The 1950s often are cited as this century’s watershed for American theater. It was then that Lee Strasberg’s Actor’s Studio, whose members worshiped at the altar of a Russian psychoanalytic guru named Stanislavsky, dominated Broadway and off-Broadway headlines with a method based on recalling real-life emotional moments and transferring them…
Whenever food acts as a central component in a movie, it occupies a peculiar role–probably because, since eating is something everyone can relate to, it’s a reliable way to establish common ground with the audience even though everyone’s experience with it differs. Movie food delivers gratification without calories, even when…
I almost never react to situations the same way that people in movies do. Maybe I’m just too short-tempered and confrontational, but I always sense that if the hero isn’t as adept at defending himself against unwelcome verbal attacks as I imagine myself to be, then he’s not much of…
thursday september 26 Hamlet: Kitchen Dog Theatre stirs up an autumn blast of theatrical introspection with its production of Hamlet, one of Shakespeare’s most-produced tragedies. It’s also one of his least understood. This means that, unlike Romeo and Juliet or Othello–straightforward Shakespearean studies of human nature that should be mothballed…
Last week I decided it was time to update my personal ad. I think it had something to do with Wanda Bodine telling me that I was “the kind of scumball that no sane woman would ever date.” First I tried my usual flat-out lies: “Michael Bolton-lover likes trips to…
The critical disdain into which playwright Edward Albee sunk from the late ’70s through the early ’90s isn’t the surprise of his career. That he ever enjoyed the relatively brief affection of Broadway audiences and critics is the real anomaly. Albee has been called the heir to Arthur Miller and…
No two films should be more dissimilar than Girls Town and The First Wives Club, which open this weekend in Dallas movie theaters. Girls Town spent most of 1996 as a hot indie flick on the festival circuit, its story of a trio of New Jersey high-school seniors who strike…
American Buffalo, with Dustin Hoffman and Dennis Franz parrying with playwright David Mamet’s razor-sharp dialogue, promised to be the sleeper tour de force of the season. The opportunity to see Mamet’s sharply honed lines bandied about by actors with an innate understanding of the rhythm of words should have been…
friday september 20 Wallace & Gromit: The Best of Aardman Animation: Packaged together into one feature-length program are nine award-winning shorts from the British-based Aardman Animations studio, recognized throughout the world for cartoons and commercials that mix the surreal and the slapstick. Every studio has had its classic duos, and…
Going immediately to No. 1 on my Best of ’86 List was David Cronenberg’s drive-in masterpiece remake of The Fly, which was even better than the one Dave had already clocked in the Drive-In Hall of Fame, The Brood. What we got here is the same story as the 1958…
The neglect of American playwright Clifford Odets is partly his fault, partly ours. It’s certainly true that Odets–who applied his talents to screenwriting but could barely stomach the Hollywood establishment in the ’40s and ’50s–had a sanctimonious tone in his author’s voice. Indeed, his political affiliations were more naked than…
When filmmakers who already possess morbid, vibrant mentalities discover the topic of food obsession, duck. Audiences are likely to be splattered with all manner of deeply personal opinions about the human condition. Trouble is, our most neurotic talents in contemporary cinema know that a ritual so intimate as eating is…
Bill Watterston, the cartoonist who created Calvin & Hobbes, was so devoted to the concept of his strip–that a little boy’s toy tiger might actually come to life, but only he could see it–that he refused to merchandise the characters. It was as if making Hobbes a real stuffed animal…
thursday september 12 Three Tall Women: Six years ago, Edward Albee couldn’t catch a cold in American theater, having been pretty much shunned as a has-been writer wilting in the camp shadow of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Thanks to a 1994 Pulitzer for Three Tall Women and a spectacularly…
Lately quite a few people have been calling me a “greasy yahoo redneck” or a “greasy redneck yahoo” or, for those who didn’t graduate eighth grade, a “jerk.” It feels good. I thought I’d lost the touch. It’s been years since I’ve gotten good, solid American hate mail, which always…
There’s a moment near the beginning of Into the Woods, Theatre Three’s latest production, when you know you’ve ventured into Sondheim territory–and director Jac Alder has provided you with a whip-smart, conscientious map. Little Red Riding Hood (Emily Parsons) has just detailed her purpose for traveling through the trees–to bring…
There were several reasons I had not anticipated reviewing The Island of Dr. Moreau. Not the least of these was that early word on the film wasn’t exactly brimming with enthusiasm. Val Kilmer reportedly was so difficult to work with that he had the first director fired, and Marlon Brando,…
The Brady Bunch Movie was a sleeper success last year, but the film itself wasn’t quite as good as the screenplay’s primary idea: setting the film in the ’90s, yet keeping the Bradys forever in the ’70s. (The Bradys aren’t too out of it; they have their own home page.)…
thursday september 5 Utopia Danza-Teatro: Based on a reading of its press information, it would be tempting to describe the Mexican dance troupe Utopia Danza-Teatro as “experimental,” but there is nothing new or uncertain about the themes that underlie its mixed-media work–economic instability in its homeland and the anonymity of…
Has this ever happened to you? You’re watching one of the 347 cable boxing matches of the week. Let’s say it’s a match between Louie “Hammerhead” Santini and Frankie “Frank” Franklin. The announcer says: “Santini is wearing the diamond-checked trunks with gold trim and black piping. Franklin is wearing the…
Jean-Michel Basquiat was a middle-class kid from the suburbs when he first started living in a cardboard box in a New York City park in 1979. Jean wasn’t homeless as a result of financial necessity, nor was he mentally unstable. He was, instead, an artist. Using the signature “Samo,” he…
It’s hard to decide which we hear more often: that there are no good roles for women in commercial American cinema, or that this–fill in current calendar year–is The Year of the Woman in film. Whatever the case, there’s usually a self-serving public-relations motive lurking behind these proclamations. The women…
