Word: baba
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Medium opens on a black stage with a bare table, and some white gauze sheets hanging from the ceiling. Monica, the Medium's daughter (Katharine J. Kean) stands in her mother's salon, dressed in white, singing to her mute friend, Toby (Joseph Lee). The fun stops when Baba (Belle Linda Halpern) enters. This room and stage are clearly hers. Her dark eyebrows and dress match the black floors. In preparation for the sham seance. Monica hides behind a gauze screen where she can be the false voice of dead spirits, while Baba seats herself at the table...
...seance goes just as Baba planned. But, suddenly she feels cold hands upon her throat. Rushing her clients out the door, she blames Toby for scaring her, while fearing that the hands she felt were actually the hands of the dead. On another night. Baba hears a sound that does not reply when she calls out to it. Possessed by fear, she shoots her pistol in the dark "at this nothingless" and Toby falls dead...
Every actor sends at least one memorable chill up the spine. Monica (Katharine J. Kean), with her pristine appearance and voice, looks a bit too pure to be a daughter of Baba, but is excellent as the innocent ghost of a dead child. When she sings as a false spirit, her clean, lifeless half-tones convincingly conjure up the image of a dead child searching for her mother...
...Baba (Belle Linda Halpern) appears as dark as her troubled soul. Her voice, a bit weaker and rougher than Monica's, blends smoothly with her daughter's. When they sing a lullaby to calm Baba, the soothing voices hardly betray that the lullaby is about a dead lover with "eyes of glass and feet of stone...
Toby faces a difficult acting problem. He should be charming enough to be loved by Monica but disquieting enough to terrify Baba. The Toby in this performance (Joseph Lee) strikes a compromise somewhere between charm and dumb-foundedness, coming off somewhat like a sad hound. Toby is less of a presence than he could be, making Monica's love look more like pity and Baba's fear only the fear of silence itself...