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January 30, 2013 | www.gaycitynews.com
THEATER
Sex and Longing BY CHRISTOPHER BYRNE
D
irector Sam Gold is not big on giving his actors a lot of room — literally, in terms of playing area. In his recent production of “Look Back in Anger” for Roundabout, he created a narrow space way downstage with a solid wall behind the actors. This was supposed to express the claustrophobia of the characters’ lives in lower class London. In reality, it created a clumsy awkwardness in the performance that suffocated the play with a pretentious concept.
PICNIC Roundabout Theatre Company at The American Airlines Theater 227 W. 42nd St. Tue.-Sat. at 8 p.m. Wed., Sat. at 2 p.m.; Sun. at 3 p.m. $42-$137; roundabouttheatre.org Or 212-719-1300
In his mounting of the William Inge chestnut “Picnic,” also for Roundabout, Gold’s done the same thing, dropping a wall of what looks like corrugated metal behind the realistic middle-class houses and backyards of 1950s Kansas, this time in an otherwise nicely detailed set by Andrew Lieberman. This feint of expressionism in a play steeped in realism makes the architecture of the Owens home, the
centerpiece of the set and the action, impossible — severing a good third of it from behind — even as it forces the actors into a confined playing space. Presumably, these close quarters are meant to ratchet up the heat of suppressed loneliness and sexuality at the heart of the story, and the wall is supposed to represent an intractable society imprisoning these quietly desperate people. As before, this facile conceit constricts the world of the play without illuminating it. Unfortunately, that’s only part of what plagues this production, which, for the most part, is as enervating as a heat wave on the Plains. The play unfolds in the backyard shared by Flo Owens, a single mother with a gorgeous 18-year-old daughter Madge and a smart but homely younger daughter Millie, and Helen Potts, a single woman of a certain age who cares for her mother. At the opening of the play, Hal Carter appears, doing chores for Helen. Hal is a prototypical character from the ‘50s, a man/ boy who has gotten through life on charm, athletic ability, and sex appeal, but as he becomes a man his essential fecklessness has caught up with him and he’s unprepared for the mantle of adulthood. He is reduced to doing odd jobs or working for food. Madge, who is working at the dime store and feels trapped in Kansas, is dating Alan Seymour, a rich college boy home for the summer who can’t believe
JOAN MARCUS
When they’re missing, “Picnic” becomes a washout
It’s hard to believe, but Sebastian Stan and romantic co-star Maggie Grace will leave audiences cold in “Picnic.”
Madge would give him the time of day. Also on the scene is the Owens’ boarder Rosemary Sydney, a teacher who is bent on marrying her reluctant gentleman friend Howard Bevans. As the play is written, Hal’s arrival
upsets this prairie home-cum-stasis. The instant sparks between Hal and Madge are supposed to be suffused with youthful carnality and — played out in full view of the neighborhood — serve as a catalyst for the older women to focus on their lives and loneliness. Hal, it turns out, is a former fraternity brother of Alan’s, but flunked out of school, tried Hollywood, and is now rootless. Still, Hal and Madge find in each another the balm for their troubled souls and their insecurity that physical beauty is all they have. (The Woody Allen quip “We were together because our neuroses meshed perfectly” comes to mind.) When Madge and Hal have an illicit tryst rather than attend the town picnic, the consequences are devastating. Alan essentially runs Hal out of town, and, against the advice of the older, wiser, but frustrated women, Madge must follow, whether to her salvation or her destruction. “Are we loveable?,” Inge’s characters ask, a theme that makes the play relevant today, even with its dated language. And if we are not loved, are we fully alive? Ironically, this production sinks because it lacks the very sexual spark it tries so hard to sell. Sebastian Stan as Hal has an impressive physique, but he lacks the darkness at the center of Hal’s character, the anger and frustration
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FILM
Brutus Among the Brutish Taviani brothers, old but very modern, return to US screen with probe of art’s redemptive value BY STEVE ERICKSON
T
he T aviani br others ar e two of the last living links to the glory days of Italian neo-realism. Back in 1954, they worked as screenwriters on a film with Cesare Zavattini, the grand theorist of that movement. They wouldn’t be able to direct films themselves until the ‘60s, and their work didn’t come to international attention until their 1977 “Padre Padrone” won the top prize at Cannes. They’re still best known for that and “The Night of the Shooting Stars,” made in 1982. Since then, their films gradually slid out of American distribution. Last year, though, “Caesar Must Die,” a semi-documentary look at a prison
production of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” took the top prize at last year’s Berlin Film Festival. While the directors are now in their 80s, their work suddenly
CAESAR MUST DIE Directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani Adopt Films In Italian with English subtitles Opens Feb. 6 Film Forum, 209 W. Houston St. Filmforum.org Lincoln Plaza Cinemas 1886 Broadway at 63rd St. lincolnplazacinema.com
seems relevant again — “Caesar Must Die” combines documentary, theater, and fiction in ways that could hardly be more au courant.
The T avianis spent six months shooting rehearsals for “Julius Caesar” in Rome’s Rebibbia penitentiary. The stage production was directed by Fabio Cavalli, who encouraged the prisoners to use their local dialects and accents. The Tavianis seemingly had free reign to shoot all over the prison. “Caesar Must Die” opens with the suicide of Brutus, filmed during a public performance of “Julius Caesar,” but it then goes back to the auditions of prisoners at the production’s outset. There’s nothing slapdash about “Caesar Must Die.” Its lighting and cinematography — and use of color, in a few scenes — are carefully worked out. Much of it seems to be shot with the prison’s natural light, but when stylized lighting is utilized, it creates
a chiaroscuro effect. Elsewhere, the images are full of inky black tones and gray backgrounds. The scenes of the play being performed in front of an audience are shot in color. I can only speculate about the directors’ motives for this switch, but I’d guess it had something to do with a desire to capture what this public performance of the play meant to the prisoners. “Caesar Must Die” brings to mind another film that played last fall’s New York Film Festival, Alain Resnais’ “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet.” Both films, derived from plays, use real people — in Resnais’ case, a cast of famous French actors playing themselves — in scenarios that grow increasingly
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CAESAR MUST DIE, continued on p.17