RAY BENNETT | movies • stage • TV • music

CANNES FILM REVIEW: Matt Dillon in ‘Factotum’

Posted on May 14, 2005 by admin

By Ray Bennett

CANNES – To get the famously sozzled street poet Charles Bukowski right on screen takes an appreciation of the man’s taste for friends in low places and a keen avoidance of over-indulgence in his fondness for blowhard wino wisdom.

Bent Hamer mostly gets it right in “Factotum,” a sweetly observed character study of a thoughtful man with a hair-trigger knack for irritating others and few illusions about where his appetite for cheap booze, easy women and the gutter will lead him.

Matt Dillon is pitch-perfect as Bukowski’s alter ego Hank Chinaski, a down-and-outer who put in two years at journalism school but now drifts from one low-paying manual job to another. His life is mostly beer at noon, whisky at night and vomit in the morning. Dillon captures both the body language of a committed drinker and the laconic speech patterns that derive from deliberate thinking and a desire to articulate carefully.

Chinaski is a writer, although he says he’s not ready for a novel yet. But he finishes three or four short stories a week and mails them off to magazines.

Bereft of society’s usual notion of ambition, he’s not above applying for a job as a cab driver even though he has on his record 18 drunk and disorderly charges and two for drunk driving.

Hank is soon fired from every job he takes, usually because if he’s told he cannot smoke that’s the first thing he does. He also has a tendency to drift away for a drink in the middle of the day. These episodes are told with tolerant affection and warm humor. In one instance, he’s assigned to deliver bags of ice to local bars. He doesn’t make it past the first one, forgetting to close to the truck’s freezer door as he quenches his thirst.

Hank is an easy man to talk to, so strangers warm up to him whether it’s in a bar or at a job center, and offer him their own take on life. “I’ve probably slept longer than you’ve lived,” an old-timer tells him.

Women come along easily too and his encounters with Jan (Lily Taylor) and Laura (Marisa Tomei, pictured with Dillon) take up much of the film as they lead him to their very different environments, one rich, one poor. The common thread is always booze. Both actresses play their roles with insight and understanding and these encounters also are underpinned with subtle wit.

Hank also has a brief period of prosperity as he hooks up with a guy named Manny (Fisher Stevens) to play bookmaker for some sad-sack fellow workers at a bicycle parts supply center.

Minneapolis-St. Paul provides a fresh, if not always beautiful, backdrop to Hank’s story, which is told with engaging languor. The picture has a fine malted look to it.

Bukowski’s observations about love and life are related in a voice-over delivered by Dillon in a whisky-soaked voice that catches the essential humor and goodwill of the man. The movie doesn’t particularly go anywhere but that’s the point.

Venue: Festival de Cannes, Directors’ Fortnight; Cast: Matt Dillon; Lily Taylor; Marisa Tomei; Fisher Stevens; Didier Flamand; Adrienne Shelly; Karen Young; Tom Lyons; Director: Bent Hamer; Writers and producers: Bent Hamer & Jim Stark; Director of photography: John Christian Rosenlund; Production designer: Eve Cauley Turner; Music: Kristin Asbjornsen; Editor: Pal Gengenbach; Executive producer: Christine Kunewa Walker; Not rated; running time, 93 minutes.

Posted in Festival de Cannes, Film, Reviews | Tagged 'Factotum', Bent Hamer, Festival de Cannes, Jim Stark, Lily Taylor, Marisa Tomei, Matt Dillon | Comments Off

THEATRE REVIEW: ‘Billy Elliot: The Musical’

Posted on May 13, 2005 by admin

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – Take a clever little film with a universal story, add melodies by a master tunesmith and then find the most brilliant boys and girls who can sing and dance up a storm and you have “Billy Elliot: The Musical,” the most irresistible show in ages.

Packaged by the film company Working Title and using the creative talent from the movie including screenwriter Lee Hall, choreographer Peter Darling, and director Stephen Daldry, the show also boasts music by Elton John.

With a cast drawn seemingly from the collieries of England’s County Durham and a group of youngsters who exhilarate in extraordinarily well-crafted scenes, the show is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser.

Three lads have been cast in the title role and they rotate performances along with the other children in the large cast. James Lomas (pictured above who alternates with George Maguire and Liam Mower, pictured below) proves entirely captivating as the boy whose interest in becoming a dancer is entirely at odds with the tough mining community in which he lives.

Following the story of the film, his family and neighbors mock Billy, not least because mining is the local tradition but also because this is 1984 and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is waging war against the miners’ union.

The period is convincingly evoked in Ian MacNeil’s sumptuous production design that includes video screens and large moving sets. Hall’s book is sturdy and his lyrics move the story along smartly. John’s melodies, too, while entirely agreeable are designed to serve the production rather than aiming to become pop hits.

As Billy is secretly tutored by local dance teacher Mrs. Wilkinson (Haydn Gwynne) and is encouraged to apply to the Royal Ballet School, the harsh existence of the striking miners is never far from sight.

Sequences involving choruses of miners fighting riot police add enormous power to a fairly simple story of a boy who wants to dance. The village scenes also convey the invaluable sense of community that existed in mining communities and that actually give Billy the grit to pursue his dream.

Director Daldry has put together a sterling cast of grownups including Tim Healy as Billy’s gruff dad and Joe Caffrey as his embittered brother Tony. Ann Emery, as Billy’s grandma, also does a splendid turn singing a lively lament for a life wasted with the wrong man.

In the end, it’s the youngsters who make the show such a success. They are all good, and Lomas is simply brilliant as Billy while Ashley Lloyd is funny and affecting as his gay friend Michael.

“Billy Elliot” will run and run for as long as there are talented boys to fill their extraordinary dancing shoes on stage.

Venue: Victoria Palace Theatre, London; Credits: Music: Elton John; Book and lyrics: Lee Hall; Director: Stephen Daldry; Producers: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Jon Finn, Sally Greene; Executive producers: David Furnish, Angela Morrison, Colin Ingram; Choreography: Peter Darling; Set designer: Ian MacNeil; Costumes: Nicky Gillibrand; Lighting: Rick Fisher; Sound: Paul Arditti. Cast: Billy: James Lomas, George Maguire, Liam Mower; Mrs. Wilkinson: Hadyn Gwynne; Dad: Tim Healy; Tony: Joe Caffrey; Grandma: Ann Emery; George: Trevor Fox; Mr. Braithwaite: Steve Elias; Dead mum: Stephanie Putson; Billy’s older self: Isaac James; Michael: Brad Kavanagh, Ashley Lloyd, Ryan Longbottom; Debbie: Brooke Havana Bailey; Emma Hudson, Lucy Stephenson.

Photos: Top by David Scheinmann, bottom by Alan Davidson

Posted in Music, Reviews, Theatre | Tagged 'Billy Elliot: The Musical', Elton John, George Maguire, Ian MacNeil, James Lomas, Lee Hall, Liam Mower, Peter Darling, Stephen Daldry, Working Tirle | Comments Off

THEATRE REVIEW: ‘Henry IV Part 1 and Part 2’

Posted on May 5, 2005 by admin

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – Nicholas Hytner’s immaculate National Theatre production of William Shakespeare’s “Henry IV, Part 1” is so vibrant and enthralling that it cries out to finally be made as a movie. Michael Gambon as Falstaff (above) and Matthew Macfadyen as Prince Hal (below) lead a splendid cast.

One of Shakespeare’s best-constructed works, it has been filmed only for television – in 1979 as part of an anthology – and used as source material for Orson Welles’s excellent 1965 feature “Chimes at Midnight”.

Hytner directs the play with dash and vigour and drives it with great bursts of humour, riveting monologues and exciting fight sequences. Wonderfully entertainng, it is both visually thrilling and powerfully moving.

The National has staged it in conjunction with the more sombrely dramatic “Henry IV, Part 2”, and the two plays make up six hours of the most persuasive argument that Shakespeare is as relevant today as ever.

Having dispatched with Richard III, Henry IV (David Bradley, below) is determined to rule as a compassionate king but he must deal first with the warring factions that have helped put him on the throne.

Among these is the volatile Harry Percy, known as Hostpur (David Harewood), who is prepared to lead a rebellion from the north. The king’s son, Henry, the Prince of Wales (Matthew MacFadyen, top picture centre with Adrian Scarborough and Michael Gambon), also complicates the king’s life. He later will become the valiant Henry V but at the moment he leads a dissolute life in the company of the fat and corrupt gourmand Sir John Falstaff (Michael Gambon).

Over the course of the two plays, Prince Hal, as Falstaff alone calls him, will throw off his wastrel ways and emerge as a ruthless leader. Shakespeare tracks the course of Hal’s growth brilliantly through his fierce rivalry with Hotspur and the transfer of influence as a father figure from Falstaff to his real father, Henry IV.

Hytner employs Mark Thompson’s superbly spare set and Neil Aistin’s sharply specific lighting to terrific cinematic effect, filling the frame as would a filmmaker.

Terry King’s fight direction is so accomplished and the actors so fit and eager that the onstage action is wholly convincing in its rough and tumble, and at times times it appears to be with deadly intent.

The large cast is uniformly fine with Macfadyen, as Hal, adept at both the fiery wit to match Gambon’s Falstaff and in the emergence of a man with a powerful backbone. Harewood commands the stage as Hotspur and makes the king’s early wish that his son were more like fully understandable.

Bradley (pictured above with MacFadyen) embodies the nobility and fragility of a king who confesses that uneasy lies the head of he who wears the crown. In “Part 2” especially, Bradley’s long speeches are spellbinding, and Gambon delivers a wise and insightful portrayal of the cowardly Falstaff, crackling in his comedy and deeply moving in his ultimate rejection.

Anyone who thinks Shakespeare is boring should see these two shows.

Venue: National Theatre, runs through Aug. 3; Cast: Michael Gambon, Matthew Macfadyen, David Bradley, David Harewood, John Wood, Adrian Scarborough, Samuel Roukin, Naomi Frederick, Susan Brown, Eve Myles; Playwright: William Shakespeare; Director: Nicholas Hytner; Set designer: Mark Thompson, Lighting designer: Neil Austin; Music, soundscore: Max Ringham, Ben Ringham Andrew Rutland; Fight director: Terry King; Sound designer: Paul Groothius.

Posted in Reviews, Theatre | Tagged 'Henry IV Part 1', 'Henry IV Part 2', Adrian Scarborough, David Bradley, David Harewood, Matthew MacFadyen, Michael Gambon, Naomi Frederick, National Theatre, Nicholas Hytner, William Shakespeare | Comments Off

MUSIC REVIEW: Cream reunion at the Royal Albert Hall

Posted on May 2, 2005 by admin

By Ray Bennett

LONDON A little more than 36 years after Cream’s last appearance, the rock world’s first supergroup returned to a rapturous welcome on the same stage at the Royal Albert Hall.

Like most of the audience, drummer Ginger Baker, bassist Jack Bruce and lead guitarist Eric Clapton were all grey hair, loose shirts and sneakers. The music, too, while still blues-based and often soaring, had an air of refinement, performed by musicians who are masters of their craft but now lack the rowdy adventure of their youth.

“Thanks for waiting all these years,” Clapton told the audience. “We’ll do everything we know, although we didn’t go on very long.”

Little more than two years, in fact, but they sold 35 million albums and influenced every band that ever aspired to fill a stadium. Kicking off Monday with “I’m So Glad,” it was soon evident that while they had one of the great reputations for internecine warfare, the threesome had actually rehearsed.

“Spoonful” and “Outside Woman Blues,” and 15 more numbers tended to support Bruce’s oft-stated belief that their songs were only there to “hang the music on” and that Cream are really about improvised solos.

Bruce, who has had a liver transplant, appeared the most battered of the trio but also the most invigorated. His bass playing was tight and focused and for a singer whose younger voice often went flat when playing live, he stayed in key and lent full-throated power to the vocals. Bruce took up his harmonica on “Rollin’ and Tumblin'” and his vocals shone especially on “Born Under a Bad Sign” and “Politician.”

Baker, whose limbs are not the most agile these days, managed the percussion like a piston-engine with poetry, driving the fast numbers and snapping the slower strides with panache. He even kept his “Toad” solo to a manageable and engaging five minutes or so.

Clapton, whose solo career has kept him at the top of his game, can still occupy spaces with his guitar that most players can only imagine. With seemingly effortless grace his solos informed such numbers as “Sweet Wine,” “Stormy Monday,” “Crossroads” and “White Room.”

Over two hours, the captivated audience was on its feet for every song with bursts of applause for each solo and sustained appreciation for the closing “Sunshine of Your Love.” Perhaps only the august atmosphere of the gorgeous Royal Albert Hall prevented dancing in the aisles.

Although perhaps it was just that nobody on or off stage appeared to be stoned. For those who saw Cream in the ’60s it was a little bit like the T.S. Elliott poem about arriving back where you started and knowing the place for the first time. What do you know? Cream really were great.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

Posted in Music, Reviews | Tagged Cream, Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Jack bruce, Royal Albert Hall | Comments Off

MUSIC REVIEW: Queen + Paul Rodgers

Posted on March 30, 2005 by admin

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – The ka-ching of the cash register sounded loudly as glam-rockers Queen kicked off their first major tour since 1991 on March 28 at the Brixton Academy as Paul Rodgers stepped in for their flamboyant frontman, the late Freddie Mercury.

Only fans registered with the Queen website were allowed access to the $100 tickets and the band’s two original members onstage, guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor catered to them with due deference. The audience responded with noisy approval throughout the two-and-a-half hour show.

There’s no doubting the band’s enduring popularity although Mercury’s music was an acquired taste. For those who never acquired it, he had a tendency to sound like an overwrought ingénue from a Gilbert and Sullivan light opera. But he could put on a show.

Rodgers, who found success with the bands Free and Bad Company, has a technically perfect rock ‘n’ roll voice with all the range and power you could want but it’s not at all memorable. His flamboyance extends only to throwing the microphone about.

For the uninitiated, Queen’s operatic rock music sounds a bit like 10cc’s but without the wit and musicality. As May took centre stage in white shirt and sneakers, Rodgers plowed through songs such as “Break Free” and “Fat Bottom Girls,” and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” to the immense delight of the audience despite their banality.

So pleased was the crowd, in fact, that Rodgers didn’t really need to be there as they sang all the songs as one voice, filling the old hall with a really quite splendid chorus. They were silent only when May played a long and expert but quite tedious solo.

For some Queen favorites, such as “Radio Ga Ga”, “I’m in Love With My Car”, “Can’t Get Enough” and “I Want it All”, Taylor and May took over the vocal chores. They declined the challenge of performing “Bohemian Rhapsody” entirely and opted instead for a video of Mercury doing the number. The crowd roared its approval.

Rodgers returned for his own big number, “All Right Now”, which also went down well and the evening ended with Queen’s stadium anthems “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions”.

It’s not Rodgers’ fault but Queen without Mercury is like the Crickets without Buddy Holly, the Doors without Jim Morrison or the Smiths without Morrissey. This tour takes in more than 30 concerts in eight European countries and if every audience is as loyal and demonstrative as the one at the Brixton Academy that won’t matter at all.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

Posted in Music, Reviews | Tagged Brian May, Brxton Academy, Paul Rodgers, Queen, Roger Taylor | Comments Off

Abbey Road Studios opens to public for first time

Posted on March 18, 2005 by admin

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – Abbey Road recording studios, where the Beatles made almost all of their music, attracts around 100,000 fans each year but they couldn’t go in. Until now.

They come from across the world to worship at the place where it all began. They photograph the famous pedestrian crossing outside and most of them write their name on the walls. For 16 days through April 3, Abbey Road will open its doors to the public for the first time since it started in 1931.

To celebrate 25 years of movie scoring, begun when John Williams led the London Symphony Orchestra through his soundtrack to “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, Abbey Road is having its own film festival.

Only movies whose music was recorded at Abbey Road are featured, starting inevitably with the Beatles’ own “A Hard Day’s Night” and finishing with “A Yellow Submarine”.

The immense Studio One, which can accommodate a full 120-piece orchestra, has been converted into a cinema with 350 seats and the smaller Studio Two contains an evocative exhibition of photographs of the many stars who recorded there from Bing Crosby to Fred Astaire to Bette Davis, and naturally the Beatles.

David Holley, managing director of the EMI Studios Group, which owns Abbey Road, says that to let in the public was overdue: “We think 100,000 people annually write their names on the walls outside. We clean them off every few weeks. It’s a tradition we like, however. It started in 1980 when John Lennon died. Many people congregated outside and an engineer played ‘Imagine’ out the window.”

Most of the 100,000 try to enter the studios and Holley says the receptionist has found a thousand ways to say no: “But we thought, with the 25th anniversary of our first film score recording, that we would celebrate by letting people see where all that great music was made.”

Empty of all instruments and equipment, Studio Two is just four walls and parquet flooring, but that doesn’t stop big-time Hollywood producers from getting down on all fours to kiss the floor, according to Holley.

Director Anthony Minghella is not immune. He and his musical collaborator Gabriel Yared (pictured above, left, with Minghella, right) conducted a masterclass in film scoring on Friday to kick off the Abbey Road festival. They each have an Oscar for “The English Patient”, one of the films to be screened.

They also wrote and recorded a song for “Cold Mountain” in the sacred Studio Two, and Minghella said, “James Taylor recorded it but at the last minute we decided it didn’t work for the film, and we cut it. It’s now only in the ether,but at least we know we had our Abbey Road experience.”

This story appeared in The Hollywood Reporter

Posted in Music, News | Tagged Abbey Road Studios, Anthony Minghella, Gabriel Yared, John Williams | Comments Off

TV REVIEW: ‘Not Only But Always’

Posted on December 21, 2004 by admin

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – In a season of musical and comedy movie biographies, this look at the lives of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore is by far the most disappointing.

It was surely a bridge too far for the accomplished playwright Terry Johnson (“Hitchcock Blond”), whose writing and direction here capture none of the magic of the comic duo who were at the peak of Britain’s sixties comic revival.

Those familiar with the hilariously sardonic Cook, described by humorist Stephen Fry as the funniest man who ever drew breath, and brilliant musician and clown Moore, who became a Hollywood sex symbol, will not recognize them here.

Anyone who wonders why the pair were idolized or why their sketches still convulse those fortunate to have seen them in their prime in the stage shows “Beyond the Fringe” and “Good Evening” or on their BBC TV show “Not Only … But Also” will find no answers.

Rhys Ifans (“Notting Hill”) and stage and television actor Aidan McArdle occasionally resemble salt Peter and cuddly Dudley but neither can master the lunatic body language and inspired vocal delivery of the originals.

Other characterisations are similarly off-base including pale imitations of Eleanor Bron, Blake Edwards and David Frost. Alan Cox suggests a diffident Alan Bennett, the shy Yorkshireman who was part of the “Fringe” troupe and Jonathan Aris is suitably intense as the over-articulate fourth member, Dr. Jonathan Miller.

It’s hardly the actors’ fault that they cannot impersonate successfully some of the funniest comedy performers Britain has ever produced. The structure of the film lets them down with a clumsy framework that has Cook and Moore in their working class Pete & Dud characters alone in a screening room as they watch a film about the lives of their alter egos.

The film establishes that their relationship was complicated from the start when they first met to create “Beyond the Fringe” for the Edinburgh Film Festival. Cook and Miller were middle class public schoolboys while Bennett and Moore were working class grammar schoolboys. The division in those days was marked although they had all gone on to Oxford or Cambridge.

Cook was a precociously successful comedy writer with a superior air and withering command of a uniquely prodigious wit. Moore was short with a clubfoot and an inferiority complex almost as big as his appetite for beautiful women.

Johnson covers the ground between their meeting and having West End and television success, and going on to movies, with little respect for the actual chronology. Gradually we meet their respective succession of wives and see the eventual fractures in what was a connection between two distinct creative personalities that meshed into one hugely inspired whole.

Moore is depicted cruelly as a man desperate for film success and seduced easily by the California good life. But Cook comes off worse as he is portrayed as a drunken, unfulfilled wastrel who comes to a bitter end. In truth, he was a man genially content with the fact that his biggest successes, unmatched by his peers, came early in his life.

The only smile caused by this film is to imagine what Cook would have said about it.

Airs: UK Dec. 30 Channel 4; Cast: Rhys Ifans, Aidan McArdle, Jodie Rimmer, Daphne Cheung, Camilla Power, Alan Cox, Jonathan Aris, Joanna Morrison, Josephine Davison, Richard Durden, Robin Soans, Alistair Browning, Tandi Wright, Brett O’Gorman, David Sterne; Writer, director: Terry Johnson; Director of photography: David Odd; Production designer: Michael Ralph; Editor: Martin Sharpe; Composer: Colin Towns. Producer: Alison Jackson; Executive producers: George Faber, Charles Pattinson; Production: Company Pictures; Not rated, running time, 120 minutes.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

Posted in Reviews, Theatre | Tagged 'Not Only But Always', Aidan McArdle, Dudley Moore, Peter Cook, Rhys Ifans, Terry Johnson | Comments Off

TV REVIEW: ‘Agatha Christie’s Marple: The Body in the Library’

Posted on December 7, 2004 by admin

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – One of the great legacies of the Agatha Christie mystery canon is the rich vein of weird and wonderful characters she left for Britain’s vast array of character actors to mine. The new film series featuring amateur sleuth Miss Marple is a perfect example.

Christie’s now quaint stories also benefit from lively scripting, crisp direction and evocative design. The first of the series, “The Body in the Library” has these in large measure with director Andy Wilson and cinematographer Martin Fuhrer exploiting Jeff Tessler’s period design to please the eye while Kevin Elyot’s slyly witty dialogue delights the ear.

The shrewd and determined spinster of this parish that is Miss Marple is portrayed with steely warmth by Geraldine McEwan, whose ability to be unpleasantly stern is smartly tempered into an appealing eccentricity.

The body found at the opening of the first film is that of a young blond woman who dances at the Hotel Majestic and is therefore of dubious character while the library is in the lavish country pile owned by the formerly unblemished Colonel Arthur Bantry (James Fox).

The colonel’s wife Dolly, played with flawless exuberance by Joanna Lumley (pictured with McEwan), calls on her friend Miss Marple to investigate, being convinced that where murder is concerned her husband is not that type of man. “He’s sometimes silly about pretty girls, but why not? I have the garden,” Dolly explains.

Dolly briskly ignores a hapless bobby who tries to keep the two from entering the library to view the body. “Nobody’s allowed inside,” he states firmly. ‘Oh, nonsense,” says Dolly as she strides past.

Another Majestic dancer, Josie (Mary Stockley) identifies the dead blond but it transpires that the elderly, wheelchair bound Conway Jefferson (Ian Richardson) was the one who notified the police. It appears he doted on the young dancer and changed his will in her favor, much to the annoyance of daughter-in-law Adelaide (Tara Fitzgerald) and son-in-law Mark (Jamie Theakston).

Meanwhile, the local chief constable, an often apoplectic Simon Callow, with the aid of a sardonic detective inspector (Jack Davenport) trek through assorted witnesses and possible suspects including an absent-minded Majestic habitue (David Walliams), a brash would-be filmmaker (Ben Blake) and a Latino chappie who’s a bit of a gigolo (Adam Garcia).

Miss Marple, of course, sees through the lot of them and McEwan has fun with the inevitable revelations that have baffled the police and surprise everyone.

There are four films in the new “Marple” series, coproduced by WGBH Boston, and if they’re all as good as the first one then Christie fans have a treat in store.

Airs: UK: Dec. 12 ITV1; Cast: Geraldine McEwan, Joanna Lumley, Simon Callo, Ian Richardson, Tara Fitzgerald, Jamie Theakston, Jack Harper, Adam Garcia, David Walliams, Ben Miller, Mary Stockley, Emma Williams, Florence Hoath, James Fox; Director: Andy Wilson; Screenplay: Kevin Elyot; Director of photography: Martin Fuhrer; Production designer: Jeff Tessler; Editor: William Diver; Composer: Dominik Scherer; Producer: Matthew Read; Executive producers: Michael Buck, Damien Timmer, Phil Clymer, Rebecca Eaton; Production: WGBH, Chorion, Granada production for ITV1.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

Posted in Reviews, Television | Comments Off

THEATRE REVIEW: Marina Carr’s ‘By the Bog of Cats’

Posted on December 2, 2004 by admin

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – Holly Hunter’s star power is one of the problems in Dominic Cooke’s staging of “By the Bog of Cats,” an intense but uneven retelling of “Medea,” but it is also its saving grace.

Playwright Marina Carr has set the dark tale of an abandoned woman and her terrible extremes of revenge in the ravaged peat land of central Ireland. Hunter’s Hester Swane is a furious mix of outraged earth mother and mystic avenger, a woman whose fiery character draws sustenance from the mysteries and malevolence of the bog of cats.

Left alone by her mother as a child, Hester is also betrayed by the father of her own daughter, the impressively named Carthage Kilbride (Gordon MacDonald), who is about to marry Caroline (Denise Gough, pictured above with Hunter), the meek daughter of a local landowner .

A portent of doom comes early as Hester enters the stage lugging the corpse of a black swan. She soon encounters a blind cat-woman (Brid Brennan, pictured with Hunter below) who recites the ancient incantation that the bearer of such will soon meet a similar fate.

That would cast a pall over anyone’s evening but Hester is made of sterner stuff and with wine-swilling panache she determines to confront her cheating partner at his wedding ceremony in order to win him back to her tumbledown shack by the bog.

Hildegard Bechtler’s spare and evocative sets and Nicky Gillibrand’s convincing costumes provide a believable backdrop to the mystical goings on and Hunter makes the most of her peat-stained gypsy sex appeal.

The play, however, takes a very odd detour when Hester goes to the wedding party. Like so many guests at so many weddings, Carr appears drawn to the festive aspect of the occasion, taking every opportunity to get drunk and crack jokes.

The result is a long and hugely entertaining sequence that appears entirely at odds with the remainder of the play. Some fine British and Irish actors are on display and Barbara Brennan, as the bride’s mother; Trevor Cooper, as the bride’s father; Sorcha Cusack, as a neighbor; and Patrick Waldron, as the tipsy Father Willow, have a rare old time swapping very funny lines at the wedding table.

Hester ambushes the hilarity with her aggrieved righteousness, however, and it’s quickly back to the bog with the cat-woman, assorted ghosts and criminal arson. Then it gets really grisly.

It’s a mixed success for Hunter, who played the role in San Jose in 2001. Her movie star charisma sometimes distracts attention from the proceedings and her brave Irish accent slips and slides a bit. But her vital stage presence, superb movement and sheer intensity combine to make her performance something to remember.

Venue: Wyndham’s Theatre, runs through Feb. 22; Cast: Holly Hunter, Darren Greer, Sorcha Cusack, Barbara Brennan, Brid Brennan, Gordon MacDonald, Denise Gough, Trevor Cooper, Patrick Waldron, Adam Best, Kate Costello, Ellie Flynn-Watterson, Chloe O’Sullivan; Playwright: Marina Carr; Director: Dominic Cooke; Set designer: Nicky Gillibrand; Lighting designer: Jean Kalman; Composer: Gary Yershon; Sound designer: Gareth Fry; Movement director: Liz Ranken; Presented by Sonia Friedman Productions, Waxman Williams Entertainment and Mark Rubinstein.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

Posted in Reviews, Theatre | Tagged 'By the Bog of Cats', Barbara Brennan, Brid Brennan, Denise Gough, Dominic Cooke, Gary Yershon, Gordon MacDonald, Holly Hunter, Marina Carr, Patrick Waldron, Sonia Friedman Productions, Sorcha Cusack, Trevor Cooper, Wyndham's Theatre | 1 Comment

THEATRE REVIEW: ‘Grand Hotel: The Musical’

Posted on November 30, 2004 by admin

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – Few places can match the buzz and excitement of a big city hotel lobby and that electric air of expectation is fully caught in the opening number of Michael Grandage’s scintillating restaging of “Grand Hotel: The Musical.”

On an empty stage with a backdrop of images redolent of Berlin between the wars, Grandage, designer Christopher Oram and choreographer Adam Cooper move a large cast in and out of the spotlight to create a spellbinding mix of words, music and dance.

Drawn from Vicki Baum’s novel and the 1932 movie starring Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford, the musical made its first appearance in 1958 with music and lyrics by Robert Wright and George Forrest. In the late ’80s, Tommy Tune turned it into a long-running Broadway spectacular with additional music and lyrics by Maury Yeston.

Grandage’s new, pared-down production at the Donmar Warehouse eliminates everything but the costumes and lets the music and action take over. With overlapping songs and dialog, the many characters are succinctly introduced, some of them glamorous and sophisticated, others poor and naive, but all of them hungry and needing something, mostly cash.

There is a retired army doctor (Gary Raymond) who meets his daily needs via a needle in his arm. His dissolute eyes monitor the daily flux of guests and each evening he elects to stay on at the Grand Hotel for just another day. “Life is not a tramcar you can run after and catch,” he cautions.

Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (pictured) is the ageing ballerina Elizaveta Grushinskaya, the Garbo role, on her eighth farewell tour and forced to dance yet again because the money is running out. She falls for the smooth Baron Felix (Julian Ovenden), unaware that he is out to steal her jewels to settle gambling losses. Mastrantonio has a show-stopping number, “Bonjour Amor,” in which she beautifully captures the essence of a woman rediscovering love but fearful of putting too much trust in it.

The Baron has also befriended a young typist (Helen Baker in the Crawford role) who is pregnant and has reluctantly accepted the generosity of a bloated businessman (Martyn Ellis) who wants more for his money than typing.

A popular fellow, the Baron has also taken under his wing a Jewish bookkeeper (Daniel Evans) who has cashed in his savings and moved to the Grand Hotel to die.

The stories interweave with lively breaks every now and then for a Charleston or athletic tap-dance by cabaret performers Paul Hazel and Joseph Noble. While leaning towards soap opera, the stories hold up and thanks to the eye-pleasing design and movement and some splendid singing, this 1920s Berlin hotel is positively grand.

Venue: Donmar Warehouse, runs through Feb. 12; Cast: Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Gary Raymond; Julian Ovenden, Helen Baker, Martyn Ellis, Daniel Evans, Paul Hazel, Joseph Noble; Book: Luther Davis; Music & lyrics: Robert Wright & George Forrest; Additional music & lyrics: Maury Yeston; Based on: Vicki Baum’s “Grand Hotel” by arrangement with Turner Broadcasting Co.; Director: Michael Grandage; Designer: Christopher Oram; Lighting designer: Hugh Vanstone; Choreographer: Adam Cooper; Musical director: Jae Alexander; Sound designer: Terry Jardine for Autograph.

This review appeared in The Hollywood Reporter.

Posted in Reviews, Theatre | Tagged 'Grand Hotel', 'Grand Hotel: The Musical', Donmar Warehouse, Gary Raymond; Julian Ovenden, Luther Davis, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Michael Grandage, Paul Hazel, Robert Wright | 1 Comment

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