Word: henley
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...Blue by Beth Henley...
Fortunately the Alley Theater has found a playwright who knows better. Pulitzer Prizewinner Beth Henley knows the limits of the form, and her Am I Blue. proves it. The other half of this double bill, however, suffers by comparison...
...like many a Christmas package, Crimes of the Heart neglects to deliver the goods. Once a comedy, it has now become a sad-sack elegy. The events that Henley and her cast pumped life into on Broadway have lost their juice. What went wrong? Is it that the intimate conversations, the teasings of Southern- gothic catastrophes, the colloquial bitchery ("She was known all over Copiah County as cheap Christmas trash"), the climactic conciliations -- all of which seemed fresh, if not downright impudent onstage -- play smug and stilted on the big screen? Or has something precious been lost? When does...
Purcell's debut feature comes out of the bottom of Beth Henley's script drawer. The author of Crimes of the Heart and (in collaboration) True Stories has down-home flakes down pat, but here they are too pat. Meet -- as if you hadn't met them in Southern literature a hundred times before -- the irrepressible outcast (Rosanna Arquette), the sensitive wanderer (Eric Roberts) in search of Miz Right, the good-ole-girl barmaid (Mare Winningham), the ex-jock with itchy trousers (Jim Youngs). In her eye blink of a role, Winningham is a buoyant delight, and Youngs nicely fleshes...
...David has a very bewildered sense of humor," Henley adds. "I wouldn't call it wry because that implies a sarcasm that he doesn't have. He laughs really loud at things and then gets embarrassed because he did." Still, getting on Byrne's wavelength takes adjustment. "I didn't put a lot of emphasis on the psychological motivations of the characters, and some actors found that a little troublesome," he admits. Ask John Goodman, whose portrayal of the earnestly romantic Louis Fyne is a memorable one, what he thinks about Byrne, and he will smile and say, "That...