Word: raffies
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...parent of a preschooler, suffice it to say that Raffi, in the throes of middle age, is shaking his sillies out. If you have no children, or live with them on the moon, it might be easier to explain that the most popular children's singer in the English-speaking world has chucked a multimillion-dollar career, ended his 16-year marriage and stopped eating nearly everything that tastes good, all in order to carry out an uncompromising and very grown-up mission: to alarm the rest of humankind into taking better care of Our Dear, Dear Mother. Mother Earth...
...were merely Placido Domingo announcing that henceforth he wished to be regarded as a rap singer, folks might understand. But this is Raffi, the Canadian folk singer who has mesmerized more preschoolers than anyone else since that piper from Hamelin. His defection from the marketplace of kids' music is comparable to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's departure from the Lakers -- he leaves behind similar, smaller shadows, but none to take his place...
Most of the other characters--a brightly-dressed flutter of engaged, soon-to-be-engaged, and married couples--alternate between stiffness and competence, depending on how much artificial language their characters spew out. The ones intended to be irritating (Curt Raffi and Jennifer Burton) achieve a bit more success in such instances than the ones who are merely sweet (David Angel and Laurence Bouvard), but this, too, is only partly blameable on the actors. Children in bright dresses, tuneful incidental music by Brooks Whitehouse, and lederhosen all around contribute to the impression of a light and pleasant entertainment, the "comedy...
...aiming for minimalism, a severe understatement that admirably suits the grim plot. The characters wear black and wander around their comfortable living room (Quincy's unadorned common room) with the same aimless ferocity that characterizes their power games. Hedda (Julie Cohen), newly married to the buffoonish George Tesman (Curt Raffi), is bitter and trapped, seeking to find artistic fulfillment by manipulating the men around her. In the few days that follow her return with Tesman from their honeymoon, Hedda gradually becomes twisted in her own plots, trapped by the circumstances that once made her powerful. The sickening build from complication...
...tone, and her sudden still pauses are effective at first, but through too much of the play she seems merely to be walking from pose to pose; the intensity that could lead Hedda to destroy men's careers in her quest for "perfect moments" appears only in intermittent flashes. Raffi as Tesman and Linda Gray as Mrs. Elvsted--perhaps the feistiest of Hedda's intended victims--offer even less depth. Raffi in particular, though he seems to have a good grip on the well-meaning naive Tesman, over-emotes so consistently that his voice deteriorates into bleating...