Cabaret (At the Shaw Festival, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario)

      Cabaret (At the Shaw Festival, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario)  {Book by Joe Masteroff, music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb, based on the play by John van Druten, and the stories by Christopher Isherwood} [D:Peter Hinton. Juan Chioran, Deborah Hay, Gray Powell, et al].
     I’ve seen the movie with Liza Minelli several times, and didn’t realise how much it differed from the musical (and presumably from the prior adaptations of Isherwood’s stories). The story here is minimal, in several senses of the word, and one of the effects is that the linkage between the scenes isn’t as strong as it should be. It’s clear from the director’s notes that this was the intention of the script writers, who wanted to highlight the contrasts between the private concerns of a handful of people and the growth of Nazi power. Thus the structure is more a series of tableaux than a sequence of scenes. To make this a successful production requires on the one hand that the tableaux themselves must be well staged and executed, and on the other that the bridges must be well acted. This production comes close, but doesn’t quite make it.
     The set is an assemblage of steel stairs and platforms resembling a tower like those imagined by the Futurists. Impressive to look at, and prompting some imaginative staging and choreography, but also confusing in that it was sometimes difficult to find the visual focus of a scene, especially (and oddly) those set in the Kit Kat club. Scenes set in places not amenable to climbing around were created by using portable bits and pieces and clever lighting to create, for example, the mood of a train at a Grenzkontrolle, or a grocery store. All very intriguing, but I don’t go to the theatre  to see the set, I go to see the play.
     The acting and singing were generally very good, the lighting was very well done, creating mood and atmosphere that supported the central vision of the play, the choreography was impressively uniform, and the music competently performed, if occasionally a bit too startling.
     As mentioned, the play suffers from a what I think is a misconceived attempt to present not so much a story as a commentary. See the nice people caught up and crushed by the Nazi juggernaut! See how their indifference to politics doesn’t spare them from its consequences! See how a dream becomes a delusion that destroys the dreamer! See how people cannot trust their love for each other to support them as the future descends on them!
     All well and good as themes, but the story must come first. Here it doesn’t.
     Nevertheless, the overall effect was quite powerful especially towards the end. We can only wish that Life is a cabaret, old chum, but oh, how much simpler life would be if it were truly so! **½

Isabel Huggan. The Elizabeth Stories (1984)

 

    Isabel Huggan. The Elizabeth Stories (1984) As far as I can tell, Huggan is what is sometimes called a “one-book author”. Not that she wrote only this book, but that she hasn’t written much else. But this is a very good book, and deservedly gained her an international audience and reputation. The stories follow Elizabeth Kessler growing up in Garten from about age eight to eighteen. Huggan has the gift of conveying what it was like to be a child, and she has no qualms about revealing the intended and unintended evil that children can do. The result is intense stories than are not exactly comfortable to read, but which leave you with a sense of having met a real person, and knowing her somewhat better than you know almost every real person in your life. That includes you, because we tend to avoid remembering events and actions that damage our amour propre. The stories also show how adults misinterpret and misunderstand children, and how some children take advantage of this failing to cause trouble for their enemies.
     No one story stands out, they are all at a high level. I first encountered Jack of Hearts as a movie (Alliance Atlantis and National Film Board Canada co-production, not available). It tells how Elizabeth's aunt, a glamorous single “career girl”, visits and introduces Elizabeth to poker. Her sister and brother-in-law don’t approve, but it confirms Elizabeth’s desire to escape from Garten.
     Recommended. ***

The movie Jack of Hearts is available on YouTube. It's scanned from a 16mm print, and flickers annoyingly.

Peter Johnson. Isle of Man Steam Railway in Colour (1998)

    

  

Peter Johnson. Isle of Man Steam Railway in Colour (1998) Most of the photos (one per page) feature the steam engines; the captions provide all kinds of history and other information. Technically excellent, a few include people (staff, tourists), or a bit of landscape. As far as I can tell, the colours are accurate. A very well done album for the fan, and of more than passing interest to the casual reader recalling or planning a visit to the Island. Looking through it, I decided we should go there on our next visit. ***

Peter Lovesey. The Circle (2005)

     Peter Lovesey. The Circle (2005) Bob Naylor, widower father of a 14-year-old, driver for a parcel delivery company, and inveterate composer of verses, attends a writer’s circle just before a previous guest, publisher Edgar Blacker, dies in an arson. The police nick Maurice, chair of the group, and a couple of others wanting to clear him snag Naylor’s help. Meanwhile, DI Henrietta Mallin takes over the case when the local DI commits a booboo. An attempt on Naylor’s life and two more arson murders, a photo that points to the deep past, tensions among the circle’s members, and budding affection between Naylor and Thomasine, all make for a nicely complex story told mostly through dialogue.
    The effect is oddly visual, because I think we’re accustomed to TV mysteries with long stretches of dialogue punctuated with short scenes of almost silent action. A book written in this mode reads like a TV script. Whatever, the story moves along fast enough that any creaks in the logic can be ignored, the wrap-up arrest and confession are a bit hurried, but all in all this is a pleasant entertainment. **½

Peter Robinson. Dead Right (1997)

     Peter Robinson. Dead Right (1997) A well done police procedural. DCI Alan Banks and sidekicks DC Susan Gay and DS Jim Hatchley investigate a beating death that quickly complicates into racial tensions, neo-Nazis, and drug trafficking. Office politics and personal relationships mix in for a satisfyingly complex plot with well-drawn characters that we care about. The crime puzzle’s solution does not, however, resolve Banks personal difficulties, which means the sequel(s) will have guaranteed soap-opera interest. One should not downplay this: people’s private and work lives always intersect. To leave that intersection out of a story diminishes it. For that matter, the crime itself has a far more complicated  motivation and context than at first appears. Robinson is good at showing the inevitable: a crime’s effects ripple outward and damage many more people than the victim, often including the perpetrators.
     I’d never noticed Robinson before this, but “Alan Banks” triggered interest when I spotted the book in the discard rack at the library. WGBH’s channel 44 runs the DCI Banks TV series, and so his name was stored somewhere in my internal database. The paperback cost 50 cents, worth it. I’ve already found another book at Value Village, but they charge a good deal more. ***

August: Osage County (2013)

     August: Osage County (2013) [D: John Wells. Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Dermot Mulroney] Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts received several nominations for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress. The film was nominated for other awards and won a few round the world. If I cared about the characters, I’d care about these awards and nominations. But the main characters are nasty, mean, self-centred, self-pitying, self-justifying, callous – after watching this film, you’ll no doubt be able to add to this list. They really don’t know what they are living for. People without a sense of meaning in their lives aren’t likely to behave well. Maybe that’s the lesson of this movie. 

     Story-line: A family gets together when the father (Beverly Weston, an alcoholic academic poet) kills himself after putting up with his awful wife (Violet) for too many years. There’s a lot of “truth-telling”, but not the kind that leads to self-discovery and through that to healing. I can see that for many viewers, the portrayal of severe family dysfunction will have its awful attraction, and for some will recall painful memories. I’m not in either of those groups. The movie began to bore me almost at once. 

     Watching Streep and Roberts do their bravura performances had a certain interest, in fact all the actors (and director) did an amazing job with what is an awful script. This showed especially in Streep's performance, in which you could often see her pulling the strings of the puppet. She's a great actor, but this time her technique was showing. The movie’s adapted from a play, the kind that some theatre buffs mistake for “serious” drama because it shows ugly people doing ugly things to each other using ugly language. It left me with a couple questions: Who is Tracy Letts, and why does he think that profanity makes for a strong script?

     Should you watch this film? Only if you like to see people torture each other. *

The Life of Python (2000)

     The Life of Python (2000) A compilation of clips and interviews, plus an English version of one of the two German episodes for Westdeutscher Rundfunk, made in 1972. The interviews are strictly for Python fans, the selected clips will raise a Huh? Or a chuckle or a guffaw, depending on your fan status. The Dead Parrot is missing, and none of the clips is complete. The German episode includes a long sketch based on a mix of Grimm fairy tales, suitably messed up and parodied, and a real treat for fans. I’m a fan, I thought this three-video set was worth watching, but non-fans will no doubt find it merely average. It’s from Jon’s collection. ***