Word: visualization
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Then again, no one seems interested, as the cameramen watch soap operas and the newspaper correspondents play gin back near the soda machines and telephones. On the lectern, behind which Reagan will stand many times over the next four years, someone has taped 36 cents--a reference to the visual aid the president used the previous evening in his nationwide speech. Two reporters read the attached message aloud, giggling: "Don't spend it all in one place. Love, Jimmy...
...this production. Those who want to can find hints of a soldier and the devil playing tricks on each other, but Martins' eye is squarely on dance as Balanchine sees it: speed, color, pattern, technical brilliance. The 22 dancers who appear in L'Histoire are costumed as visual metaphors of sound, not as characters in a script. The men, in unitards, belts and boots, allude to the recurring martial overtones in Stravinsky's score. During such passages, the women, looking hoydenish in ankle socks, are reminders of dissonance and jazz to come...
Kustow has chosen to stage this at a long table at the front of the stage, keeping our interest with visual mayhem but accentuating the fragmentary nature of the dialogue. Stephen Rowe and Tony Shalhoub, as Joe and Wes, try mightily to keep things going, but with little success. Some awkward pace changes contribute to the difficulty, and the act sags until Frederick Neumann, as the John Huston-like director John Bean, takes things over. Neumann shines as the horny, hearty old American ("It's a simple name--I am a simple man.") whose vision of the revolution comprises mostly...
...cussedness" we get plenty--a freewheeling assortment of burlesque gags and visual stunts. Wood grew up in the world of British music halls, and the influence appears in his predilection for puns, wordplay, and sexual humor (men in drag and a woman, Mary Jane Pendejo--played by Karen MacDonald--as Major Trumbull). This is wonderful entertainment, but it's going nowhere; Wood's view of moviedom--war as a ribald chaos prevents the play from establishing any dramatic focus or momentum, and the act lapses into a number of extraneous routines. It remains a wild burlesque with some high points...
...delivering a voice-over of a soldier's death for a sequence of the movie. This helps to lessen the play's claim to seriousness and lets it stand as glorified burlesque. Kustow's direction throughout is faithful to Wood's music-hall style, with an unending series of visual gags and (with some noticeable gaps) a fast-paced verbal attack--much of it funny, much of it silly. If you've seen enough Morecambe and Wise or Monty Python, you'll recognize it quickly enough...