Word: shrewish
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...crosses his angelic avenger's face as he sets most of his relatives and friends (including his mistress, played by Isabelle Huppert) on their self-destructive courses. When Cordier draws the bottom line on his moral accounting, two petty criminals, his mistress's brutal husband, his own shrewish wife and her doltish nephew-lover have all been neatly written off as dead liabilities. He can now face the calamity of World War II with his own small set of books balanced...
...ballet is basically a good-will-be-rewarded morality tale, and the characters are conceived on this level. There are the ugly stepsisters (David Drummond and Larry Robertson), cavorting with bovine vulgarity, the shrewish stepmother (Elaine Bauer), and Cinderella herself (Laura Young), a painfully angelic victim. We can't be expected to take these people seriously, and Cunningham doesn't either. Large chunks of the ballet are given over to slapstick--the stepsisters squabble tug-of-war fashion over a shawl, or trip over each other to greet the Prince (Woytek Lowski). The liveliest moments are high comedy having nothing...
...that job, and in rapid succession he loses a few others--houseboy, gas station attendant, waiter, road crew--when the white employers become displeased with him. These contacts with Afrikaaners and Britishers--who insist on being called "Boss" or something equally demeaning--are typified in this encounter with the shrewish woman who hires, then summarily fires, Zach as her houseboy...
...other developed characters--there are only two, which stands as an appreciable flaw in the script--manage to keep up with Jero throughout. Deborah Adams portrays Amope, a classically shrewish woman who bitches her rather nerdy husband, Chume, to distraction and even manages to ruffle the seemingly unflappable Jero. Adams plays it just right: the piercing shrill of her voice could cause inner-ear disturbance and she cuts a very intimidating figure without descending to the level of parody. Even better is Marlon Riggs as Chume, who rants and raves hysterically with near-perfect comic timing...
Similarly, Frances Gross, in her portrayal of Grover Bagby's shrewish wife Cora who deduces what's really going on, shows a little too much shrew. And the four maids who comprise the play's chorus are too disorganized in their organized disorganization for their own good. Only Vivian Cavalieri, the first maid, could do anything so practical as sing completely, and quite well, on tune...