Archive for July 29, 2010
RAW: Film – Me And Orson Welles – 4K
Jul 29th
When as a 17 year old, Richard Samuels (Zac Efron) gets a call up to be in a new 1937 Mercury Theatre production of Julius Caesar he immediately happens upon the massive ego and figure of Orson Welles (Christian McKay) and his crew of actors, stage hands and producers. In the course of the hectic shambles that precedes opening night, Richard gets infatuated with Sonja (Claire Danes) and observes at close range the actor’s world of ego (sometimes fragile), bluff, the lure of the next thing and its brutal impermanence.
To be sure, the ‘Me’ in the title is the star and Welles is relegated to just one of the next lead performers. Whether this is a design flaw will be a matter of taste. Danes is dazzling and immensely charismatic, being flirty but not exploitive. McKay wonderfully channels Orson’s bravado, brilliances and brittleness and Zoe Kazan as Greta, Richard’s off stage friend, is the model of youthful enthusiasm laced with self doubt and an endearing personality. As for Efron, it is rare for a teenage heart throb to develop into a genuine actor but Efron is one such novelty – he is a real actor and will be a star for audiences of all ages for years to come.
This is the third ‘play within a play’ this year (after NINE and I, Don Giovanni) and probably the best. The production is excellent all round. Richard Linklater’s direction is tight, shot in a brown sepia and Holly Gent Palmo’s screenplay (based on a Robert Kaplow novel) is a feature with dialogue that cuts to the essence of the personalities without stereotyping – Welles for all his bravado has his moments of self doubts, genius and cowardice, Richard and Greta have their youthful excesses without marking them juvenile. And who can go wrong with the music of era resonating throughout.
A failure as a biopic of Welles but a simple joy as entertainment.
Kryztoff Rating 4K
RAW: Letter’s End By Wolfe Bowart – Playhouse Till 31st July – 5K
Jul 29th
Adelaide parents and grandparents gather up in haste those pre-teen young ones in your life and make for the Dunstan Playhouse to revel in Wolfe Bowart’s Letter’s End. In a world of 3D and other cinema graphics, it is rare to see a single performer amaze and dazzle without all that tech. Bowart achieves that in trumps.
Mops that growl, apples that can be eaten off paintings, eggs that bounce and then don’t, a mosquito that never says die, blooms that transform from dead sun flowers to red roses and so it goes on in a never ending menagerie of products from a brilliant imagination that has children shrieking in joy and adults gasping in admiration.
His crowd interactions are fun with his helper on stage on opening night so full of joy even before he got on stage that it was obvious the goodwill of the whole show had infected all in the audience.
To be sure, this is mime of the highest order, in the Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton class for the 21st century. The sheer brilliance of not only the acts but the timing and the successful pursuit of magic throughout leaves those attempting to fathom how it is done exhausted and unfulfilled.
Please get your (grand)children along to Letter’s End, it will be an experience they and you will remember for a very long time.
Kryztoff Rating 5K