Word: scrims
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...triumph for Talusan and his cast. This production proves that musical theater does not have to be sappy or cliched. The show highlights the modern problems of entirely modern love. The book is innovative and engaging, and the music, played by a "teeny tiny band" behind a raised scrim, is complicated and intriguing. Talusan's Falsettos is one of the strongest productions on the Harvard stages this year...
...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...
Which is why it's nice to have Ostrich Churchyard, the pre-major label, pre-gauzy scrim versions of all the early Orange Juice songs that aren't collected on The Heather's On Fire (and of a couple that are) along with a few live recordings. This material--to the extent it doesn't duplicate Heather-- is less immediate, slightly muddy-sounding, and requires some patience as Edwyn Struggles With His Emotions; it's quite worth your money if you don't already own the songs, though. Presuming, that is, that what you already own includes some taste...
...death of their son. This self-knowledge pervades the stunning finale. The husband has retreated to the Mexican inn where the couple spent their honeymoon. As he waits, on the traditional Day of the Dead, hoping his wife will come to him, she appears behind the haze of a scrim and lights a candle for her son and all the victims of her husband's ambition. But she does not come in. Instead, two sides of a wall close slowly, slowly, and cut her off -- perhaps for now, perhaps forever...
Director Barry Levinson, who has been known to place a sentimental scrim over the past, avoids the temptation here. He envisions old-time Hollywood as sleek, hard and distracted by its own overnight success. The whole town acts like an overhandsome star -- rather like Bugsy's friend George Raft (whom Joe Mantegna plays a little too kindly in the film) -- a dumb guy who thinks his prosperity proves that he's smart...