Word: soliloquys
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...perception: though this is a multigenerational chronicle that follows the main and minor figures of two Southern clans from 1904 to the present, the entire saga is really about only one person, the author. The trilogy is, not far under its surface of entrances and exits, a single long soliloquy--Price's own dark, spiraling meditation, mostly baffled and gloomy, often agonized, on human isolation...
...clashing incongruities of costume or accent, no radical deletions or insertions. Sets are appropriately dark and stark. The pace is brisk, sometimes to the point where speeches seem dashed off -- less expounded than expelled. But the rapidity mostly works. Hamlet's "To be or not to be ." soliloquy comes in at a hurtling but affecting clip; Fiennes seems less concerned with weighing alternatives than with feverishly fending off suicide. He makes an athletic-looking prince, and he manages to appear beautifully, brainlessly exultant in the final scene, with fencing foil in hand-savoring a duel that he considers mere sport...
...probably. But wordplay soon swamps a vigorous plot. Much traditional writing is, you might say, in this book linguistically taboo, a vast anomaly calling for a radical, slightly wacky approach to put things right. To wit, this famous soliloquy that a world-class playwright wrought for a moody Scandinavian scion: "Living or not living: that is what I ask." Or an alcoholic bard's notoriously rhythmical night thoughts: "'Twas upon a midnight tristful I sat poring, wan and wistful/ Through many a quaint and curious list full of my consorts slain." A mournful coda follows: "Quoth that Black Bird...
Here's an idea for Speed II: terrorist wires teacher's copy of Hamlet. If he gets to the "Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I" soliloquy -- Ka-BOOM...
...went out for cigarettes and never came back." This moronic blunting of the relationship between the two (in the original movie, Benjy's deceased father is mentioned exactly once) is introduced in a hackneyed song called "Larger then Life." This number is unfortunately typical in its irritating soliloquy style. As written by composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens the songs don't just pause the action, they bring it to a screeching halt...