Word: kim
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PURGATORY IS THE overriding subject of Narratives, Earl Kim's new musical adaptation of various excerpts from Samuel Beckett's work. In seven skits Kim effectively captures the essence of Beckett's purgatory-a world founded on the premise of an irreducible absurdity-one in which the realms of the shadow and substance constantly collide,interweave and fall apart. In this world characters are racked by doubt and tormented by a nightmarish past which they cannot escape or hope to understand. Purgatory is not a way-station between heaven and hell in Kim's view, it is the Universe itself...
...balance which Kim establishes between actor and musical instrument reflects his assimilation and digestion of Beckett's rhetoric: Kim spent two years composing Narratives, finishing in 1975 just in time for the master's 75th birthday. Kim established a precedent for this performance in Exercises en Route, his first successful attempt to set the spoken word to music. In this new form which he calls "Music/Theatre," Kim draws upon the improvizational abilities of the Ariel Music Ensemble...
...Narratives assume personalities of their own, carrying on musical conversations among themselves. In the opening skit, for example, a violin, cello and piano exchange various harmonies, attempting to reach a common ground. In a later piece an altercation between between cello and alto-trombone ranges from melodrama to farce. Kim's parallels and parodies the actors' disjointed monologues. In one skit a piano accompanies actress Irene Worth, responding to the natural cadences of her voice as she relives a traumatic childhood experience. The culmination of this tension between the actor and instrument occurs in the last piece when the voices...
...very incompleteness of Beckett's works far increases the spectator's need to project his own despair in the spaces of the play." It would be a mistake to confuse an actor's shortcomings with the author's intent: to argue that the audience is simply misconstruing Kim's-and ultimately Beckett's-purpose. Worth struggles at points with the difficulties of her script, and her monologues sometimes appear awkward and belabored. Soprano Jane Bryden fails completely. Her words are inaudible...
...camera repeatedly closes in on Joe's face as the girl's taunts become increasingly strident, "You know that penny farthing hell you call your mind...that's where you think this is coming from don't you...behind the eyes." We expect some kind of catharsis and yet Kim gives us none save two tears which slowly roll down Joe's face...