Word: crafting
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MERT AND PHIL. Flawed in craft but spunky in spirit, Anne Burr's unflinching drama dared playgoers to face the corruption of the flesh and the death of love...
...first, often hilarious section, they are cast as voyeurs, peering coolly into cages, stop watches and check lists at the ready, to study the sexual behavior of their victims. "Did you record that interaction?" one of them inquires in the ineffable jargon of his craft, as male gorilla approaches female. The analogy between ape and human behavior in this realm is dubious at best, the more so when the subjects are "interacting" not in their natural state but in prison. This portion of Primate makes the Yerkes crowd look like fugitives from a Woody Allen movie...
...first three novels, John Fowles displayed a talent for taking risks. The Collector (1963), The Magus (1966) and The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969) came in impressive sequence, one surpassing another in virtuosity, like the work of a magician developing his craft, slow motion, before his audience. The Collector was a comparatively simple pass?butterflies in psychotic transformation turned into pinioned women, perhaps a gothic variation on Lepidopterist Nabokov. In The Magus, Fowles worked gaudier effects: allegory, romance, black magic. The French Lieutenant's Woman played the entire Victorian milieu against the 20th century; Fowles could so persuasively dream...
Donen is a director of sophistication and invention whose entertainments like Charade and Two for the Road are object lessons in how to craft the kind of movies they are not supposed to be making any more-movies that are smart, funny and piquant. Because Donen's films are usually so polished, there is a tendency to think of him as a specialist in after-dinner-mint amusements, but that designation does him an injustice. It ignores the abounding vitality and brassiness of On the Town, Singin' in the Rain and It's Always Fair Weather...
...beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder. More than likely, the play and Joseph Papp are being lambasted for presenting subjects that audiences deeply dread facing: the corruption of the flesh, the death of love, and growing old in bleak utter loneliness. There may be too little craft in Mert and Phil, but there is undeniable courage...