#1
Posted: 4/9/06 at 6:35pm
Talkin Broadway is Mixed-to-Negative with spoilers:
"A flood of black is sweeping across the stage of the Music Box, threatening to wipe away anything and everything that dares deny its existence. The real and imaginary ghosts controlling it won't be ignored, and they can't find their rest until everyone onstage and in the house is unsettled by the macabre message they bear.
Alas, those spirits are destined to be as restless as the audience at Festen, the fitful stage adaptation of Thomas Vinterberg and Mogens Rukov's 1998 Danish film of the same name. Adaptor David Eldridge and director Rufus Norris have tried to give those portentous poltergeists a permanent home in everyone's mind by presenting a play that might satisfy those who prefer their horror any number of ways: blatant, subtle, deeply personal, or bitterly ironic. But in trying to do too much, they've accomplished too little.
It's the missed opportunities that depress more than anything else in this potentially powerful play. The solid roster of actors, numbering some major talents culled from the stage and screen, should have no trouble puncturing the mind and heart when set upon a fine, theatrical story that wouldn't be out of place in the canons of Tennessee Williams or William Inge. Yet there's a distance between performers and material, and performers and audience, that prevents this tale about the public unmasking of a child molester from catching fire.
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Festen recalls last season's Democracy, Michael Frayn's play about the political machinations surrounding West German chancellor Willy Brandt. Frayn's intriguing espionage thriller was a hit at London's National Theatre, but was sabotaged in the U.S. by a cast that couldn't find in the highly British text and production enough American analogues to allow the story to ring true for us.
That problem is even more greatly exacerbated here by a cast operating in so many different styles, it's as if someone is operating a remote control every time a new line is spoken. Superb stage actors like Larry Bryggman (as the father) and Michael Hayden (the secret-shattering son) find in the lines the proper style and attitude for communicating their complex, conflicting emotions. Screen stars like Julianna Margulies and Jeremy Sisto, as the other two surviving siblings, shine only in the miniature moments that force them to internalize as thoroughly as they might before a camera; they affect occasionally, but too often lack the properly detailed size needed to fill a theater. Ali MacGraw, as the possibly complicit mother, speaks and moves as if auditioning to be a model at an auto show; she's a deflating non-presence in a role that should provide firm anchoring for the fractured family.
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this Festen has a group of people, and actors, who aren't believably bound together by anything. This sadly subverts their ability to realistically convince us of the battle that can erupt between those determined to keep quiet and those who believe wounds are only healed by speaking out."
http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/Festen.html
"A flood of black is sweeping across the stage of the Music Box, threatening to wipe away anything and everything that dares deny its existence. The real and imaginary ghosts controlling it won't be ignored, and they can't find their rest until everyone onstage and in the house is unsettled by the macabre message they bear.
Alas, those spirits are destined to be as restless as the audience at Festen, the fitful stage adaptation of Thomas Vinterberg and Mogens Rukov's 1998 Danish film of the same name. Adaptor David Eldridge and director Rufus Norris have tried to give those portentous poltergeists a permanent home in everyone's mind by presenting a play that might satisfy those who prefer their horror any number of ways: blatant, subtle, deeply personal, or bitterly ironic. But in trying to do too much, they've accomplished too little.
It's the missed opportunities that depress more than anything else in this potentially powerful play. The solid roster of actors, numbering some major talents culled from the stage and screen, should have no trouble puncturing the mind and heart when set upon a fine, theatrical story that wouldn't be out of place in the canons of Tennessee Williams or William Inge. Yet there's a distance between performers and material, and performers and audience, that prevents this tale about the public unmasking of a child molester from catching fire.
______________________________________________________________
Festen recalls last season's Democracy, Michael Frayn's play about the political machinations surrounding West German chancellor Willy Brandt. Frayn's intriguing espionage thriller was a hit at London's National Theatre, but was sabotaged in the U.S. by a cast that couldn't find in the highly British text and production enough American analogues to allow the story to ring true for us.
That problem is even more greatly exacerbated here by a cast operating in so many different styles, it's as if someone is operating a remote control every time a new line is spoken. Superb stage actors like Larry Bryggman (as the father) and Michael Hayden (the secret-shattering son) find in the lines the proper style and attitude for communicating their complex, conflicting emotions. Screen stars like Julianna Margulies and Jeremy Sisto, as the other two surviving siblings, shine only in the miniature moments that force them to internalize as thoroughly as they might before a camera; they affect occasionally, but too often lack the properly detailed size needed to fill a theater. Ali MacGraw, as the possibly complicit mother, speaks and moves as if auditioning to be a model at an auto show; she's a deflating non-presence in a role that should provide firm anchoring for the fractured family.
_______________________________________________________________
this Festen has a group of people, and actors, who aren't believably bound together by anything. This sadly subverts their ability to realistically convince us of the battle that can erupt between those determined to keep quiet and those who believe wounds are only healed by speaking out."
http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/Festen.html
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
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