Word: altmans
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...this event. Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches is, after all, one of the uncontested dramatic triumphs of the decade: a box-office smash, a genuine epic and the recipient of four Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize. One might say, then, that the transcendence of director Leah Altman's production is somehow inevitable, that it "comes with the territory...
...would be wrong to say so, and worse, one would be unfair to the stupendous work of Altman and her cast and crew. No play is so great that it is foolproof. If anything, mediocrity is more obvious when the potential exists for a brilliant night of theater. Angels in particular--with its large cast, its tricky, complex script, and its logistical nightmares of sound, stage and light effects--raises the stakes for success remarkably high. What we experience at the Loeb, then, is the transporting magic of talented dramatists giving the play, and the audience, everything they have. Those...
Angels in America doesn't really have any "lead" characters, and Altman's cast performs with the smooth excellence of a true ensemble. Shapiro, in her first Harvard performance, is a revelation. Harper is a sympathetic character but not necessarily a likable one. Shapiro dares to make her paranoia and love-starvation obvious from her first scene, but accents her performance so shrewdly with comedy and irony that the character devastates rather than depresses...
...Altman has taken equal care animating all of these (and other) characters, regardless of their time on stage. She places Angels in America where it belongs: in a complete moral universe of heroic risks, mutable ethics and terrible punishments. Altman's most recent directing project, last spring's revival of Mamet's Oleanna, was a wobbly production that tried to let its controversial subject matter speak for itself; it didn't. Here, however, she shows a sureness of perspective that recalls that other Altman, Robert, the filmmaker behind the human panoramas of Short Cuts and Nashville, and whose name...
...film's final scene mimics the final dressing room scene of "Raging Bull," the techniques Anderson borrows from his elders for the most part are not simply homage or imitation. The movement of the camera, which he uses throughout, suits his purpose well. Since his film, like many Altman films, is an ensemble piece, the camera wanders both to capture the wildness of the surroundings and to trace the lives of his many characters...