Word: theaterful
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...award Senator Ted Kennedy an honorary degree. His contributions to Harvard, Massachusetts, and the United States are simply too great to go unrecognized. In light of his recent diagnosis, we hope that President Faust and her fellow members of the governing boards will call his name at Tercentenary Theater this year...
...first is Schenectady, the working-class city near Albany where Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a theater director, lives with his artist wife Adele (Catherine Keener) and their young daughter Olive (Amy Goldstein). Caden, who's had a critical success staging Death of a Salesman with young actors in the middle-age roles, is himself a premature alter kocker: he hears mortality gargling at him everywhere. In the first scene, he wakes to a radio talk-show report about how the coming of autumn is a harbinger of death; from then on, Caden's life is one long fall. Reading...
...paintings, she tells Caden she'd prefer that he stay home; she'll take Olive with her. Soon, it's clear, mother and child are gone for good. That leaves Caden open to the adoring advances of Hazel (Samantha Morton), who runs the box office at his theater. Her attentions hardly distract Caden from his obsessive suspicions of a physical breakdown: a bathroom accident has left him with a scar on his forehead and the skin disease known as sycosis. Before long, even sympathetic viewers will wonder if Caden is suffering from psychosis...
...observers to infer that Kaufman's mood was no less morose than Caden's. "At times," wrote a reviewer in the Times of London, "it feels more like a suicide note than a movie." (That wouldn't be a first for Kaufman. His 2005 audio play "Hope Leaves the Theater" ends with the character Charlie Kaufman committing suicide...
...adds a fitting layer of ironic detachment. Characteristically, Havel's main stage direction during the play is to tell his actors not to overact. On opening night, in the final scene, after the cast exits back stage on a elevator-like device rising skyward, leaving the theater hauntingly still and dark, Havel's gravelly voice boomed out over loudspeakers. "I thank the actors for refraining from burlesque," he said. "The theater thanks the audience for switching off their cell phones. Truth and love must triumph over lies and hatred! Turn on your cell phones. Good night and sweet dreams...