Word: aromarama
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ALOT OF Harvard writers are, well, if not trend-makers, then at least trend-breakers, and William Rubenstein is no exception. His original "stagefilm," Aromarama: For Motion Sickness certainly transcends conventional definitions of what makes good theater. In fact, one leaves the show wondering what makes it theater...
Judging from the playbill, Aromarama is a pastiche of slides and sound satirizing box-office biggies from The Guns of Navarone to The Godfather, strung together by skits parodying disaster films. But the idea of L.A. smothered by 2000 feet of waste just doesn't make it, nor does the last-ditch seduction scene of a photographer on the eve of the city's destruction: "Please photograph me. I mean, I know we're not going to have time to develop...
...format of Aromarama--a joke here, some slides there--just doesn't hang together. The production is a confusing forum for Rubenstein's dilettantish fancies. It's a good thing his photographic forte is the centerpiece...
...olfactions" themselves - supplied from the "library of essences" compiled by "Osmologist" Hans Laube, who perfected the Smell-O-Vision process - are on the whole no more accurate or credible than those employed by AromaRama, but at least they don't stink so loud. Moreover, the gimmick is backed up by a witty script that at times owes as much to Don Miguel de Cervantes as it does to Scriptwriter William Roos. The Todd 70 Process camera is used to flashy effect, especially when it is mounted on a helicopter. And Hero Elliott is a remarkably sly and appealing comedian...
...Chicago, four weeks after the competing AromaRama opened in New York, Mike Todd Jr. finally uncorked his own Smell-o-Vision film. Something less than an attempt to go around the world in 80 whiffs, Scent of Mystery is a whodunit that lacks coherent narrative, is little more than a pastiche of festival scenes, falls on its nose...