Poetry
Mead, S.E.
S.E. Mead Amputations Without anesthesia, walking sticks behind a cyclone fence getting through most days on only one bowl of porridge. Swallowing's strenuous, some throat nearly closing over...
...During the act ! was a scream, merely, whereas m~w hands, kindly, sensitive tips, occasionally rai~ a spoon, check the gauze for drainage and life has resumed a small suggestion of humanity, that hope, exhausted gratitude still doing all it can with hurt just a tfac-) for I am black (tor) a kind of indian in this land from which (con-) my blood (stant) must be cut Neville thinks the estate should have come to him and may yet if he can persuade Colin that he is sick enough to die...
...That scene isn't on Broadway either...
...Jordan or Clarence in It's a Wonderful Life (without their heavenly credentials...
...The only reason that I can see for turning the character into a villain (indifference is so much more frightening than villainy) is that it provides a role for the estimable Robert Westenberg (the Big Bad Wolf from Into the Woods...
...But she is only the most prominent of the ghosts that haunt the play...
...A note in the New York Times on May 3 indicated that, even though the show was open and running, the producers were planning to cut back on the intrusive ghosts to make things clearer for children, an important element in potential audiences...
...On stage, there are problems with the garden itself...
...Swallowing's strenuous, some throat nearly closing over from so much emptiness, nausea, an acidic gullet and its limb lump, that .sacrifice required to slump away from the phantom trap...
...For that, you might well turn to the 1984 BBC adaptation of the book in which film can show the changing garden, can let us see and almost touch Dickon's animals and the robin which leads Mary to the garden...
...For that is the line run's purpose: it's a last-minute step towards making the performers so fluent that opening night jitters won't make them go blank once the curtain goes up...
...They also falsify one of Burnett's central points--that Mary, surrounded by people in India, was as isolated as when she is alone in Yorkshire...
...Both recognize that the dressing scene between her and Mary is a natural for a musical number...
...No director is present or needed, only an assistant stage manager holding the prompt book to make sure everyone is word perfect...
...Of course, this is hindsight...
...We get more of the garden there, although Heidi Landesman's charmingly theatrical sets never evoke the real magic that Bumett had in mind...
...If the children have to edge their way around the brothers to get to their own story, they also have to face the beneficent interference of the dead Lily, who is as busy as Mr...
...That does away with the moment which"frue Gardenites will insist is the most important one in the book, when Mary enters the garden alone and thinks the dormant plants are dead...
...Set bound, the opera could not present the garden until the end of the play, when a crumpled, discolored canvas was removed to reveal a pastel garden set, which means that the three children have to discover the garden at once...
...Why's it coming back, always a succubus...
...But if you harbor a perverse desire to be present at such a rehearsal, just betake yourself to A Kiss Before Dying, the latest 406: Commonweal...
...Both the opera and the musical have their virtues, but if it is Bumett's Secret Garden you want to see, check your video store for the film...
...Both musical versions of the book recognize the vitality of Martha (Dickon's sister, the chambermaid who looks after Mary) as a character and keep her on hand for the f'mal triumph in the garden...
...Bumett simply forgot her...
...GERALD WEALES SCREEN LETHAL SMOOCHES 'KISS' & 'MORTAL THOUGHTS' couple of days before a play opens, its cast usually meets in a rehearsal room or a hallway for what is called a"line run...
...Mary's parents, her Indian servants, and various unidentified waltzers float in with great frequency and make scenes difficult to perceive...
...dybbuk, ! go on mouthing about...
...Of course, if you were ever to blunder into a line run, you would swear that you had never seen such colorless, such toneless, such spunkless actors in your entire life...
...The word "run" is precise for the actors usually race through the script, deliberately discarding the inflections and pauses that have evolved during rehearsals and that will be revived on opening night...
...There was a vice, straps and the blade blacking out everything but the pain gunny sack breathed till to suffocate sounded like .salvation...
Vol. 118 • June 1991 • No. 12
