Word: deitch
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Vote (Nora Paley), sad-eyed lady of the psychic lowlands, flipped down and out on methedrine. In more level moments she makes love to at least four men (Jim Flinsch, Eric Isen, Robert Chapman, Jim Calvert). Anxiously to the rescue come two impotent saviors, her brother Michael Twelvetrees (Dan Deitch) and former boyfriend Steven Blaine (Dan Chumley). Twelvetrees has his own problem; he surreptitiously takes photographs of himself making love to girlfriend Samantha Quentin (Maeve Kinkead). And Blaine is afraid to approach Anastasia. He keeps watch from a phone booth near her apartment, smoking cigarettes and counting the gangbusters...
...that they are both alive. Says Brecht: "In observing this battle do not rack your brain for motives: concern yourself with the human element...concentrate your interest on the showdown." The play lives off power, the juxtaposition of the brute vitalities of the prairie born George Garga (Daniel Deitch) and the Malay lumber dealer, Shlink (Seth Adagala...
These elements of a not quite finished play become a damn nuisance after a while. They should have been rewritten. Especially in face of the finely directed and magnificently acted confrontation between Deitch and Adagala. Adagala moves with Stoic strength and speaks a measured rage from behind a white mask of makeup. Deitch's eventually triumphant vitality is less restrained. His eyes grip the audience even with his head hanging upside down off the edge of a table...
Babe backs up Deitch and Adagala with an engaging ensemble. Patricia Hawkins is Garga's selfish, brightly brainless wife. Jim Shuman, Anthony Mowbray, and Lloyd Schwartz as Skinny, the Baboon and the Worm respectively are a trio of underworld figures who are funny yet always potentially dangerous. And I. M. Lamb as Garga's father is the most amazingly impotent old man ever to live off his children...
However, there are at least three outstanding jobs. Dan Deitch plays his sour, self-righteous Angelo with a sibilant "S" that makes every word he utters sound selfish and mean. Susan Channing has the part of Isabella to deal with -- one of the most ambiguous roles ever written. Yet she manages to be both touching and priggish, and she is always believable. And Paul Schmidt, though he may not show the power and the glory of the Duke, does do a creditable job with a part that goes on forever and ever...