Word: accents
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This is, of course, all very subtle, and one has difficulty overlooking Tracey Ullman's coarse performance as an Italian-American butcher's wife. Aside from the fact that she looks like a man in a bad wig, she struggles to conceal her cockney accent and is inexpressive at best. Lili Taylor as Teresa tries too hard to convey a lowly monastic plainness, ending up as flat as Ullman. Judith Malina plays the matriarch Carmela as charmingly as an unfed pit-bull...
Towards the end of the movie, the National Enquirer-esque tone escalates, starting with the scene in which Ullman gives birth to a chicken. Teresa's first sexual experience makes the screen go blue and bubble as if underwater; Jesus shows up sporting a British accent, and instead of multiplying loaves of bread and fish, coats the room in red-and-white checkered shirts; and in the end, stigmata scars appear on Teresa's palms. All of this, and Joseph's sausage starts curing heart disease and cancer...
...relented. After that, I have only vague memories of what ensued. She had me in her spell. Her hands still holding my hand, her eyes glued on my face, she delved into my future in an thick Italian accent. "I see a man in your future, in seven months or seven years, do you understand?" I cringed. Please let it be the former, I thought...
Though the play maintains a tension between black humor and heartfelt sorrow, the production at times seems amateurish. This is due in part to the unfortunate attempt to create some form of a British accent, which makes Green Fingers resemble a well-acted high-school performance. And although the actors interact genuinely with each other, their movements on stage are often stiff, focusing on one repeated body movement to emphasize what the character is supposed to represent...
...their portrayal of the main couple which holds the plot together, Mitchell and Keamy create a believable tenderness. Despite a serious problem with his "British" accent, Mitchell plays the younger, innocent plant-obsessed boy with such sincerity that he takes the emotional center stage...