Word: plot
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...printed program attempts to defuse any violent reaction to the composer's contemporary style: "The piece is accessible to anyone who will open his or her ears and listen carefully to it, giving it as much attention as a film with a complex plot." This was correct in one respect: listening to Dallapiccola's Variations invoked the sensation of watching last year's Mission: Impossible. No matter how much one tried to pay attention to the plot's convolutions, one was continually plagued by the question, "What is going on?" while the sole consolation was the star quality...
...this movie, scorewriter John Williams studied African traditional music and integrated it with the Western musical idiom he usually works in. The movie teases us with this traditional music, but uses it only to underscore savagery and apparent backwardness; any scene of real emotional charge or import to the plot is backed up with a typical Western-style orchestra and chorus. At one point, the Africans seem to have converted to Christianity, as they apparently hold aloft and make supplications to a copy of the Bible, a turn of events more than a little disturbing and perverse...
...seems like an exercise in futility to try to summarize a Gilbert and Sullivan plot, but the bare bones may suffice. Our young hero, Nanki-Poo (Jerry B. Shuman '98), the son of the Mikado of all Japan, has fled his father's court in the face of his upcoming nuptials to Katisha (Tuesday Rupp), a ferocious elderly noblewoman. While disguised as a wandering minstrel, Nanki-Poo has met and fallen in love with the delicious Yum-Yum (Caline Yamakawa)--but their amours were frustrated by the fact that the tailor Ko-Ko (Paul D. Siemens '98), the guardian...
...this, of course, is only what we learn with-in the first five minutes; as the play progresses, the plot becomes progressively more convoluted until even the closest of observers may be hard put to figure out, by the time we reach the obligatory happy ending, exactly who has been doing what to whom. But all this hardly matters. The reason for The Mikado's enduring popularity is not the complexity of its plot; it's the play's fast-paced, brilliant comedic development, endearingly ridiculous characters, unremittingly sparkling dialogue and clever patter songs, which include some of the best...
...punch. ("How's Laurie?" "Fine." "Yeah, but how is she, though?") Scott Zigler has directed with haunting spareness. And the acting is top-notch, particularly Patti LuPone, feisty and funny as Jolly. But raiding the memory bank has made Mamet lazy. His plays have never been much concerned with plot, but The Old Neighborhood has no forward propulsion at all. Bobby spends most of the time staring off into the distance, head cocked slightly, as if groping for memories, meaning, connection. So are we. Because the play, in its terse but meandering way, occasionally stumbles on a snatch of family...