Word: aili
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...exaggerated part was Aili Singer's performance as the Jewish wife of a gentile doctor early in the Third Reich. Preparing to leave the country (to make things easier for her husband), she incessantly purses her lips and tenses her fingers through a series of phone calls to friends, then shouts her way through an imagined dialogue with the absent husband. A friend of mine who spent several weeks of a drama workshop on this Brecht play tells me that this difficult role ought to be played down, and I think he's right. But Singer just keeps pouring...
...begins with a "prologue by an actor," setting our own world's good guys against the bad, showing the present relevance of Brecht's rule. (Penn-Central executives get light jail terms for stealing thousands; George Jackson gets killed for stealing seventy dollars). The Caravan performance is only adequate; Aili Singer as Langmann is vicious, and with precise line readings and movement completely dominates the stage. Playing Langmann by a woman is an interesting twist, and with Ms. Singer, it works well. Joe Volpe as the coolie is also good; his character demonstrates the proper fluidity of stupidity. The rest...
...AFRAID. It would be so much easier simply to stop now, to choose and be done with it, to leave certain questions unanswered. Aili prods, "Keep going, Mary. Keep going until you know who you are." In the closet, the mannequin (Anne Barclay), an old woman now, with smile frozen, holds up a tattered veil. Frozen stiff with waiting. she holds forth the veil to the younger women; it is their turn to wait. And when He comes, she says, "strangle him with it." One solution...
Another solution. Those plastic breasts. It fits, after all, all of us, desire. Mary chooses, and grinds sexually, chanting, "Wow. Wow. Wow." "She's tight," they taunt Aili, who tries to refuse. "Very tight. And dry. Very, very dry." And when Aili shouts, "Isn't there something else?" the answer is simply...
What do we choose? There are no answers in this play, perhaps not in our lives. When Aili protests, "I can't choose. These are all your designs, not mine," there is no real response, for just whose designs are they? The designer, a man, answers, "You don't like my designs? Fine. There are plenty of women out there who do," but we know he is as terribly trapped as we. The mannequin cowers in the closet. And Mary responds, chanting, "Wow. Wow," as the men murmur. "Pose, Smile, Change," and, "Bang, I'm a man." Aili screams...