Stage
Weales, Gerald
The story involves an uncouth petty hood with a heart of gold goers are there either because they read the enthusiastic and (Bob Hoskins) and an elegant prostitute (Cathy Tyson),...
...K. and his wife Frances built at What struck my father at the time, how- Beaconsfield in the 1920s, he used to ever, was the fact the Saint George was enjoy showing children his toy theater, dressed as an English soldier...
...It reflects Clarke's years with Pilobolus in its use of THERE IS a small movie house in Yeadon, Pennsylvania, movements that emphasize the athleticism and control that is where the owner welcomes the customers as though so important to the Pilobolus dances...
...or NEVILLE BRAYBROOKE, British writ- so...
...the performers, the program here, as in Earthly Delights, Vienna: Lusthaus is still another reminder, if one is needed, indicates that the work was "Created with the Company...
...On the occasions terton had one day visited their house and article that he sent to the Darlington when he came to see us, he appeared to drawn for him and his brothers a series of North Star, Chesteron described news- have all the time in the world to spare...
...The set by Robert Israel is minimal, but it is seducee as one hand tries to protect the woman from the hand designed to emphasize that space is an active participant in any that presses to undress her...
...follows an established pattern, but with constant photographic Papp calls Vienna: Lusthaus a tableau vivant, a label that and dramatic flair...
...LOVE & DEATH IN OLD VIENNA The matter of Vienna: Lusthaus gains its strength from method...
...The story involves an uncouth petty hood with a heart of gold goers are there either because they read the enthusiastic and (Bob Hoskins) and an elegant prostitute (Cathy Tyson), whom quite explicit reviews of Vienna, or else because, like Papp, he chauffeurs around to assignations...
...Like Bogart in Prater...
...But immobility is hardly a term that license, "a nun in disguise, a sister of mercy" for trying to describes Clarke's work...
...In 1901, in an lightning drawings...
...Yet, al- G. K. would say...
...was at home, he worked write his pieces at home and then walk every day...
...Then there was the mysterious pers...
...abominated...
...form, dissolve, merge into one another and, although the Both sentimentality and exaggeration are avoided, how- viewer may carry away a portfolio of concrete pictures in his or ever, by the film's harsh realism in portraying child prostitu- her mind, the power of the work lies in its totality...
...The text, by Charles Mee, Jr., consists of disMuch of what I have written above suggests that Clarke is connected speeches - part anecdote, part confession - that the only begetter of Vienna: Lusthaus, but to be fair to her and sound as though they might have been lifted from case studies...
...undergarments - white pantaloons and singlets - that were TOM O'BRIEN so useful to Toulouse-Lautrec...
...At the opening, an they were stepping into her parlor, which is what the officer, trim in uniform and black boots, stands center stage inner lobby looks like...
...that American theater is no longer simply a matter of plays in This sense of group endeavor reflects how much Clarke's work performance...
...For the first time, words have entered a whole...
...At tea Later, when my father began his career parties afterwards one of his tricks was to as a literary journalist, Chesterton was to throw a bun in the air and catch it in his help him get reviewing on various pa- mouth...
...CHESTERTON 50 YEARS LATER Master of topsy-turvydom down with them to the DailyNews...
...The denied visits to the daughter he loves) is touched by the cruel members of Clarke's company sometimes move with an alexploitation in what he sees...
...capabilities of the human body are stamped all over the work Beginning with Hoskins's release from prison, the film which she conceived and directed...
...After dinner he would relax with a er, editor, and critic, is presently at work cigar and a glass of wine...
...And Paul Gallo's lighting design not only helps estabsuch a night club, but, knowingly or not, she has annexed an lish the changing moods, but becomes an active part of the old strip specialty number and turned it into a complex physi- proceedings when it provides a shadow picture to accompany cal image that fits the theme and texture of her piece as a the live image on stage...
...As in the earlier piece, the reminded of an exotic dance that used to be popular in sleazy musicians wander in and out of the action, becoming part of night clubs, one in which the female dancer is both seducer and the stage pattern...
...They occasionally come full stop, "black tart," becomes "a lady" and then, with some poetic frozen for an instant...
...It is set in the Vienna of Schnitzler and Freud in which The Big Sleep or The Maltese Falcon, Hoskins represents elegance, romance, and decadence mingle, where Gemutsome small trace of decency in the urban forest of the night...
...Presumably the theater- of the men wears shoes on his hands and, as he contorts his Commonweal: 406 body in unlikely ways, his arms and booted hands become for Vienna: Lusthaus with the aid, as the program says, of another person with whom he is carnally involved...
...This is tion...
...I was Bach, Friesen, and Johann Strauss...
...After a brisk canter, he stops and, like a LipVienna: Lusthaus, not because the Yeadon, which is a pleasure pizaner stallion, arches his leg, lets his foot hover tentatively, palace of sorts, much resembles Clarke's Lusthaus, but be- and then brings it gently to the ground...
...He lichkeit rubs elbows with anti-Semitism...
...To him, Tyson, at first only a most painful slowness...
...The bright lights of the opening, when seems not quite right for a Clarke piece, not even for The Hoskins is released from prison, give way to half-light when Garden of Earthly Delights which is based on the Hieronymus he starts driving Tyson around to search for her friend, then Bosch painting...
...Only a few years ago though he was to write poems and essays did I discover that this referred to his in praise of Fleet Street, he never actually book on Thomas Aquinas, which came worked there...
...In a later scene, the cause Joseph Papp slipped a "Dear Patrons" note into the same performer (no names are attached to specific sequences), Playbill as though he felt a need to put us at our ease...
...told them that these pictures were in- At eighteen, Chesterton had gone to At Top Meadow, the house which G. tended as an allegory of world events...
...Sometimes he would read a 11 July 1986: 407...
...the men are usually dressed as officers or wear formal late-Victorian mufti...
...This had hap- lished anonymously since the great ca- ing a political demonstration in the pened during the Boer War, and Cousin thedrals...
...I was reminded of this hospitable and then begins to move in a circle, becoming the horse and woman when I went to see Martha Clarke's new theater work, rider at once...
...Richard Peaslee, who is not simply its technical ingenuity, but the way in which an did the score for Earthly Delights, creates a gaily somber score aesthetic statement becomes a moral one...
...but it really takes finds perfect foils in the regal Tyson and the magnificently place in the not-so-subconscious fantasies of most people...
...brutal Michael Caine as the taciturn cockney crime lord who is Unless an image calls for a ball gown or no clothes at all, the first their employer, then nemesis...
...used to tell the story of how quality of the talk made them so different To amuse his friends, he would often do when he was a boy, G. K. Ches- from other London pubs...
...The images are delicately suggestive or openly erotic, but the eroticism slides easily into the comic or the eccentric...
...GERALD WEALES G.K...
...He would start at 10:30 in the morning and carry on until 6:00 P.M...
...I must get back to Tommy," times in his Autobiography...
...Acting award at Cannes this year) catches both the hood's The piece takes its name from the Pleasure Pavilion in the bumbling incompetence and genuine chivalry...
...Mona Lisa abides by film noir Baltimore...
...Starkly directed by Neil Jordan, this film is only for the Garden of Earthly Delights (1984-85), a creation which has strong of stomach, not because of its violence but its raw vision played most recently at the International Theater Festival in of the seamy side of life...
...In the early days, when he out in 1933...
...Clarke piece...
...Ostensi- nude now, moves slowly across the stage...
...The Lusthaus is a garden of earthly delights CLARKE'S 'LUSTHAUS' which needs no Bosch in the wings to remind the audience that all flesh is grass...
...I think of the tableau vivant as a static stage infernal "darkness visible" as they tour fire-lit slums on their picture, the performers posed and immobile like the Living desperate quest...
...In addition, Hoskins's perfect portrayal (which won Best particularly true of Vienna: Lusthaus...
...He was never to lose that 1890s, and he never bothered to replace G. K., as he was called by the family, romantic view of the press...
...What the Slade School of Art and there acNEVILLE BRAYBROOKE he particularly liked about Fleet Street quired the habit of a lifetime of always N Y FATHER Patrick Braybrooke was its pubs, where the liveliness and carrying colored crayons in his pockets...
...The muscular conbly an indication of his admiration for Martha Clarke, the Papp trol that made the horse sequence possible can be read is his letter seems to have a subtext, asking us not to be shocked, bare body as in a Leonardo anatomy study...
...Her pieces consist of images that save her friend...
...quick sketches of knights, ladies with papers as "the largest work ever pub- His watch had been stolen, he said, durgolden hair, and dragons...
...with its painted cardboard figures...
...Spirits he on an autobiography...
...Clarke may never have gone to dance...
...Chesterton was proud of being a character whom nobody ever met called journalist, and mentions this several Tommy...
...She then diverts him to they are old Clarke admirers who have followed her career search for one of her very young colleagues still walking the from her years with the Pilobolus Dance Theater to The streets...
...lived in Kensington, Chesterton would When G.K...
...In another scene, a disturbed, surprised, which is an odd message to get from the comic one that turns ugly as it moves from sex to violence, one producer of Aunt Dan and Lemon...
...Clarke is not appearing as a performer in Vienna: conventions, yet with such conviction that it restores meaning Lusthaus, but her mind, her eye, and her understanding of the to the term "underworld...
...Mona Lisa is discomfort- women wear those discreetly evocative turn-of-the-century ing because it explores the existence of evil in frank terms...
...What makes Martha Clarke's piece so rewarding is enriched by the contribution of others...
...There is no plot, but Stage there is a recognizable thematic development as the work moves toward the final images which, visually and verbally, evoke death...
...Hoskins (who is separated from his wife and Pictures that were so popular in England in the 1890s...
Vol. 113 • July 1986 • No. 13
