Word: stoppard
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...Stoppard...
...poster says: "Rough Crossing by Tom Stoppard. Music by Andre Previn." But don't expect a Broadway crowd pleaser. Rough Crossing isn't really a musical. It's not really by Tom Stoppard either. But billing aside, the production at Quincy House is an enjoyable rendition of an intelligent farce...
Rough Crossing, Stoppard's adaptation of Ferenec Molnar's classic Play at the Castle, has all of the usual Stoppard word wizardry as well as some wonderfully insipid musical numbers. On board the Italian Castle two writers scramble to put together their musical comedy before the boat reaches New York. In their way are a composer who can't speak, an actor who can't act, a prima donna with whom both the composer and the actor are in love, and an indefatigable porter. As they attempt to find an ending, the two writers offer typically Stoppard commentary...
...kind of underworld groupie who is appreciative of their style and implicated in their actions but still one ironic step outside their souls, and who is ready to analyze every movement and moment in 484 pages of headlong streetwise orotundity and subordinate clauses even longer than this one. Tom Stoppard's script daringly dumps that voice (there is no voice-over narration) and puts its trust in other eloquences: Doctorow's story and dialogue, the actors' faces, Benton's tactful direction...
...feels it went wrong long before Tom Stoppard sat down to write his doggedly faithful adaptation of John le Carre's best seller, long before director Fred Schepisi shouted "Action!" (or, possibly, in this case, "Stasis!"), perhaps even before the novelist set to work on his book. Le Carre seems to have gone off at about the moment the literary world made him its designated serious entertainer and he started believing his enthralled reviews. All his recent books contain far more writing than they require to explore their conventional characters and ideas. "Oh, get on with it," one snorts, setting...