Word: cullum
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...three-hour running time to just over two may have been, considerations of dramatic coherence cannot have numbered high among them. The female lead (Jobeth Williams) dies offscreen, her passing noted in just a line or two of dialogue. Another major character, a farmer and family man (John Cullum), gets shot by squatters, and his widowed wife and orphaned children react only by turning toward the sound of the gun. Charac ters tumble in and out like cards in a dropped deck...
...plot line is as simple as sin. Previously wed to each other, Amanda (Taylor) and Elyot (Burton) meet again on the terrace of a seaside resort in France. Each is on a second honeymoon with a fail-safe second mate. Amanda has chosen conventional, humdrum Victor (John Cullum), and Elyot has chosen humdrum, conventional Sibyl (Kathryn Walker). But Amanda and Elyot are blithe spirits: witty, sophisticated, selfish, mercurial. They skip off to Paris, make love again, tiff tempestuously again and, when discovered by the appalled Victor and Sibyl, steal off together again...
Five years before Elyot meets the disagreeing Sybil, and before Private Lives begins, Elyot and Amanda divorce. As the play opens, the two are newly remarried, he to Sybil (Katryn Walker), she to Victor Prynne (John Cullum). Embarrassingly enough, both couples honeymoon in Deauville. Worse yet, their respective suites share a balcony. But Elyot is as unsuited for the flighty, girlish Sybil as Amanda is for the formal, gentlemanly Victor. While Amanda and Elyot rediscover their old love. Coward argues, always humorously, that passion often blends both tenderness and hostility. And the tender and hostile moments in the Private Lives...
...satin and well-tailored fits, flatter the actors well, as do David Mitchell's sets and Tharon Musser's skillful lighting Mitchell creates a lovely art-deco Parisian living room, with a satin chaise, modernist artwork and large, slanted windows. And Katselas also surrounds his principals with accomplished performers Cullum, who won Tony Awards for Shenandoah and On the Twentieth Century, blends naivete with an almost treacly love for Amanda to create a character who seems unbeatable despite his efforts to the contrary. With a breathless voice, and a fey, almost stupid demeanor. Walker's Sybil seems both attractive...
...Green have followed the plot line of the famed 1934 screwball-comedy film, but that line now seems monorail thin. Lacking inspired lunacy, Director Harold Prince has taken refuge in camp and stylistic cartoonery. As Oscar Jaffee, the flamboyant theatrical producer who is down on his mendacious luck, John Cullum looks and cavorts rather like a Barrymore run off by a slightly defective duplicating machine. To make a comeback, he must sign Lily Garland, the woman he catapulted to stardom, to a stage contract. In that role, Madeline Kahn displays an arsenal of talents. She is kooky, vulnerable and seductive...