Word: singin
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...Singin' like a Bird...
...blackface charade is on the air! A troupe of darkies in their field-workers' clothes and prison garb are singin' and dancin' and funnin' away, in a skewed, bitter, made-for-TV version of the old minstrel show. The feet flash, the banjos are pummeled; the energy level ascends in megavolts, moving beyond satire into irresistible entertainment. And suddenly a weird thought creases the moviegoer's skull: TV could use a comedy-variety show with a self-lacerating edge; and Mantan: The New Millennium Minstrel Show--the defiantly offensive TV parody that is at the heart of Spike...
...import from Paris, mind you). Even the self-proclaimed (actually, government-proclaimed) flagship of the English theatrical world, the Royal National Theater, found itself bowing its hat to the Americans with a new production of Arthur Miller's All My Son and a stage of adaptation of Singin' in the Rain. Even the Old Vic Theater opened its doors to non-British writers and put up Frank McGuiness' new play, Dolly West's Kitchen, a sentimental (and surprisingly Neil Simon-esque) family-based comedy that deals with the issue of Irish neutrality in World...
...romance: a Jane Eyre from pop balladeer Paul Gordon and some of the folks behind Les Miserables. All you composers working on more versions of Martin Guerre and The Wild Party can put them aside. The musical is perking up. Broadway might be fun again if shows would stop singin' the blues...
...given the lilt of Irish laughter to go with his wastrel ways. But the film has the vitality of remembered truth. Is Frank hungry? He licks a newspaper for the residual grease of the chips it held. Is he sopping? He steps in more puddles than Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain. (Ten years the family rented the same flooded ground floor, and no one thought to lay a plank from the doorway to the stairs.) The three boys playing Frank at 7, 11 and 15 are fine. They create a collective portrait of a child tough enough...