Word: plot
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Eighty Days should not be billed as "a new musical by Craig Peters based on Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days". This is not a 'musical'--it lacks the necessary plot and unity, and will leave an audience expecting these basics disappointed. Eighty Days is a showcase for Peters' original music to be played and sung, and if viewed from that perspective, it's a show worth seeing...
...audience members, however, the artistry of the production overcame its harshness. Many particularly enjoyed the ending, which manages to be at once cynical, unhappy, exultant and uplifting -- a bundle of contradictions faithful to the novel by the late Manuel Puig. He consulted on the script and suggested a key plot change from the film: when the mismatched cell mates briefly turn romantic, the bond is not love but a quid pro quo transaction, each using the other to serve a purpose the other has not embraced. Only after the deal goes ruinously wrong do they discover true devotion...
Tommy is a fairy tale with heavy Freudian overtones. The narrative centers on spells and enchantments, ordeals and rescues, in a life verging on the gothic. The thematic concerns are more universal: growing up, facing down everyday demons, coming to terms with the past. In the current plot (there have been several variations over the years), the central character is a boy of four when his long-missing father returns home from a German POW camp. The father, presumed dead, finds his wife in the embrace of another man, quarrels with him and shoots him. The frantic parents instruct their...
...seen one Gilbert and Sullivan Operetta, you can pretty much figure out the rest of the plot without thinking too hard...
Solid performances were delivered by Michelle Sullivan, as Madeleine, and Spyros Poulios, as Fergus. The two leads seemed to push along the absurdist plot with energy. Poulios's intriguing accent and slurring, as well as his convincing passion were marvelously sustained throughout the work. His blocking and gesturing captured the simultaneously introverted and erotic Fergus with aplomb. Although sometimes dwarfed by Poulios's emotion and improvisation, Sullivan put together a convincing dramatic collage of her own as the tough and straight-talking Madeleine, a Madeleine that is intellectually, though not emotionally, in touch with Fergus's elan. Yet despite...