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By John Campb ell
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NT LIVE: A SMALL FAMILY BUSINESS (CTC) (No Free Tix) Sun 13, Wed 16: 1:00pm ROYAL SHAKESPEARE: HENRY IV PART II (G) (No Free Tix) Sat 12: 1:00 DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (CTC) (No Free Tix) Wed 9: 9:00am, 4:05pm, 6:40pm, 9:30pm Thu 10, Fri 11, Mon 14, Tue 15: 11:10am, 4:00, 6:40, 9.15pm (3D) Sat 12, Sun 13, Wed 16: 1:20pm, 3:55pm, 6:50pm, 9:25pm JERSEY BOYS (M) (No Free Tix) Tue 8, Wed 9: 11:20, 3:45, 6:30, 9:15 Thu 10, Fri 11, Mon 14, Tue 15: 9:00am, 1:45pm, 6:50pm Sat 12, Sun 13, Wed 16: 9:00, 4:00, 6:40 2D RIO 2 (G) (No Free Tix) Tue 8,Wed 9: 9:15am, 11:25, 1:35 Thu 10, Fri 11, Mon 14, Tue 15: 11:40, 1:50 Sat 12, Sun 13, Wed 16: 11:10, 1:50 THE TRIP TO ITALY (M) Tue 8: 4:05 Thu 10, Fri 11, Mon 14, Tue 15: 9:00am Enjoy our licensed bar
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26 July 8, 2014 The Byron Shire Echo
Clint Eastwood was always on a hiding to nothing when he decided to bring to the screen this Tony award-winning musical that swept all before it. The (Sydney) production that I saw was the most exhilarating night at the theatre that I have experienced in a long time and, frankly, Eastwood has been unable to capture the magic. For a start, there is no live, ampedup band belting out the string of irresistible hits that Bobby Gaudio wrote for and performed with the Four Seasons – Walk Like A Man and Big Girls Don’t Cry, pop classics by any measure, are made to sound almost bland. But there is more to it than just the music and Eastwood’s forte has always been the subtle, piece-by-piece construction of his characters. Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice’s original Broadway script is closely adhered to as the highs and lows of the group are charted in an orthodox, sometimes pedestrian manner. Frankie Valli (John Lloyd Young), Tommy DeVito (Vincent Piazza) and Nick Massi (Michael Lomenda) are guys earning gigs as a trio going nowhere. They are more than likely headed for a life of petty crime, the depiction of which in the opening scenes of a klutzy burglary and jolly imprisonment is as corny as Kellogg’s. When the cocksure but gifted songwriter Gaudio (Erich Bergen) joins them the partnership he forms with Valli results in immediate chart-topping success. The period recreation is faultless, but too often it appears visually sanitised, like the set of a TV show, and there is a lack of context – it’s as though there were no Elvis, no Beatles happening in the outside world.
HENRY IV PART II
Following his production of Henry IV Part I screened at Palace Cinema last month, Royal Shakespeare Company artistic director Gregory Doran continues his exploration of Shakespeare’s history plays with Henry IV Part II, concluding the epic, comic and thrilling vision of a nation in turmoil. Starring Antony Sher, Jasper Britton and Alex Hassell, Henry IV Part II screens at Palace Byron Bay Cinema on Saturday at 1pm. Tickets $15–$24 available now at the cinema box office or online at www.palacecinemas.com.au.
Curiously, the expected tale of trauma and triumph whirling around the stars’ struggles with drugs, booze, sex scandals etc never comes in to play. Instead, the major drama is centred on the financial dispute that arises when Valli and Gaudio usurp the profligate, deeply indebted Tommy’s position as group leader. Despite its flaws, however, Eastwood finds an emotional hook and in the end it matters.
TWO FACES OF JANUARY Patricia Highsmith, one of the great crime writers, took a psychological approach to the genre. She created Ripley, a character to whom screen justice has been adequately served only in The Talented Mister Ripley (1999), and provided Hitchcock with one of his most cold-blooded murders in Strangers On A Train (1951). For Highsmith it was not a case of ‘who dunnit?’ as much as ‘you did it’. Which is to say, the killer is always known and you are in his shoes all the way. So it is here. Chester and Colette MacFarland (Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst) are holidaying in Athens. It is 1962, the high summer of a fading period of unhurried elegance. At a café, after a day of blinding beauty visiting the Parthenon – Chester in his cream linen suit, Colette her canaryyellow Dior – they meet Rydal (Oscar Isaac), a handsome, Greek-speaking young American conman (another version of Ripley). The three are drawn tightly together by a slight but profound circumstance (a trait of Highsmith) that places Isaac at the couple’s hotel after Chester has unintentionally killed a private detective who had been sent from the States to recoup money that Chester embezzled from investors. Smitten by Colette, Isaac agrees to help them flee the scene. What a tangled web we weave… The three are drawn ever deeper into paranoia and mistrust, with their options diminishing rapidly as authorities close in on them. Director Hossein Amini has done well to stay in period and not try to place the events in a contemporary setting, for though the story may be common in its stark simplicity and known to us all in various guises, the telling of it is old-fashioned, unfolding step by nightmarish step. Marcel Zyskind’s cinematography is gorgeous, Dunst brings more than mere passivity to an otherwise underwritten part and Isaac is terrifically brooding, but Chester is the fulcrum and, as the suave,
self-assured alpha male whose world is unravelling, I’ve not seen Mortensen be so good – or smoke so many ciggies.
SUNSHINE ON LEITH As most movies are now saturated with mood-prompting songs – they can often seem like little more than soundtracks with accompanying visuals – the fully blown musical runs the risk of being uncomfortably twee, if not entirely implausible. But Across The Universe (2007), based on the Beatles’ catalogue, proved that it can still be a viable genre and Sunshine On Leith, inspired by the Proclaimers’ 1988 album of the same name, furthers the cause with ebullient big-heartedness. Not that Craig and Charlie Reid are in the same league as Lennon/McCartney, but their tunes and lyrics are straightforward, feature a strong narrative component and, most significantly, are understanding of the people and place that give them such life. The story deals with everyday but complex personal relationships (what relationships are not?) and it is told in a simple, direct manner. Davy (George MacKay) and Ally (Kevin Guthrie) return home to Edinburgh after a tour of duty in Afghanistan (the Reids can be spotted emerging from a pub as the boys dance down the street). Demobbed, Ally wants to settle down with Davy’s beautiful freckled sister, Liz (Freya Mavor), while Davy falls for an English nurse, Yvonne (Antonia Thomas). On the night that Davy and Liz’s parents, Rab and Jean (Peter Mullan and Jane Horrocks), are celebrating their twentyfifth wedding anniversary, an ancient infidelity comes to light and ultimately all three couples find themselves confronted by the prospect of losing the love they so cherish. It is as cheesy as it gets, but not for one minute did I not care about what the end result might be for the characters. The songs are mostly ‘unplugged’, with the vocals given every opportunity to eke out the words’ emotional nuances and, without exception, each of the players sells the conceit (Mavor is especially winning). Edinburgh never looked so good and the closing, Bollywoodesque rendition of 500 Miles, including mass choreography outside the city’s National Gallery, will lift the spirits of anybody concerned by the dousing of the sunshine that once shone on our country.
Byron Shire Echo archives: www.echo.net.au