Word: mama
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...SHEPARD is one of the brightest people in contemporary theatre, with credits ranging from La Mama to Zabriskie Point. In La Turista, he has written a vehicle which succeeds on the level of farce, yet never seems at home on any other level. The play breaks cleanly at the acts, although each act mirrors the other to some extent in setting and characters. The first act can be taken as an entertainment, a humorous diversion of no great moment, but it seems to attempt something more. Shephard gives us two American tourists in a Mexican hotel, confronted with a strange...
Promise at Dawn, based on Romain Gary's dutiful autobiography, takes little Romain from his boyhood in Russia to his early manhood in Paris. Beside him at every step is Mama (Melina Mercouri), who could give Sophie Portnoy lessons in classic and popular momism. Denied recognition as an actress, she seeks vicarious glory through her child. Mama forces her son to take violin lessons that he might be another Heifetz, ballet lessons that he might be Nijinsky reincarnate, French lessons that he might be a future ambassador. The woman's compulsion is infinite; when her son enlists...
...hero, Assaf Dayan (Moshe's son) is called upon only to look virile, admittedly a difficult assignment given such smotherhood. As Mama, Melina Mercouri (Mrs. Dassin offscreen) has moments of solar intensity coupled with an absolute lack of vanity. When the script calls for her finally to be ill and old, she permits the makeup man to do his worst and appears pitiable indeed. In its own way, her vital, uninhibited performance is mere makeup, covering the scenario's merchandised nostalgia. There is, of course, the melancholy possibility that the Dassins wished to construct a burlesque. Sadder still...
...that nearly everyone involved, Hughes included, is desperately trying to make sense out of Fellini's genius, taking themselves so seriously that they are failing miserably. Ross could have made an intelligent farce out of the spectacle of set designers and hairdressers, love children and La Mama actors rationalizing Fellini's social-psychological-religious urges while the director himself thumbs his nose at every available theory. But Hughes never quite conquers her awe of the proceedings, a flaw compounded by her cinematic illiteracy. (At one point, she refers to the famous film director Luigi Visconti...
...pity or terror. Her older son, Sidney (Ron Leibman), is the sort of chap whom a caliph would choose to guard his harem. Living on Manhattan's East Side, Sidney shuttles frequently between his own pad and the Hocheiser private loony bin, where Gordon continually threatens to throw Mama out the window. Offense is the order of the day, particularly in one episode when a gang of blacks forces Sidney to strip and rape a lady in the park. The "lady," it turns out, is a cop in drag who falls in love with his assailant...