Word: bahia
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Director A.J. Antoon has placed the action in Bahia in northern Brazil at the turn of the century. The play's divisions between city and forest, between earthbound mortals and ethereal spirits thus become racial differences as well. White colonial masters stumble through the enchanted wood uncomprehendingly, while brown and black aborigines, attuned to the realm of magic, dance to throbbing Afro-Brazilian music and cast voodoo spells...
...about 1986, the year humanity took its first step down the evolutionary ladder. The tale is a burlesque that mixes natural history, sitcom humor and the Old Testament. For the Flood there is conflict, economic disaster and pollution; the part of Noah's Ark is played by the Bahia de Darwin, a cruise ship that shuttles tourists from Ecuador to the Galapagos. There are baggy-pants characters including a Midwestern con man, a widowed schoolteacher, a Japanese computer wizard and a German sea captain. All converge for the Nature Cruise of the Century, an event that promises the company...
...send a movie audience marching out to the barricades, you must get them into the theater. Don't cerebrate - celebrate. Bye Bye Brazil does just that, setting a naturalistic tale to a bossa nova beat. It follows a tatty caravan of entertainers through the backwaters of Bahia, making music and mischief and the occasional friend or lover. The glittery magic means more to the actors than it ever will to the villagers; the show must go on so that the showmen can continue to believe in themselves. The attractive cast does not press this point; they too are here...
...foreign coexists with the Brazilian. My friends had both Guarana, a Brazilian soda made from an Amazonian fruit, and Coca-Cola in their refrigerators. We would go to a club to hear a singer from the state of Bahia--the "bulge" in the northeast of the country--chant rhythmic, Brazilian music and then drive along the beach, listening to Emerson, Lake, and Palmer on the radio. But there are the adaptations. I learned that the Portuguese word for razor blade, gilete, is also slang for "bisexual" (two sides of a razor blade...