Word: napier
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Director Trevor Nunn and designer John Napier, the Cats team, have fashioned one coup de theatre after another, reprising Wilder's opening with the newly deceased hero (Alan Campbell as Joe Gillis) facedown in a swimming pool, and working up to a levitating mansion. This larger-than-larger-than-life approach ; doomed the gentle Aspects, but it suits the more histrionic material of Sunset. Some of the lyrics, though, have got to go. To have Joe sing that L.A. has changed a lot "since those brave gold rush pioneers/ Came in their creaky covered wagons" is ridiculous. L.A. barely existed...
...physical production is much the same, but the elaborate set movements mesh better. Designer John Napier has added one brilliant flash of wit. After Norma's epic mad scene ("I'm ready for my close-up"), a scrim falls and reveals an image of Close, looking girlish and made up in the beestung-lip style of the 1920s. It is, chillingly, the only time one sees Norma's legendary screen face...
...cramped others. And even more than in the original version, the show sorely lacks the cinematic fluidity of Les Miserables or The Phantom of the Opera. But Hytner has triumphed at the end, making what used to be an unbearably depressing suicide mercifully less graphic. With set designer John Napier, he has found a less realistic, more suggestive look that better serves the metaphorical layers of this most ambitious musical -- yet is entirely congenial to that helicopter...
...might be equally cynical about men opening up to other men. Atlanta psychologist Augustus Napier tells of two doctors whose lockers were next to each other in the surgical dressing room of a hospital. For years they talked about sports, money and other safe "male" subjects. Then one of them learned that the other had tried to commit suicide -- and had never so much as mentioned the attempt to him. So much for male bonding...
...activities like drumming aren't as dumb as they may look. Even though no words are exchanged, the men at these sessions get something from other men that they earnestly need: understanding and acceptance. "The solitude of men is the most difficult single thing to change," says Napier. These retreats provide cover for some spiritual reconnaissance too risky to attempt in the company of women. "It's like crying," says Michael Meade. "Men are afraid that if they start, they'll cry forever...