Stage:

...He looks sustaining them financially...

...both of us...

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

...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...

...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...

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

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

...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...

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

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

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

...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...

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

...Philadelphia is not an anomaly...

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

...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...

...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...

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

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

...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...

...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...

...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...

...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...

...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...

...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...

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

...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...

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

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

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

...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...

...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...

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

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

...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...

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

...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...

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

...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...

...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...

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