Word: actually
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...centered production, of course, is probably an appropriate result of an implicit concentration on identity (here, ultimately that of a Jewish community in November 1938 that exists concurrently with Jewish communities suffering horribly in Nazi Germany). The allusive title binds the two in its surface mundane apperance and its actual reference. Yet this connecting of the dots in the greater picture just doesn't happen enough, and the audience--faced with the struggle of a number of fine performances but a frustrating lack of compelling, well-paced interaction--must pick up the pieces...
...tournament seemed more of a last minute tune-up for the team, rather than actual competition...
...such scenes accumulate, a viewer senses that, as with thirtysomething and My So-Called Life, two shows that could also be precious and manipulative and that had similar attitudes and characters, there may be stages to go through: disgust, annoyance, grudging tolerance, enjoyment accompanied by self-loathing, actual enjoyment. Right now, the pain-pleasure ratio of watching Ally McBeal is tilted in the wrong direction, but it's shifting...
...stylistic choices Lumet has made with the film call attention to its lack of content. The sets look artificial and freshly constructed, and there are hardly enough extras milling around to make the ICU resemble an actual hospital ward. At selected moments, all sound other than dialogue is suppressed--people speak in a vacuum as doors slam and gurneys rumble by in utter silence. It's a unnerving device, but by putting a magnifying lens to the dialogue, Lumet only highlights the stilted writing and heightens the sense that he's out of his element...
...find much of the action confusing. The play's program does provide scene summaries in English, and large LED boards flanking the stage periodically show abbreviated English translations of the dialogue. Frustratingly, the boards are seldom used: most of the dialogue remains untranslated. This is a shame, as the actual script of Umabatha contains some remarkably poetic language, even after translation...