Word: realisms
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...larger than life, from the caloric content of the pastries at Demel to the Emperor Franz Josef's mustaches. For its new Die Fledermaus, televised by PBS on New Year's Eve, the Metropolitan Opera has constructed outsize rooms in Johann Strauss's idealized waltzing city with such vivid realism that they could be sold today as luxury condominiums. Eisenstein's residence comes equipped with a spacious sun porch; Prince Orlofsky's pleasure palace boasts both a grand foyer and a palm-court refectory that make Maxim's look understated. When it comes to grandeur, Otto Schenk and Gunther Schneider...
Some might say that she has set herself an impossible task in trying to balance those roles, to season force with humanity and realism with faith. Yet if there is one thing that Aquino has already committed to the safekeeping of posterity, it is her gift for stretching the limits of the possible. Last year, the widow with the radiant smile managed to turn history into something of a fairy tale. If she can now bring something of the morality play even to a hardened political world, history itself, like most of the forces she has already...
...also knows that by grounding his work with a few simple ironies, he can humanize his basic screen character, that of the dutiful loner, and separate it from upstarts like "Sly" Stallone and Chuck Norris. The sergeant's swearing, for example, is well beyond the grunting demands of realism; it is an aria of obscenities and more a commentary on macho posturing than an assertion of it. Same thing with the women's magazines he reads. See, he hopes to re-up with his ex-wife (Marsha Mason, full of fire and ire) and thinks maybe a little secondhand psychobabble...
...THEATRICAL PIECE, be it the oddest surreal composition or three hours of unstinting realism, must be the visible facet of a complete coherent reality lurking without the borders of the play. It must make sense, even if it is a sense never before seen. The job of the dramatist is to create a new world, or a new version of the world we know, and to put it in the same room with a paying audience...
...from writer-director Kaplan. Scenes are quick and to the point. Friends Neal and Brad (Will Provost and Matthew Schuerman) encounter Bevvy, the clinging woman (Karen Petrone); Alyssa, the Cold Pretentious Artist (Sarah Beck); and Lynn, the "mature" but power concerned puppeteer. All roles are performed soundly, with particular realism coming from a "golly-gee" Provost and the emotionally distant Beck. I'm not sure if Petrone's Bevvy is quite what was aimed for or not, but she does get a sense of "clingingness" across in any case. Schuerman impersonates the worldly beer-drinking buddy with recognizable accuracy...