Word: spinella
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Streamers)--works on a much smaller canvas here. He immerses us in clinical details--like the doctor's careful instructions on how to take a fatal dose of pills (one at a time, with as little water as possible) or the compulsive conversation of the victim's lover (Stephen Spinella), who forces himself to go out to a movie when the deed is done. The narrow focus can be constricting (this is a small play on a big theme), but Rabe's jittery, naturalistic dialogue and Douglas Hughes' knife-edge direction make it a powerful, unmistakably theatrical event...
...once the play's villain and hero. Ron Leibman, in the role of his career, makes the ruthless lawyer a delinquent child, waggling his tongue, mocking his superiors, cackling as he spews abuse, playing the telephone like an organ as he hypocritically curries or grandiosely dispenses favor. Stephen Spinella as the sick, saintly queen and Joe Mantello as his unhinged lover are endlessly watchable, nakedly real. Alas, David Marshall Grant and Marcia Gay Harden are ciphers as the Mormons, he as stolid as wood and she vibrating like Jell-O; neither offers insight into the pain that mainstream audiences...
...other actors are bland, save for Cynthia Mace as the Mormon's deranged ; wife, but her role starts at a mountaintop of emotional frenzy and leaves her nowhere to go. As a gay man who deserts a dying lover, Joe Mantello projects a nihilism far more intriguing than Stephen Spinella's saintliness as the lover, although Spinella has the almost unplayable task of being visited by angels, ascending to heaven and returning to earth -- alive despite two apparent death scenes -- to bless the multitudes. Kushner has said the play's second half is two drafts away from being done...