Modern Congas

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"Are you saying all these people are dead? Inconceivable!".......2006-01-03

Set in a holding room Vichy, France, in 1942, this powerful play by Arthur Miller introduces nine men who have been picked up on suspicion that they are Jews or Jewish sympathizers. Waiting to be questioned are an actor, a waiter, a businessman, a psychoanalyst, a Marxist railroad worker, a gypsy, an ancient Hasid, a fourteen-year-old boy, and an Austrian prince. As they talk and begin to share bits of information, Miller examines the tendency of ordinary men to become immobilized when faced with "an atrocity...that is inconceivable," to refuse to believe that such behavior can possibly happen in a civilized world. At the same time, he also examines those others, the Nazis and their collaborators in France, who serve an ideology, not mankind, those who subordinate themselves so completely to an abstract concept that they believe "there are no persons anymore."

Directed by Stacy Keach, who also wrote the background music, the production features a talented cast, including Rene Auberjonois as the actor, Allen Garfield as the panicked and fatalistic artist, and Andrew Robinson as the German major who has second thoughts about his role. Harris Yulin shines in the very demanding and crucial role of the psychoanalyst Leduc, and his confrontation with Richard Jordan, as the Austrian prince who has failed to act when he had the chance, is heart-stopping. The external action takes place with only one set and virtually no props, focusing the audience's attention on the characters' intense psychological crises, through which Miller examines the tendency of men to believe that the world is essentially rational. Gradually, the truth about the waiting train and its destination emerges, and the sense of horror becomes palpable.

As the men, one by one, disappear from the set, the drama focuses on the psychoanalyst and the Austrian prince, one Jewish and one Christian, one of whom wants desperately to live, and the other of whom has already attempted suicide. Beautifully paced, with a very moving climax, the play is an unusually sophisticated treatment of the Nazi horrors. Miller does not see events purely in black and white, showing instead that everyone creates his own reality to keep from accepting the unthinkable. Written in 1964, while Miller was representing the New York Herald Tribune at the Frankfurt war crimes trials of officials from Auschwitz, this play is Miller's creative reaction to the atrocities he has heard first-hand--and one of his most powerful plays. Mary Whipple

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Life is a movie - with deleted scenes and added songs.......2007-11-23

Peter Chan's Perhaps Love is an intriguing Chinese/Hong Kong/Malaysian backstage musical built around the notion of life as a movie where we constantly edit our memories and that, while we are all the leading players in our personal movie, we're no more than bit parts rather than co-stars in anybody else's and that consequently life is full of abandoned subplots and deleted footage. With the huge amount of mutual crossover between local pop stars and Hong Kong movies, it's surprising there have been so few movie musicals from that part of the world, but they're thin enough on the ground for this to be marketed as the first Chinese musical in 40 years. Only it's not 'really' a musical - like most modern musicals, it tries to disguise the fact it's a musical by setting its drama against the making of a movie musical as Takeshi Kaneshiro has to come to terms with the fact that the great love of his life (Zhao Xun, excellent in a virtual dual role) has completely edited him out of her memory because to her the past is only useful as a reminder of what to get away from. Her present is Jacky Cheung's director with Fellini syndrome (he can't see what he really wants to do with his film), and she's already rewriting that relationship in expectation of a Hollywood deal. Through it all wanders Ji Jin-hee's angelic keeper of discarded footage, an occasional observer rather than an active participant.

Hong Kong's failed official entry for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, it's a lavishly mounted affair, with beautiful photography and great design. There are some visual influences from Jacques Demy (most notably an overhead shot of multi-coloured umbrellas) and more overtly in the circus scenes Moulin Rouge, although thankfully the musical numbers are much better shot than Luhrman's effort, and without resorting to excessive ADDS editing. Peter Kam's songs may occasionally sound a little odd to Western ears (although the HK DVD thankfully subtitles the lyrics, a rarity in musicals), but they're surprisingly impressive and memorable, and for the most part well-served by the cast. Kaneshiro may have the face of an angel but he also has the singing voice of Lee Marvin, although since his songs aren't written for a trained voice that's not a major problem. However, Jacky Cheung is quite a revelation to anyone only aware of his work as an actor - not only does he have the strongest voice among the cast, but its the one that puts the real emotional power into his numbers. Its appeal to Western audiences is probably limited to fans of Wong Kar-Wei's brand of morally compromised romanticism, although this is not as exhilarating or daring as the best of Wong, it has more than enough imagination and emotional resonance of its own to make it well worth checking out.

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