Screen:

...The island-once a place of Farewell My Concubine has the texture of a great historical novel...

...Bracing himself, Shitou saves her...

...For want of a comparable look at Shitou and Douzi, we lack the sensual rationale for their acceptance of a life that has done so much to cramp their spirits...

...1 Was he destined to be a player, all right, but not exclusively of Commonweal 3 December 1993: 15 female roles...

...Toward the end of our has an extra finger and this minor freakishness disqualifies him...

...Terry's I wrote my "last theater review" (January 22,1971...

...Although actors are regardsister...

...In any case, it is as a "female" Kaige is willing to put the bodies and nerves of his characters that he is forced to function both off stage and on...

...Indeed, this was be fed and sheltered...

...And, sure enough, under wouldn't have achieved a career but also wouldn't have felt pressure they always revert to childish form...

...Douzi always saccompelled to court disaster...

...A desperate prostitute holding her starving child watchever, assumes individuals are not to be trusted in coming to es a theater troupe being harassed by a mob...

...In black-and-white, we see the turmoil prohibit removal of various forms of life support, particularly in the streets of Beijing that reflects the inability of the war lords medically assisted nutrition and hydration-which of course is to rule in the face of Western exploitation and Japanese impethe presumption the committee holds...

...No," they said, "he will tell us we Mother has disappeared...

...As a group, they seem to have acceptremember her part in her dying husband's having turned away ed life on Friel's pier, but here, too, wonderful Tennessee hovers from the career in classical music that was his youthful ambi- just over the horizon...

...theatrical apprentices exercising halfpatient, we are not always obligated to provide treatment...

...Early in his training, Douzi is inspired mind on reading these documents on medically assisted nutri- through watching a performance of veterans to achieve greattion and hydration suggests that maybe these elderly sisters were ness in his own craft, but why does he keep changing the line, right on both counts...

...Beaten by the old when they are little, beatof their personalities, there is surprisingly little dramatized in- en by the young when they are old, these two actors, reputedtrospection...

...The magsister-in-law, a reluctant teacher of classics, is given to rau- azine had decided to drop the stage column...

...Farewell My Concubine is futerms, then to reject treatment is to reject care, which does not eled by pain...

...tion...

...For instance, the his heroes suffer so grievously...

...Now he is broke-temporarily, up, and she tosses him an umbrella which he deftly catches...

...Given the subtitle of the play, the damping down the tensions among them-we learn that Terry's actors should be instruments only, but this is an Edward Albee sister, who seems so relentlessly dense, is not so much for- work and, without the crutch of linear plot, they develop recgetful as blessed by a selective memory that allows her to mis- ognizable personalities...

...There's so many years ago was among the first things that came to my no easy answer to this...

...tive bravado toward some politically dangerous intruders who 16: 3 December 1993 Commonweal have swarmed into his theater...

...in their assessment and because I would not think that this would Is that new identity as an impersonator of maidens and conbe the priest's response...

...conversation, I asked if they wanted to discuss this with their So Mother takes an ax and chops off the offending digit...

...Brian Friel-new works the telling of stories, ostensibly a way of passing the time, acand old-has become a staple of regional theaters all over the tually-through both the story and the interruptions-a way of country...

...It's a perilous drop but, trusting his "Because of the shortening attention span of the average audience acrobatic skill, she jumps...

...Chen he altogether on the wrong path...

...But the troupe's leader refuses: the boy the classic case for terminating therapy...

...Considering that so the core of their natures...

...The vulgarian among these quasi-intel- weal...

...Or was Chen Kaige, by his very remains latent, resident in the material but seldom explored omission, evincing a disgust with an art form that has made through give-and-take between characters...

...today, Herr Wagner, we must ask you to limit the length of your Much later in the movie, Shitou is behaving with self-destrucnext opera to no more than four and a half hours...

...Or is he simply resentful at having to break from drama cries out for a decisive confrontation between Douzi Mother and childhood so suddenly, so violently...

...he insists-but long enough for him to lose the option he has Not nearly so spectacular a feat as catching a plummeting body, taken on the island, which he remembers having visited years but she has made her point: brace yourself once again and save ago...

...Christian pilgrimage-is their Tennessee, a promise of peace What it lacks, or rather what it deliberately eschews, is the psy- and beauty, a surcease from loss...

...Interrogated by the Red Guard, they much of this movie's drama depends on how the changes and don't merely collapse but drag each other down in an ecstasy dangers of history force people to squirm within the armors of unleashed rancor...

...like a traditional male and must also bluster his resentment whenThese are fascinating ambiguities but we in the audience ever bailed out by his "concubine...

...on the rack but he keeps a respectful distance from their And Shitou, the macho enactor of warriors...

...And what a tragedy to feel that the church "By nature I am a girl, not a boy" to "I am a boy, not a girl...

...And Shitou must always bluster his way into danger Shitou has offended...

...Unfortunately one often does not know whether or not a treatment is beneficial until one actually tries it...

...Apparently comfortable with his maleness and a static quality that is a relative letdown after the highly married to a former prostitute who adores him, he seems happy...

...But Chen Kaige's film is no confection, no Last Emperor...

...There is no need for it in the childhood scenes which ly so splendid on stage, are programmed for degradation...

...But the fact that this experience from cubines a fulfillment or a thwarting of Douzi's soul...

...A new home acceptand we're going to do it...

...Terry's own marriage, once again to drop the stage column...

...enough satisfied with the spectacle in this Chinese Thus the committee asks whether "medically assisted nutrition movie about the linked destinies of two Beijing and hydration should always be seen as a form of normal care...

...for though we are always obligated to care for a ows of performers glide...

...is he fulfill- thoughts...

...In Tennessee, three couples have come to a comic (the account of trying to bury a dog frozen solid with his decaying pier in Donegal (not far from the fictional Ballybeg, tail straight out), some serious, even sentimental (a loss-of-inthe usual setting of Friel plays) to catch a boat to an island nocence reminiscence by the actor who wears an ACT-UP tee only occasionally visible offshore...

...In fact, early in the film, pain literally floods the screen with Fifth and finally, the prolife committee states: "It is not easy color...

...Standing on a platform high above lectuals, Terry, a pop-music promoter and gambler, has been the stage, the actor's wife gets his attention with a cry...

...It will presumably find new produc- Concerto Grosso...

...The sequences of training, abuse, Farewell My Concubine, we have a static, despairing view of childish camaraderie are as emotionally direct, fluent, and naked human nature...

...A band of recognizable Friel losers who cling to the possibility that their Tennessee is still out there on STORYTELLING the horizon, still reachable...

...Something is missing at ponder them more than the characters do...

...One of them removes a ruined unprobed...

...One example: seeing his future wife besieged by rather violent customers on the second floor of a whorehouse, Shitou, standing on the ground floor, calls to her to throw herself down into his arms...

...My concern is not to pick linguistic nits, but rooms...

...The magazine has decided uneasiness over an affair with Terry...

...But instead of thanking his apprenthe magisterium is to have the final word in resolving practi- tice, the troupe's leader-teacher beats him for a recent cal moral decisions...

...Perhaps if he had defied his teacher, he these two by watching them as children...

...The cast of play in which a group of people gather for an occasion-a death, Fragments consists of eight actors-four men and four womena celebration-and quietly, unwillingly let their lives unravel who are identified by their real names...

...He looks sustaining them financially...

...They tell stories, some before our eyes...

...His voice nearly destroyed by the disease that is killing Shortly after I began to cover plays for Commonweal in 1968, him, he does most of his talking with his accordion...

...And perhaps then he wouldn't rifices himself just as the traditional woman is taught to do, and feel so resentful whenever Douzi bails him out by giving pri- always resents the fact that his devotion invariably goes unapvate performances for the officials and military officers whom preciated...

...Therefore, the latter three quarters of Concubine have ing himself...

...The film's director, Istvrin Szabo, shows us the antihero on stage, doing everything from operetta to Goethe...

...After a prologue showing the two main characters-Shitou, to arrive at a single answer to some of the real and personal the portrayer of heroic warriors, and Douzi, the female imperdilemmas involved in this issue...

...Opera stars: the theatrical masks and headdresses...

...I think "Farewell My Concubine" in 1977, we are taken back to their that the only way a single answer could be given would be to childhood in the 1920s...

...In other (the abandoned son of a prostitute) and Shitou's wife (an exwords, has Douzi found the right path in the wrong way, or is prostitute), but all we get are several minor skirmishes...

...the massive pomanifesting care, that is, when the burdens are disproportion- litical demonstrations that turn city squares into outdoor courtate to the benefits...

...the play itself, consists of a series of solo turns and an occaLike Aristocrats (1979), Wonderful Tennessee is another Friel sional duet set within a group performance...

...Fear of technological entrapment could cause CHEN'S 'FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE' great harm because people who might benefit from a treatment would not receive it or would reject it...

...I am quite leery of speaking of treatment and care as inter- the swirling yellow backdrop curtains against which the shadchangeable...

...as anything in Shoeshine or Forbidden Games...

...By witnessing Brandauer's exultation in his artistry, we understand why he cozies up to a regime that gives him a stage to dominate...

...later in the season, Arden, another Phila- in New York, a venue devoted to the works of Albee...

...One of delphia company, will be doing Translations the devices of the director and the characters in Tennessee is (1980...

...to warn against an implicit begging of a critical question...

...If the latter, he made a mistake...

...The outing was Terry's idea, shirt...

...And, as each blow falls on the lad's backside, the Many years ago when I began doing ethics rounds in vari- nostalgic black-and-white photography turns into vivid color...

...both of us...

...In comprise the first quarter...

...Recently, I had another look at Mephisto with Klus Maria Brandauer enacting a spectacularly talented and spectacularly amoral actor who collaborates with the Nazis...

...Chen does this circling for us through subtle parallels, repetitions, contrasts...

...Yet his most recent play, Wonderful Tennessee, in a revealing the characters...

...charged childhood episodes...

...By using a similar device within a nonpredictably excellent Abbey Theatre production, lasted only a realistic structure, Albee has created what his subtitle calls "A few days on Broadway...

...If the protagonists are finally as static as statues, we can nevertheless circle round a statue and view it from different angles...

...has abandoned you at the time of deepest need...

...Connoisseurs of the exotic will be well "care" in a way which suggests that they are interchangeable...

...In them, we witness the violent formation gripping sequences of theatrical training and breathtaking and deformation of human nature...

...Why is it necessary for us to sonator specializing in faithful concubines-getting ready to arrive at a single answer, particularly when the issue is so com- rehearse a farewell performance of their best loved vehicle plex, as the committee's statement itself documents...

...Farewell My Concubine is both voluptuous and Fourth, the prolife committee uses the terms "treatment" and acrid...

...Philadelphia is not an anomaly...

...Are Leslie Cheung and Zhand Fengyi, troubled domestic lives, we may justly expect psychological so felicitous in their characterizations of Douzi and Shitou, not complexity rather than emotional nakedness, but this complexity adept at Beijing Opera style...

...As they pass the time-talking and singing, fueling and and his need to be touched...

...We discussed the situation and it was clear that death ed as being only one step above prostitution, at least Douzi will was imminent and further therapies useless...

...parish priest, for I was surprised that they asked to speak with Douzi's contract is signed with his blood...

...As a boy he submitted to the blows Under the opacity of adult good manners, prideful aloofness, of his teacher with a willingness bordering on gusto, but as stoicism, and hypocrisy, Shitou and Douzi remain children...

...delinquency...

...It was Edward Albee's new play, tion of Dancing at Lughnasa playing at the Fragments, which will be coming in this Philadelphia Drama Guild/Annenberg Cen- production, directed by the playwright, to the Signature Theatre ter...

...The tone of the work deepens from the first to the secto celebrate his birthday, but they are stranded on the pier since ond act, ending with a ritual laying on of hands-like the end the aged boatman, who lives just offstage, never comes to get of a group therapy session-as an actor ruminates on his aging them...

...naked in the freezing morning air while singing to the rising Neither is a particular treatment always an appropriate way of sun of the strength that is filling their bodies...

...The boy actor, such a serious decision, that answers to complex issues can be Shitou, wins the crowd over with the old Kung-fu stunt of breakformulated in terms universally applicable to all cases, and that ing a board with his head...

...The title comes from a song that they all sing, "Down by the Because of its visual beauty and vital acting, and a story that Canebrake," in which Tennessee is the unattainable destinatakes us through the hazards of several tyrannical regimes, tion of the song's narrative voice...

...Remembered hymns aside, chological penetration of such a novel...

...Then he looks around...

...The column and cous songs to mask her disappointment in her husband, who I were back by the end of the year (December 17), intermitis writing a book about time that he will never finish, and her tently at first and then regularly...

...That musical term, as it is defined within tions somewhere beyond the street of broken dreams...

...GERALD WEALES Commonweal 3 December 1993: 17...

...ous hospitals, I was asked to speak with two elderly, unmar- One scene later, the prostitute offers her little son, Douzi, ried Irish sisters who wanted to terminate treatment for the third for membership in the company...

...with the power to hurt him...

...SCREEN A byproduct of this line of argument could be a decision not to start someone on a therapy or technology for fear that it would not be stopped if and when that treatment should become in- BEHIND THE RED CURTAIN appropriate...

...L NNESSEE& 'FRAGMENTS' IN hile watching Tennessee, I was reminded of a very different play that I had just seen at the Ensemble Theatre of Cincins I write this, there is a very good produc- nati...

...RICHARD ALLEVA life preserver from the frame that holds it, which is then revealed as a cross, and to it they attach bits of their belongingsSTAGE bits of themselves-and after circling a pile of rocks, they leave, promising to return...

...But then why does he constantly feel the need to defy those Of course, this lack of dynamism may be Chen's very point...

...Shortly after, Douzi burns the cape can't stop the treatments, but we know it's the right thing to do she wrapped about him against the cold...

...the ethicist rather than him...

...Nevertheless, Farewell My Concubine is quite compelling...

...They rouse and I write "reputedly so splendid" because, though there are sting the viewer...

...After twenty-five years, to a lawyer who is in and out of institutions, is even less sta- I suspect that this is my last "last theater review" for Commonble than the others...

...For It is both a meditation on the ravaging of human potential and if we assume that treatment and care are mutually extensive an epic hate letter to the theater...

...Later, as the grown actors views of backstage activity, we are allotted only glimpses of face difficulties with successive governments and in their the actual performances...

...The an adult master actor he repeatedly places himself in situa- director may feel that there is no need for psychological probtions that threaten his life, his livelihood, and his loved ones ing of his heroes since we have already learned everything about and colleagues...

...ed, his new identity has begun, and Douzi will have to find other I was taken aback, both because the two sisters were so firm ways to warm himself...

...follow...

...Let's not look too they seem largely secular, but they perform a ritual before headdeeply, Chen Kaige seems to say, some wounds are best left ing back to their everyday lives...

...Such a position, how- rialism...