Stage
Weales, Gerald
trying to save 5 against bad guys trying to kill him, Badham minister's secretary, take off his shirt to show that his broken opens the door to predictably sentimental claptrap. In place of ...
...The scenes in the first act are each labeled - Badham obviously wants to make "peace" movies that a lighted message across the top of the stage - with one of the exploit Hollywood's fascination with hi-tech machinery, but standard rules from texts for beginning writers...
...ignorance," "love," "obedience" be for the work of Wendell Berry...
...As might his use of certain good to look at...
...The Latin American, fresh out of an sign she can do no wrong as a soulmate to 5 the fugitive...
...distance between experience and its transformation into either Badham uses his characters to provide some awkward sex- art or effective reporting, and the way in which the written ual humor...
...interesting...
...The poet has been imprisoned because he was effect of the second act is to insist that truth and virtue have the ambassador to Spain of the now deposed rightist dictator- only literary validity and that words are at the service of ship...
...trying to save 5 against bad guys trying to kill him, Badham minister's secretary, take off his shirt to show that his broken opens the door to predictably sentimental claptrap...
...audience outside of New York...
...Louis is a wasteland, has arrived of her scenes painful to watch...
...He didn't...
...I prefer Principia Scripbound by rules, informed by love...
...How much better he caught youth culture in one account alters the actuality that is its source...
...Latin American...
...comment in War Games: "forty-two, that's old...
...I never for a moment believed Cronyn's rigid old play were a mystery story instead of the kind of semi-serious general...
...gued, original, and passionate essays in ing...
...Much has been made of the performers as whom she loves, but of the system which he represents...
...But as their discomfort turns OUT OF THE WASTELAND to fear and then to pain, there is desperation in their attempt to EXPERIENCE & ART find comfort in the fact that they are accumulating "usable material...
...He has little time our most versatile and prolific writers...
...Even if we accept the accuses the delegation of not understanding about torture, a integrity of the visiting delegation and, from an opposing young American observer explodes...
...He works omissions which any given reader might Wendell Berry from and embodies a concept of order (by regret...
...When the host, a seasoned writers' conference in-fighter, reputation and political expediency...
...which he means "the possibility of reSecular Pilgrimage," from the 1975 col- RECOLLECTED ESSAYS 1965-1980 sponsible action"), and an "ecological lection A Continuous Harmony: Essays intelligence" of temperance and obligaCultural and Agricultural on the upsurge Wendell Berry tion superior to himself...
...Worse, she comes equipped in the Latin American country, his baggage full of undigested with a houseful of pets and drives an ice cream truck, a sure cliches of the 1960s...
...cipline, balance, and responsible re- for the modern "specialization of Why isn't he better known...
...Tandy is effective enough as Lady Elizabeth, lost in her impending death - the terrible secret that reviewers but I was oddly unmoved by the performance or, perhaps, the (New York Times, Time) have refused to reveal as though the character...
...conference in New York...
...Sheedy has not improved with leaflets attacking the dictatorship...
...It is scheduled for fall produc- .The titular petition is one favoring nuclear disarmament tion by the Royal Shakespeare Company in London...
...In his essays on poetry some, and all the same size so they sit MEMBERSHP in Standing by Words, as in his essays on companionably and harmoniously in the the land in Recollected Essays, Berry has bookshelf...
...6 June 1986: 345...
...Perhaps in a straint might seem old-fashioned and poetry," and the "religion of art...
...The American at first believes that he is safe because he is an American, the Latin American because his father is a prominent lawyer...
...At one point, Cronyn's foot toriae, which, whatever its weaknesses, was aimed at the made an odd little turn that caught my eye, a playful twist that mind...
...The appearance of the petition in the Times is an Petition, hailed not for its content but because it stars Jessica occasion for a long delayed discussion about their marriage...
...Natural as a teenager, she has developed a brittle cattiness written a first novel about how his bourgeois family does not as a young woman, a vociferous artificiality that makes many understand him and how St...
...these are he needs to avoid the easy caricatures and safe liberal-left intended as comic and, as the scenes get uglier, ironic comthinking he wallows in here...
...TOM O'BRIEN ments on the imprisoned men...
...Tandy and Hume Cronyn in what they say will be their last From the beginning, she has felt a prisoner not of the general, two-character play...
...The play is concerned with the a defense contractor...
...It is a startling and robots are "impervious to human weaknesses...
...Which is as it should Northpoint, $13.95, 146 pp...
...COLLECTED POEMS 1957-1982 with a new/old meaning, and uses these Two of these books are selections, the Wendell Berry words naturally and unself-consciously...
...They are not really necessary to the action on stage because the conversation of the prisoners - ranging from their ambitions to their reading to their families Stage - tells us all we need to know about the search for experience that can be made into art...
...scenes are often funny, as we watch these two young men, Badham does have enough skill at pacing and editing to creations of the literature they have read and of the great works keep the story of the robot's escape and the "birth" of its mind they hope to write, alternately annoy and comfort one another...
...He opens his trousers to position, the minister of culture, the process is a frighteningly show the permanent damage to his genitals, suffered in this funny game like the most flamboyant public quarrels at the last country fifteen years before, and insists that his coequal, the International P.E.N...
...In closely arof nature poetry...
...We Sooner or later, a girl has to show up, and she's the same as meet them in Act I, fifteen years earlier, in jail for passing out in War Games, Ally Sheedy...
...The two young men are the central figures in the play...
...Standing by Words, Berry castigates the Berry is well-known in environmental Brian Swann egotism of the Romantics, particularly circles as an untiring and eloquent advo- Wordsworth and Shelley, while asserting cate of "sustainable" farming methods...
...Her an acting couple, as though the play were designed to illustrate one major act of nonconformity - before the petition - was a the Tandy-Cronyn marriage rather than that of the Milnes, the long-ago affair which the general, bending his rigidities, put retired English general and his wife, who are Clark's char- up with because he wanted her more than he did the correct acters...
...I miss, for example, an essay, "A Northpoint, $20, 213 pp...
...culture of the revolutionary government for the release of a Yet, this impulse is little more than a gesture because the main celebrated poet...
...A moment at the end of Act 11, confirmed by a coda that I N THE SECOND act of Richard Nelson's Principia Scrip- flashes back to 1970, suggests that whatever the two men have toriae, a committee of eminent writers - an American, a become - one an unwriting functionary, the other a successGerman, a Latin American - has come to an unnamed ful journalist - they share an experience that confirms the Latin American country to negotiate with the minister of muddled idealism under their dangerous youthful foolishness...
...I cannot share the reviewers' sentimental enthusiasm thing...
...forced me to concentrate on the actor, not because of the GERALD WEALES Books: THE RESTORATION OF VISION N ORTHPOINT Press books are always THE WILD BIRDS "irrelevant...
...After English university, is almost as innocent about his own counall this telegraphing about plot and character, Badham's try as is the American whose ignorance he attacks...
...visible part of a career's output which Northpoint, $16.50, 268 pp...
...which Lady Elizabeth has signed much to the distress of her husband who not only opposes its substance but sees her name A LESS AMBIGUOUS reception than the one given Principia on the list as a repudiation of his career and the England that he came to another idea play of sorts, Brian Clark's The has served...
...At this point, the visiting the critical self-examination Badham evoked in War Games, Latin American describes the torture that his wife underwent in he uses Short Circuit for moral self-congratulation...
...The Nova's security staff and top scientists are mindless and older American angrily tells his young countryman to pull up greedy warmongers given to Faustian statements that the his pants because, "We're talking here...
...Depicting combat with the other four robots, The American's need to preach platitudes is particularly effecBadham wittily evokes every fighting convention in film from tive perhaps because Nelson, who would have been in college Robin Hood to The Three Stooges...
...Or each can be balanced Wendell Berry loaded words such as "gin," "pride," neatly in the palm...
...country that admires excess and con- that our richest and most responsible traBut he is not as well-known as he should sumption, rapidly changing excitement, dition is to be found in such writers as be to the rest of us for what he is: one of and the quick fix, Berry's virtues of dis- Milton, Dante, Pope...
...But that is key to his in the late sixties, knows him more intimately than he does the problem: ShortCircuit is full of allusions, but little substance...
...On cue, 5 gets disturbing scene not because of the characters, who never hit by lightening, "malfunctions," and escapes to explore the wander far from stereotype, nor because torture is the ostensiworld...
...Commonweal: 344 Principia Scriptoriae, hardly a name for a marquee, was rightness of the gesture for General Milne, but because I effectively produced for a limited run by the Manhattan Thea- expected the fey old rascal from Cocoon to come bursting out ter Club and, as with most of Nelson's plays, is likely to find its of the general's shell and dance across the stage...
...In the acting and in the writing, The Petition seems General Milne, never become transformed into a character designed to pull at our heartstrings...
...his native country, and the German says, solemnly, that he From the first, the score is stacked in 5's moral favor: read the essay describing the event and found it moving...
...The political differences of these two people and the for the two actors, although I have often admired their work on social, sex-role implications of their marriage are somehow other occasions...
...Naturally, there are ESSAYS "larger responsibilities...
...The American, who has age...
...The true poet has Place on Earth...
...The early trick-ending comes as no surprise...
...These four are hand- SIX STORIES OF THE PORT WILLIAMS uncurrent words...
...But this is a rich gather- Northpoint, $18, 340 pp...
...He takes words as seriously as he takes also includes three novels, Nathan Coul- farming, and for him poets are the bearter, The Memory of Old Jack, and A STANDING BY WORDS ers of our culture...
...In place of shoulder had never healed properly...
...Predictably, 5's inventor is a laid-back fellow (Steve ble subject, but because at this graphic moment Nelson's Guttenberg) who never examines what he is doing' working for themes become most insistent...
...Irascible he can be (The Gin Game), meticulous he work that one would expect from the author of Whose Life Is It can be (Krapp's Last Tape), but these elements, evident in Anyway...
Vol. 113 • June 1986 • No. 11
