Word: surrealness
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...pepper shaker, like a chess master toppling the king. The visitor went down. White grains of salt spilled out of the holes in the top of his head, and he expired on the flat white linen. The expanse of tablecloth had become for an instant dangerous, in a surreal way. The American had been run down by a pepper shaker from the Pleistocene in a restaurant named for the paramount white colonial of British East Africa, Lord Delamere...
...faults aside, the A.R.T. should be proud of this production and proud also that their season of six shows includes three by living American playwrights. Sweet Table at the Richelieu is a surreal tea-time, a peculiar mediation on memory and decay that owes as much to Milan Kundera as it does to Chekhov. It is not quite the "penetrating tale of nobility and charlatanism... guaranteed to keep you engrossed, hypnotised--and dazzled by rich language and seductive images" that the A.R.T. brochure touts. It is, however, a generally intelligent skillful, and well-written piece of theater, and that...
...conquerors absolve themselves of sin by the very act of conquest. He repeatedly urges himself to be a Napoleon -- which, Lyubimov acknowledges, Soviet audiences often took to mean a Stalin. These philosophical monologues, however, are kept brief. Lyubimov relies heavily on ritual and brief blackout skits that verge on surreal slapstick; he creates a milieu more than he mounts a debate. Like a cinematic montage, the story jumps from Raskolnikov to his family, his destitute neighbors, a deranged friend caught in a suicidal religious ecstasy and, occasionally, the inquisitor who seeks to extract Raskolnikov's confession. This structure is meant...
...there is a market for the truth. Writer-Director Stone was there, for a 15-month tour which won him two wounds, a silver star and the memories he now brings to paying audiences. There have been other powerful films about Vietnam, including The Deer Hunter and the semi-surreal masterpiece Apocalypse Now. But unlike those films, Platoon is at its best when it forgets "art" and acts as eyewitness...
Kopit, however, isn't content with merely showing us the familiar Dr. Strangelove crew of zanies. He also makes intriguing suggestions about curiosity and the allure of the vision of the ultimate catastrophe. Foreman's eerie, often surreal staging captures the sense of this fatal desire...