'History o
f the Am
encan
FSm':
Thursday, March 31, 1977 The Daily Tar Heel 5
mixed bag of theatre and movie
By MICHAEL McFEE
Staff Writer
Some clips from the cutting room floor
about Chris Durang's new "History of the
American Film," the current Playmakers
Repertory Company feature:
TAKE ONE. Concept: America and the
movies. What better metaphor? From the
innocence of the silents to the all-out
carnality of Sensurround, learning to talk,
sing, fight, love it's been an ideal
symbiosis, one made in the stars. The
quintessential American dream: God, girls
and guns.
TAKE TWO. Plot: how to make it work
without being either "That's Entertainment:
Part Three" or a rapid sequence of allusions
for the film buff? Solution: make it both.
TAKE THREE. The musical illusion.
This seems most promising: it's common to
both film and theatre: it offers a flashy
synthesis of music, dancing and acting; and it
epitomizes a sort of national naivete that "no
matter what happens, everything is going to
be all right." The playwright manages this
beautifully in his take-off on the Busby
Berkeley Golddiggers production number,
here called "We're in the Salad" "we've got
a lot of what it takes to fill a bowl." The Dick
Powell male with his dancing radish, lettuce,
carrot and tomato, smiling his way through
those wonderful cliches of choreography and
spectacle, all the way to a huge bottle of
Roquefort dressing glittering in from the
flies to douse the dancers with bubbles.
Great fun, awful puns, and even the theme
"I love God, and I love Lassie."
TAKE FOUR. The allusion illusion.
Much more tricky. The references to cinema
past are inevitable, of course, given the
nature of the play; but how to make this
piece of theatre exist independent of its
references for those who do not know film
history, or for those historians who insist on
more plot than a mere montage of clips?
Durang fails on both levels. The boy girl
plot line of J immy ( J oseph Cole) and Loretta
(Sandra Geiss), the play's inconsistent
attempt at dramatic unity, is brittle as an old
print. And the universe of allusions through
which they transform themselves seems
random (where were the Westerns? the silent
comedies?) and ill-developed (compare
Stoppard's integration of Wilde into
Travesties).
TAKE FIVE. Characters: cartoons or
archetypes? If the latter, the The Mother,
The Gangster, The Moll, The Good Girl,
The Negro and so on, should resonate
immediately in the audience's collective
filmic consciousness. At first they do, as
Mother abandons Child, who becomes Girl
in Orphanage, who is finally sent out to face
The World with a quarter. But the typical
cleverness cannot last if not embodied, and
the demands of Durang's history must move
us along before we are satisfied. Characters
become two-dimensional, cliches pulled
from the panels of a Marvel Comic.
TAKE SIX. Character: example. Frank
Raiter, who has clearly demonostrated his
abilities with the PRC this year, does as well
as anyone here in being briefly appealing.
But consider the mere costume exhaustion of
his playing (in order) God, Ticket Man,
Gangster, Judge. Edward, Pa Joad,
Cardinal Richelieu and the Theatre
Manager. This is the fecundity fallacy: more
is not always more.
TAKE SEVEN. Technical
considerations: .enormous, given the
multitude of transformations in the play.
TAKE EIGHT. Direction. The essence
of American movies is action, so the director
must keep it moving. Bill Ludel does so.
although Act Two gets pretty static in spots.
TAKE NINE. Taste. Much of that fat in
Act Two is due to some puzzling and only
marginally funny lapses in the playwright's
sense of taste. The whole atom bomb
sequence is just terrible, like Cagney's
grapefruit in the face: "Goodnight
Hiroshima" likens the Japanese victims to
french fries. Little Mickey loses his hands:
Loretta becomes an alcoholic with polio;
and the Blessed Virgin Mary is reduced to a
redundant sight gag.
TAKE TEN. Tone: comic or not? This
corresponding' uncertainty doesn't mean
that one must absolutely choose between
comedy and message, but one shouldn't be
continually confused about it. Take the
conclusion in the movie theatre: is it parody?
Bob Seger
Bob Seger, whose latest
single, "Night Moves,"
is now number 5 on the
charts, will appear at
the Greensboro
Coliseum at 8 p.m.
Friday, April 1 , with the
Atlanta Rhythm Section
and the rock group
Starz. Reserve tickets
for the Bob Seger
concert are $7 and $6.
Tickets are on sale at
the Coliseum BoxOffice
and all area Record
Bars.
IlligfC
fte? -He
UNC student wins MTNA contest
I i - - I
William Chicurel, a
graduate music
student from
Asheville, won first
place in the college
composition com
petition of the
Musical Teacher
National Assoc-
The work is a classical composition
based on the most dissonant interval in
music, the augmented fourth (tritone).
Chicurel said that the flute represents
the butterfly, and the soprano voice is
youth, aware of the reality of the situa
tion. The violin represents the struggle
of the Jewish people.
The piece was performed in Atlanta
last weekend during the MTNA
national convention.
& iation (MYN A) for
fejJfZ-his composition,
William Chicurel "Butterfly."
"Butterfly" is a statement about the
struggle of the Jewish people during
World War II. Chicurel said he was
inspired be a poem written by Pavel
Friedman, a German Jew who died in a
Nazi concentration camp.
Decatur Jones
Decatur Jones, a local nightclub
performer and UNC musician, will perform
his senior recital at 8 p.m. Palm Sunday,
April 3, in the Hill Hall Auditorium.
His recital Will consist of several works for
various ensembles and guitar and will
feature The Grinding Concern and the UNC
Jazz Lab Band.
Jones asserts he will also conduct a partial
eclipse of the moon.
Special Tonight!
Student Rush
See PRC's
A History of the American Film
for 12 Price!
Just get to Playmakers Theatre at 7:45 and show your I.D.
It'll save you $2.25
V fifiirfu in Maw Vnvk thi summar. Columbia
University offer over 400 undergraduate and
professional school courses. For a bulletin write:
Summer Session, Columbia University, 102C Low.
Send only one dollar (to cover
postage) for your copy of our
latest mail-order catalog of over
7,000 research papers.
Quality Uneurpaed
Fait, Dependablt S$rylc
Speeches, Report, etc.
All Materials Sold
For Research Assistance Only
AUTHORS' RESEARCH SERVICES INC
407 South Dearborn Street Suite 600
Chicago. Illinois 60605
312-922-0300
Now
Playing
3:00
6:00
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A ROBERT FRYER Production
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satire? absurd homage? straight statement?
TAKE ELEVEN. Soundtrack. 1 know '
we are a melodramatic people on the screen,
screaming, firing and fainting. But I couldn't
shake the feeling that blank pistols and all
that aural hubbub were like Sennett
slapstick: funny at first, but eventually
Deep Jonah:
Jqzz
Night
Steve Wing, jazz pianist and vocalist,
and Rodney Marsh, saxophone and
flute player of "Hard Times Jazz Band"
fame, will return to Deep Jonah this
week.
Wing and Marsh provided one of the
highlights of the year for Deep Jonah
with their history of jazz performance
last February.
Since that time, both musicians have
been performing with the local musical
"Hot Grog" at the Kennedy Center in
Washington, D.C.
They will return to perform in Deep
Jonah from 8:30 to 1 1 Thursday night.
There is no cover. Bring a bottle of wine,
and enjoy some good jazz.
Tar Heel Classifieds
Cost Only $1.50
Held Over
5th Week
Shows
2:30
4:50
7:10
9:30
Hi
nC0EG(i)Y
BEST PICTURE
tMuea y WWW WINKLf V RUttM CHAflTOFf
BEST DIRECTOR
JOHN O WJSf N
BEST FILM EDITING
to-:" i t?v
7
Shows
2:20
4:40
7:00
9:20
Held Over
7th Week
ACADEMY AWARD
WINNER
Faye Dunaway
"Best Actress"
Peter Finch
"Best Actor"
Beatrice Straight
"Best Supporting Actress'
Prepare vmirxrlf for a perfectly
oulraitHis motMtn picture.
MGMpmmnti WuT
FAYE WILLIAM PETER ROBERT
DUNAWAY KOLCEN I1NCM OUVAU
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4:45 bigger, more exciting
7:00 than "AIRPORT 1975"
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Shows
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and Joseph Cole in PRC's "History of the
empty.
TAKE TWELVE. Self-consciousness. "I
want this to be over I don't like screwbafl
comedies," Loretta complains in an early,
sequence. This typical and constant
reference of the play to itself, to its structure
and representative nature, seems arbitrary
American Film"
and self-congratulatory for the most part.
CONCLUSION: Given the long
controversy over films of plays, and
considering the difficulties with this new play
about film, maybe mixing these media is just
that, a mixed bag. Maybe it's only in the ads
that they look the same.
The Carolina Union Needs Your Hs!pl
The application due date for committee
chairpersons of the Carolina Union has been
extended to Monday, April 4.
Applications and interview sign-ups for all
committees are available at the information desk of
the Union.
CAROLINA UNION
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