Word: scripts
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...well-realized element of Miller's script is a "lone cellist," here ingeniously expanded to two, probably as underapreciated as it is slightly overused. Like voices calling and responding to one another, they act, unlike much musical interscenic filler, to further contemplation with subtle gradations of emotion rather than the current fad of ironic comment or scene-labeling through dastardly clever epoch-hopping musical selection. Bach (played by Laura Lee'00) and Gounod (Luba Mandzy '01) trade strains here, at the same time softening and commenting upon the rough edges of Miller's emotional landscape...
...that it breaks through to the surface only fleetingly, and then restricted almost entirely to the violence of suggestion and language rather than action. Softley's contemporized approach works because of the genuine erotic chemistry between Bonham-Carter and Roache, which reaches its peak at the Venice Carnival (a script addition), only to disappear completely in the one explicit sex scene (definitely a script addition), which Softley deliberately deeroticizes to show the gulf that opens between Kate and Merton. Both the sexualized metaphor of the masked carnival and the loveless sex may strike one as a bit heavy-handed...
...would be unfair to the stupendous work of Altman and her cast and crew. No play is so great that it is foolproof. If anything, mediocrity is more obvious when the potential exists for a brilliant night of theater. Angels in particular--with its large cast, its tricky, complex script, and its logistical nightmares of sound, stage and light effects--raises the stakes for success remarkably high. What we experience at the Loeb, then, is the transporting magic of talented dramatists giving the play, and the audience, everything they have. Those gifts are prodigious, indeed...
First and foremost, there is the crisis of the script. Wendy Kesselman's screenplay (adapted from her own stage play) is remarkably schizophrenic, jumping from one storyline to the next with absolutely no transitions. At times, the absence of any logical bridge between scenes causes one to wonder whether a better movie was left on the cutting room floor...
...confused attitude toward its heroine. Still, Something about Catherine, that "mediocre and defenseless creature," has always drawn the attention of some superlative artistic advocates. Like the Wyler film and the Broadway productions, this Heiress boasts an impeccable cast and a sensitive director who nearly overcome the flaws in the script with the sheer emotional power of their commitment to the work. As befits the story of a wallflower, the Lyric takes flawed material and makes of it something magnificent...