore and Steve Tipton play the titular pair as a sort of wetlands Bert and Ernie, with an ensemble of three (among them the versatile comedienne Sherri L. Edelen) filling out the roles of fifteen other forest creatures. Costumes by Rosemary Pardee are suggestive rather than Taymoresque: a chunky cardigan, fuzzy hat, tights, and fur-trimmed ankle boots (all in shades of gray) are sufficient to give us Erin Driscoll's pert Mouse, for instance. Movement styles are likewise only sketched, not full-on Method: Gartshore's Toad uses a loping hop to get from place to place; Bobby Smith's Snail has a priceless short-strided walk that takes a whole verse of a song to carry him halfway across stage.

This is a short piece, perhaps 95 minutes of playing time, punctuated with an intermission for the benefit of younger audience members. This means that the pleasant "Cookies" has to carry the weight of a first-act finale, which it can't quite do. And the narrative is extremely easy to follow, even for the most inattentive midweek season subscribers. The deepest psychology in the play is perhaps in Snail's second-act "I'm Coming Out of My Shell," a glam bit of out-of-the-closet whimsy. But where else in town can you see and hear three tap-dancing Birds, dressed in orange zoot suits and singing in 1940s three-part close harmony?

Sun, 27 Nov 2005 21:16:25 GMT

Starving, by S. M. Shephard-Massat, directed by Seret Scott, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

S. M. Shephard-Massat's easy-going comedy-drama takes place in "a new neighborhood for Atlanta's 'upscale negro population'" at the mid-point of the twentieth century. The compact play, with overtones of Shakespeare and A Streetcar Named Desire, follows the lives of five families who live in or near a four-unit apartment building. Not yet middle class, at least they are doing better than just scraping by; they include a Pullman porter, a sanitation worker ready to strike for union benefits, a high school teacher, and the proprietor of a small taxi service. All of them are well-drawn, and we want to know what happens to them; indeed, a sequel that tells us how Felix's labor action turns out would be welcome. There is a tension among the people of this neighborhood between the ways of the city and those of the country. Indeed, a bit of gardening by Archer sparks the first altercation of the evening, between him and Frieda (feisty Lizan Mitchell), who doesn't want collard greens growing in her yard.

Among the uniformly strong cast are Bethany Butler as Dolsiss—college-educated, privileged, and addicted to something nasty—and Jessica Frances Dukes as Bettie, a sunny-dispositioned girl off the farm in Florida who must face some heartache.

Shephard-Massat's narrative unfolding of events in the second act is perhaps abrupt. But the guardedly hopeful thrust of the play's resolution is inspiring.

Tue, 22 Nov 2005 21:34:18 GMT

The recent film of The Dying Gaul is an interesting study of way Craig Lucas changes his material as he adapts his stage plays for the screen.

The story of the play and the movie concerns unsuccessful screenwriter Robert (the talented chameleon Peter Sarsgaard), who has just offered his latest script (also called The Dying Gaul) to producer Jeffrey (the always dangerous Campbell Scott). Robert's script comes from a very personal place; Jeffrey says that he loves the script—but could the genders of the leads be changed so that the relationship is hetero- rather than homosexual? Robert resists, but quietly agrees. Then Jeffrey, mindful of the powerful position he's in, makes a pass at Robert.

During the rewrite period, Robert comes to know Jeffrey's wife Elaine (Patricia Clarkson looking very toothsome) as well, and the three of them become interlocked in a suite of hidden relationships that are hidden and manipulating. The character of Maurice in Robert's script is based on Robert's lover Malcolm, who has died; Elaine uses that information in her own power play for the heart of Robert for reasons that are never clearly motivated. The resolution of this story leaves all three of them, Robert, Elaine, and Jeffrey, severely damaged, with no one having taken the moral high ground.

Craig Lucas himself acknowledges that this is a dark, crispy story, written quickly in reaction to personal suffering. And he has Robert admit that the point of "the dying Gaul" is "oblique." The Roman statue depicts a vanquished enemy warrior—imagine today a documentary detailing the deaths of Iraqi insurgents—Robert's screenplay suggests, "maybe... some kind of compassion was awakened in the Romans," and that perhaps other people would be spared.

The play, as published in book form, introduces a fourth character, Dr. Foss, who is Robert's therapist. In the film, Foss is a marginal presence, appearing in one brief scene. By cutting away at Foss's screen time, Lucas keeps the focus sharply on the triangle of Elaine, Jeffrey, and Robert. Yet in so doing, he omits to explain how it is that Elaine got access to Foss's case notes.

The film's setting is very precisely specified as 1995, and Vincent Jefferds's production design keeps us in that year: the cell phones are sleek but a little bit clunky; Jeffrey and Elaine's ocean-view home with rimless swimming pool is to die for. There's even a good attempt to render the GUIs of online applications from ten years ago, with their garish graphics. (Of course, no movie shot of a computer screen with words on it will ever look completely realistic, because the words have to be outsized so that we can read them.) And from our vantage point, we understand how instant messaging works and don't need to be told, so that bit of exposition in the playscript can be trimmed.

The proximate cause of Elaine's fate is more ambiguous in the published play than the movie. The film uses an image (a tourist snapshot of Robert visiting the statue "The Dying Gaul") under the closing credits to emphasize the point that Robert makes in a closing monologue in the play:

ROBERT: ... each thing, no matter what it is, is a learning—it's an opportunity: to learn the rules. To perform.... "All men contain the potentiality of Enlightenment, and the process therefore consists in becoming what you are."