Word: aristocrats
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THOUGH the first musical for the relatively new Huntington Company, the production sports a professional polish. Delivering a baritone as rich as his impeccable surroundings, Rex Hays makes a commanding Baron, carrying himself like a true mythical aristocrat and offering entertainment fit for any peer. Even to, Hays cannot rival the performance of Mitchell Greenberg as Gaston, who makes even simple, stereotypical conquest seem lovable if not admirable. Breathing too little personality into her stereotype-fashional character, Donalyn Petrucci offers neither the melodious delivery of Hays nor the charisma of Gaston...
...chameleon, and in his new 20-minute video for the song Blue Jean, from his soon-to-be-released album Tonight, Bowie assumes two roles. Sometimes he is Lord Byron, sometimes he is a sign painter named Vic, vainly trying to convince his girlfriend that he and the randy aristocrat are buddies. Seems like old times, but the period is mid-20th century. "Blue Jean is a '50s-style short," explains Bowie. "This is where videos are going...
...dialogue -only song, dance and wallflower vignettes. A forlorn aristocrat fishes his monocle out of a champagne glass, fixes it in his eye, and one bubbly tear slides down his face. A 1930s hard-boiled hero, based on the young Jean Gabin, reappears 20 years later as the aging Gabin's Inspector Maigret. There is plenty of verve here but little charm; the relentless closeups favored by Director Ettore Scola (A Special Day, La Nuit de Varennes) turn every character into a comic-pathetic gargoyle. It is left to the nostalgic sound track to evoke the emotions...
...that all this local color doesn't include some serious issues. Lauren confronts quite a few of them as she works her way from suspect to suspect: the South Africa divestiture movement, the Black tables in the Union, a young Richmond aristocrat struggling with his homosexuality. None of it particularly fazes Lauren, who comes across as a sort of Nancy Drew with high SAT scores...
...bereft of narrative and description. The evening demonstrates only one astonishment. Edward Duke, the entire cast of Jeeves Takes Charge, is a festival of upper-class twits, from the harrumphing members of The Drones, young Bertie Wooster's club, to the nattering dames, to the one true aristocrat of Wodehouse's canon: the immortal, if tiresome Jeeves...