Stage:
Weales, Gerald
hatred of foreigners in both West and East serves as a conve- nient cover for the deeper resentments between the two Germanies. The troubled, violent youth in West and...
...and her apparent intention...
...It had Commonweal 24 September 1993: 19 conventional psychological tensions buried beneath its eccen- r 1 tric surface: mother-daughter conflict in a decade in which play- BECOME A wrights-male for the most part-worried more about father-son 1993 ASSOCIATE confrontation...
...Summer House opened and closed El Bill Me...
...and other European countries: closing down borders means cutting off potential access to the world economy...
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...perspective...
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...Eastman the Manhattan Theatre Club), his two serious ladies Cuevas's suitor, and his noisy extended family, but of remarkable travel to India where they meet a variety of men verbal constructions like Mrs...
...Western governments used to issue solemn statements condemning the Edited by the Jesuits since 1909, lack of freedom to travel in the East...
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...but a country with rigid border controls risks isolat- • Population, the Church ing itself from economic development...
...way, the increasing openness, fluidity, and internationalization Join us as we explore such of the world's economy demand tough choices for Germany complicated issues as...
...Akalaitis' s treat- When McNally kills off Kitty's husband in her absence, he seems ment of Bowles's comic Mexicans is excess in the right direc- to be laying it on a bit thickly...
...This I could have done without the final scene in the first act, in is presumably her willingness to accept all of life, its ugliness which Molly and Lionel, the newlyweds, sit side by side read- as well as its beauty (Ganesha is the embodiment of this idea), ing comic books...
...E. C.'s long opening monologue...
...Somewhat surpris- to mask the pain she still feels at the accidental death of her ingly, since Akalaitis highlights Mrs...
...It is misleading to Name describe the play in these terms, although these are the forces that feed the plot, because such compression gives no sense Address of the texture of the play...
...beating before she could reach him and he wanders, blood-stained, Constable's questions about the summer house...
...In a world without borders, the third world can come to • Religion and the the first world, while the social contract within the first world Transformation of Politics crumbles...
...Featured regularly are Now Western Europe is in the difficult position of having to incisive articles on contemporary put its money where its mouth is (or was...
...I had my doubts about some of the per- acters...
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...At the end, these two old friends have become friends formers, but Frances Conroy was a perfect Mrs...
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...She has come to India Mrs...
...Here, as in her novel Two Serious Ladies, Bowles's strange women tend to go in pairs...
...The troubled, violent youth in West and East Receive 22 issues Of Germany are using foreigners as scapegoats for their own problems in coming to terms with life in the more difficult circumstances of the unified Germany...
...on Broadway...
...but perhaps the playwright wants tion, the addition of the music underlining the preposterousness some kind of balance between the marriages of the two charof Solares and family...
...hatred of foreigners in both West and East serves as a convenient cover for the deeper resentments between the two Germanies...
...Instead, as the lights go down, she is trying to answer Mrs...
...Since the sum- around the stage and her mind until she manages to separate mer house is Molly's old hiding place, this ending suggests that her prejudices from those of his killers...
...and the Pope As I left Berlin this time, I was acutely aware that here was Issues which, in the best of Jesuit a city and a country in the process of remaking themselves...
...Box 48468 • Atlanta, CA 30362-1468 i Jane Bowles said in Vogue (May 1, 0 YES...
...Constable...
...AMERICA What is rarely mentioned in the discussion about foreigners The National Catholic Weekly and refugees in Germany and Europe is that the situation is a direct result of the collapse of the cold-war system and the rigid For As Little As $14.95 border controls which once existed in Eastern Europe...
...your five hundred goony friends," P.O...
...of their continued union at the end of the play...
...but the voices of her characters in this play pull the work askew, derail the psychological train that another playwright C ompared to Bowles, Terrence McNally is a very might ride to the finish, and often leave the reader/viewer reach- direct, very explicit playwright...
...E. C., and she never quite got the given characteristic comic lines to both of them...
...10038 an extremely strong woman who offers advice not love to Molly, her reclusive daughter, but who, when the mother's own vul- Benefactors $1,000 Charter $125 nerability breaks through her defenses, loses Molly to Lionel, Supporters $500 Sustaining $50 Molly's young and somewhat peripheral husband...
...I am not tantly because in A Perfect Ganesh (recently at thinking of the broad comedy of Mr...
...Although the tone of that opening speech, but much of her performance was two male actors (Dominic Cuskern and Fisher Stevens) have impressive...
...E. C. does not return to her childhood jealousy of her sis- ed too long to accept her son's homosexuality...
...It looks so different...
...remind me of the balance thusiastic young daughter who takes a header into death (ac- in 6 months...
...Without ever knowing the City State Zip S' 4305 woman, I was one of her goony friends from the beginning...
...Both women Dianne Wiest could not, of course, touch the regality of Judith are very funny in their very different ways and McNally has Anderson, the original Mrs...
...but opening up • Human Rights borders means exposing less-privileged citizens to low-wage • Religion, Education and competition from abroad...
...COMMONWEAL ASSOCIATES Mrs...
...If it is truly for free- theology and current events, lively dom to travel, then it can hardly build walls and iron curtains film and book reviews as well as of its own...
...I say this hesiing for a platitudinous handhold which is not there...
...in a deeper sense, sharers of each other's burdens...
...ing...
...I prefer Molly's confusion ("I don't know...
...all played by two actors, one of whom wears the elephant head Akalaitis, who has been known to play artistically fast and of Ganesha) and where they come to terms-or almost come loose with texts that she stages, sticks close to Bowles's script to terms-with their various guilts and losses...
...In fact, however, the Iron AMERICA is a weekly journal of Curtain prevented millions of potential refugees from coming opinion published for the thoughtful West: the Communists were efficient border guards not only reader interested in the Catholic for themselves but for Western Europe...
...E. C. and her daughter have switched roles...
...Bowles, dealing with potentially dis- LCity'State, - Zip --------------W-astrous and painful material, is essentially a fine comic writer...
...I but I confess to being a little ill-at-ease at an image which seems don't know...
...Molly now acts on her own too neat...
...Either issues and prominent personalities...
...her mother to become a garrulous drunk...
...to kiss a leper on the lips, she says, and she finally does...
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...He died of a ter...
...The ending is somewhat different Margaret (Frances Sternhagen) is rigid, defensive, and far from that of the published play...
...Eastman Cuevas's dis- first child years before and the less painful fact that her marsimulated memory of her childhood in her first speech (highlights riage is no marriage...
...In tradition, invoke lively discourse the new Europe, much depends on the outcome of that remak- and serious thought...
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...Mrs...
...All right, all right, I know these are quibbles-in- much tricky work to do as they shift from character to characdications of my respect for Bowles's play-and I know that ter, it is the two women who are at the center of the play...
...SUMMER HOUSE' & 'PERFECT GANESH' AMERICA The National Catholic Weekly here's no point in writing a play for Subscription Dept...
...for easy tears...
...the important thing about the new production of In the Summer Sternhagen and Caldwell are a pleasure to watch, whether they House is that it did very well by the author, the play, Lincoln are going for laughs or tears (more properly, sentiment too tough Center, and all the goonies that got a chance to see it...
...You have to reach more people...
...Solares, Mrs...
...cident...
...funds play both baffled and delighted me when I first saw it...
...Forty years after that event, Lincoln Center has revived the play, under the Name direction of Joanne Akalaitis, perhaps because the producers sus- Address pect that there is more Bowles-style gooniness around in the 1990s than there was in the 1950s...
...Please send me 22 issues of AMERICA at the special 1954), shortly after her play In the introductory price of $14.95...
...In Bowles's Patrons $250 work, men tend to be peripheral...
...she uses her sense of propriety and her very sharp tongue rather than being released by her mother...
...Constable is the victim-protector of her edgily over-en- Half enclosed...
...Eastman Cuevas, the play's matriarch, appears to be 15 Dutch Street, New York, N.Y...
...GERALD WEALES 20: 24 September 1993 Commonweal...
...Kitty (Zoe Caldwell) is sloppy, forgetful, grandly: Jennifer Tipton did the lighting), at the end of the play open to new experiences, but is dogged by guilt at having waitMrs...
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...suicide...
...to even so oblique a promise to be making an analogy between leprosy and homosexuality...
Vol. 120 • September 1993 • No. 16
