Word: staging
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...About My Mother, Pedro Almodóvar's Oscar-winning film of 1999, identity is not a stable character trait. A nurse becomes a prostitute, a nun becomes pregnant, a prostitute becomes a saint and several men become women. The much-anticipated stage adaptation of the film, now playing at the Old Vic Theatre in London until Nov. 24, doesn't settle on a single form either. Containing a film sequence and several plays-within-the-play, it is, like its transgender characters, a type of crossover - a trans-genre. What it wants to say through its densely layered metadrama...
...drug-addled, HIV-positive transvestite father, who now goes by the name Lola. He is elusive, but she finds Agrado, a transvestite prostitute he robbed and abandoned, and Sister Rosa, a local nun he impregnated and infected. Manuela begins mothering them both, and also befriends Huma, an aging lesbian stage diva performing in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. The quartet form a bizarre postmodern family that shares pain and solace alike...
...been enhanced by the adaptation. The theme of fertility - of pregnancies and menopausal women - resonates in the dramatic space of the theater, which as the curtain rises is pregnant with possibility, but by the end is filled with emptiness, as the seats are vacated and the actors slip off-stage. It is also a joy to watch so many women on stage obviously relishing an ensemble work. Diana Rigg's stately performance as Huma - and her excerpts as Blanche DuBois - anchors one of the largest casts at the Old Vic since Kevin Spacey took over as artistic director...
...stage also poses challenges to the material. Lesley Manville as Manuela, unlike her counterpart in the film, never displays the intimacy of her grief, in part because of the declamatory demands a large space places on an actor. Fortunately, one character who feels at home is the hammy transvestite Agrado, played by Mark Gatiss...
...fondness for foreign movies. It may be a decent bet that Groundhog Day - the goofy 1993 film in which Bill Murray relives the same day over and over again - is among them. The difference is, Murray does it in Punxsutawney, Pa., while Kim does it on the nuclear stage...