Word: shen
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...example, the good woman of the title is Shen Te (Priscilla Smith), a ho' in pre-war Setzuan. A sort of Oriental Mary Magdalene, she is the only person in the province willing to house three Gods (Isabell Monk, Harry S. Murphy and Thom Molinaro) on a fact finding mission from heaven. The deities--who obviously left home without it--reward Shen Te with a small fortune and the admonition to continue being good...
...While Shen Te found it hard enough to be good when she was a lady of the evening, her windfall--invested in a tobacco boutique--makes it even harder for her to behave virtuously, with all the beggars, parasites, and unscrupulous MBA types hanging around. To keep the capitalist hounds at bay, she employs a lesson from The Importance of Being Earnest, disguising herself as her hardhearted cousin Shui Ta and executing all of the unpleasant duties of a businessman in his name...
This Jekyll-Hyde tactic works well enough until Shen Te falls in love with a grounded pilot (James Andreassi), whose sole desire in life is to fly. She sees in him the romantic dreamer--he sees in her the ticket to a pilot's job in Peking. Passion, betrayal, a broken wedding, pregnancy & lawsuits; Brecht packed enough plot threads in here to power a whole season of Dallas...
...Brecht spoke of emotionally "distancing" the audience from the actors, he was thinking in terms of yards, not light-years. Though Shipley's male alter-ego Shui Ta is an outstanding piece of physical acting (her face is concealed by a mask), she never quite makes you believe that Shen Te was either a prostitute or someone who Did It All For Love. Joseph Costa is fine as an unemployed hobo, but in the important supporting role of the Policeman he couldn't make the Keystone Kops second string. What's worse--or I guess better--is that several...
...really happy that the administration hastaken concrete steps to get this committeeestablished," said Shen, who heads theFoundation's student advisory board...