The Old Man and the Sea at Long Wharf Theater

David Begelman

In the opinion of many of his literary critics, Ernest Hemingway’s novella The Old Man and the Sea was an impressive comeback for the American novelist whose detractors were less than charitable about him. Max Eastman found himself on the receiving side of a burly fist when he intimated the writer lacked the “serene confidence that he is a full-sized man.” Zelda Fitzgerald declared him as “phony as a rubber check,” while James Joyce felt the macho author was “a sensitive type” posing as a tough guy.

Yet after the failure of his 1950 novel, Across the River and Into the Trees, and at a point in his career when many of those same critics felt his abilities were waning, Hemingway produced a tale of a fisherman whose lonely battle with a giant marlin was widely hailed as a stunning literary achievement. It was awarded a 1953 Pulitzer Prize, and was instrumental in earning its author the 1954 Nobel Prize for literature.

Director Eric Ting co-authored the stage adaptation of Hemingway’s novella with Craig Siebels. Its current production at Long Wharf theater also marks its world premiere. Both men have taken on a task that is a daunting one on any accounting. The Old Man and the Sea is all about the interiority of a narrative. As such, it would seem to defy any attempt to refashion it as a stage drama.

Mr. Ting and his accomplished cast of three performers make the most of the creative challenge despite this inevitable shortcoming. The artistic concession for any production company adapting a great written work is to insist the play is merely “based upon it,” an option nonetheless inviting speculation over any dramatic short-fall in comparison to the literary masterpiece.

The Old Man and the Sea, a Hemingway work of driving internality, has a surface symbolism that hints at immense themes underlying the dialogue of its central figure. Santiago is an old fisherman who has a habit of talking to himself aloud or musing: “He only dreamed of places now and of the lions on African beaches.” It is what is left unsaid that is the soul of the novella.

Like Hemingway’s prose style, the plots of both the novella and the drama based upon it are bare-boned affairs. The aging Santiago lives in a shack improvised out of “the tough budshields of the royal palm,” and seems to have lost his edge on fishing.  He has gone 84 days without a catch, and is determined to redeem himself by taking his skiff far out to sea to hook the big one.

Santiago’s devoted assistant, Manolin, has been ordered by his papa to seek work elsewhere than with the luckless old man, so Santiago’s venture out to sea must be a solitary one. This does not prevent Manolin from doing all he can on land to tend to the old one, including preparing food for him. In the novella, Hemingway’s writing style may be terse, but there is a world of meaning bombinating in sentences like: “The old man taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him.” 

Director Ting has divided the drama into sections he calls the heroic and tragic arcs. These correspond to the first and second acts of the play. The first encompasses Santiago’s preparation for, and encounter with, the big fish. The second involves the aftermath of his part triumphant and part discouraging return from his sea adventure.

The problem with the stage adaptation of the Hemingway work is that the prose passages in the novella, not the dialogue, contain all the beauty and power of the narrative. Unfortunately, it is precisely these that cannot be staged. As if to compensate for the drawback, the stage script expands the roles of the boy, Manolin, and Cienfuegos, the negro whom Santiago beats in a bout of arm wrestling. (Actually, in the novella, only passing mention is made of the negro, who is from Cienfuegos, not named “Cienfuegos.” He is also not a singer of gorgeously composed guitar ballads, as in the present production, and, unlike the stage script, he had a second unsuccessful—because of his broken confidence—rematch in Casablanca with Santiago.

That being said, the Long Wharf dramatization of The Old Man and the Sea is a happy balance of production values, given the limitations imposed on any stage adaptation of the Hemingway work.

Mr. Ting’s direction, as audiences have come to expect from this accomplished artist, is uniformly imaginative and compelling. His three performers, Mateo Gomez as Santiago, Rey Lucas as Manolin, and Leajato Amara Robinson couldn’t have been happier casting choices in markedly distinguishable roles. Mr. Gomez radiated the moral strength and doggedness that is such an essential quality of the old fisherman, while Rey Lucas’s young Manolin was a near perfect study of devotion. Leajato Amara Robinson’s striking portrayal of Cienfuegos put flesh on a character of passing mention in the novella. His singing and guitar playing impressively punctuated the ongoing action.

Mention should be made of co-author Craig Siebels’ set design, with imaginatively shifting levels of platforms, star-studded expanses, and a centrally positioned and wobbling old skiff. Michael Chybowski’s lighting highlighted the action exceptionally well, while Kaye M. Voyce’s costumes appropriately mirrored how we might well imagine the garb in the novella (where Santiago’s shirt was a patchwork of faded colors, much like his sail).

Mr. Ting’s production in its own way mirrors a feature of the old fisherman’s first 84 days at sea: not a big fish anywhere in sight—even after Santiago invisibly reels him in on stage.            

The Old Man and the Sea runs from April 1 to the 26, 2009 on the Mainstage of Long Wharf Theatre, 222 Sargent Drive, New Haven, CT. Curtain times are Tuesdays at 7 PM, Wednesdays at 2PM and 7 PM, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 PM, Saturdays at 3 PM and 8 PM, and Sundays at 2 PM and 8 PM. Tickets are $32 to $62 with special discounts for seniors and children. Tickets may be purchased by calling the box office at (203)-787-4282, or online at www.longwharf.org. 

 

‘The Mystery of Irma Vep’ is a boisterous, campy romp

David Begelman

If you’re looking for the highest reaches of dramatic art in the Charles Ludlam spoof “The Mystery of Irma Vep,” you’ll be disappointed. What you’ll get is hardly unforgettable playwriting, but rather a madcap pastiche of deliriously funny moments of contrivance and situational twists that tickle the funny bone to the max.

Shakespeare and Company, a group of performers that has distinguished itself for delivering such well appointed comedies as Tom Stoppard’s “The Real Inspector Hound” and “Rough Crossing,” and Georges Feydeau’s “The Ladies Man” has mounted yet another wildly funny show. The Ludlam farce, while a notch below the playwriting of those other venerable vehicles, is nonetheless a bundle of belly laughs in its own right.

Ludlam has crafted a farce in which two actors perform eight different roles. The playwright insisted that both performers should be of the same sex as a precondition of production. This ensures that cross-dressing is yet another component in this face-paced comedy of zany circumstance that has audiences in various states of hilarity —when not rolling in the aisles.

“Irma Vep” would tax the resources of any two performers. It is virtually bursting with rapid costume changes, piped-in melodramatic musical cues, sundry special effects, dialogue full of double entendres, wisecracks, props like wolf carcasses, sliding bookcases, and dialogue suddenly interspersed with words filched from—of all things—Macbeth and Hamlet.

Ludlum’s madcap comedy was first produced by the Ludlum Ridiculous Theatrical Company, and opened Off-Off Broadway in Greenwich Village in 1984. Closing almost two years later, in 1991, it became the most produced American play, and the longest running one ever produced in Brazil, South America.

The comedy opens in Mandacrest, the estate of Lord Edgar (Ryan Winkle) and Lady Enid, Edgar’s second wife (Josh Aaron McCabe). The latter, who toddles across the stage in mincing steps, lives in the shadow of Edgar’s former wife, Irma, whose portrait hangs ominously above the fireplace in the spacious parlor of the estate.

The action takes off in a series of scenes involving “ungodly nights” of fog-laced, moonlit ambience, werewolves, vampires, traduced characters who are quick to observe that they “feel the green fairy’s fang,” a portrait that begins to bleed when hit by a bullet accidentally discharged from a gun, and a household maid who elects to cheer things up by serving a sumptuous breakfast of “kippers and kidneys.” 

There is even an excursion to an Egyptian tomb where Lord Edgar hopes to unravel the mystery of Mandacrest by investigating the sarcophagus of a mummy in an unexcavated tomb—courtesy of a conniving Arab with an eye patch all too eager to cut a self-serving deal.

Winkles and McCabe tear up the scenery in episodic grandeur, to the considerable enjoyment of the audience. The dialogue is bursting with allusions to themes in Victorian novels, Agatha Christie mysteries, gothic invention, Shakespeare, horror flicks, Alfred Hitchcock, and every cliché imaginable. (McCabe as an improbable character, the hunched-over Nicodemus, has an accent that is too Boris Karloff to be accidental.)

The show is a delightful spoof of much you have seen or read about in stories that keep you young, albeit shivering at night between the sheets. Moreover, it is delivered by two seasoned troupers that are a pleasure to watch doing their breathless thing.

“The Mystery of Irma Vep” runs until March 27 at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, 70 Kemble St., Lenox, Mass. Performances are Wednesdays through Saturdays at 7:00 p.m. Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. Tickets are $12-$48, and can be purchased by calling the box office at 413-637-3353, or contacting www.shakespeare.org, 

 

 

  

The Music Man at TriArts Sharon Playhouse

David Begelman  

Meredith Wilson’s shiny, exuberant, star-spangled The Music Man has a heartwarming place in the annals of American musical theater. The story line by Mr. Wilson and Franklin Lacey, is about a notorious con-man and fleecer, Professor Harold Hill. Like others of his bent, his moniker even isn’t his real name. His scam involves introducing himself as a musical expert, drumming up enthusiasm for what he can provide in the way of expertise, and bilking citizens of local towns out of money they fork over for musical instruments and parade costumes. He then makes off with the booty like a thief in the night.

Mr. Wilson’s show, whenever it is performed, so bubbles with the sheer delight of its bouncy musical numbers and book, you scarcely notice the generous dose of cliché-ridden themes throughout the course of the show, not to mention it’s backhanded slap at the gullibility of small town yokels. And even if you did notice them, it wouldn’t matter at all. The Music Man is a lilting, buoyant work that propels you right through any criticism of it you’d care to consider in your worst moments of dyspepsia.   

One of Harold Hill’s ventures in a Midwestern town has an unexpected result. River City, Iowa, circa 1912, changes him forever. But the process goes both ways after he transforms it into more than the provincial place it was before he arrived.

To borrow a metaphor from Rodgers and Hammerstein, River City is alive with the sound of music after Professor Hill comes to town—even if the band of children he outfitted with trombones and parade regalia play their numbers with unparalleled incompetence. In the eyes of townspeople and parents, they sound like the Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall. And it is, after all, only the way you see things that carries the day.  

The shows tunes in The Music Man are memorable. They have the effect of picking up your spirits like a rousing John Phillip Sousa march. One of its signature musical numbers, “Seventy-Six Trombones” does just that. When done well, as it is in the current TriArts production, you feel like jumping out of your seat to join the performers on the stage. For some of us, it’s only a touch of arthritis that gets in the way.

As expected, the TriArts production of The Music Man continues the tradition of delivering the goods in this area theater’s customarily polished manner. Its cast is headed by Gavin Lodge as Professor Harold Hill, a triple-threat performer in the role. Mr. Lodge, while looking on the youngish side as an experienced bounder, reprises the part created by the incomparable Robert Preston in the original Broadway show and movie.

In addition to being an attractive presence on stage, Mr. Lodge moves through some of the energetic dance routines with aplomb, and provides the show with a romantic lead who is a mixed bag of tricks, combining hypnotic appeal to town folk with the conniving ways of a scalawag.

Professor Hill’s shenanigans are suddenly morphed into another thing when he meets Marian Paroo, the River City town librarian and piano teacher. At first, and on the make for Marian in the delightful number “Marian The Librarian,” the Professor finally gets to realize his thing for her is something else entirely, as is made amply clear in the Second Act duet, “Till There Was You.” The reprobate has met his match—and it’s all deliciously topsy-turvy.

It may be an understatement to say that Allison Berry as Marian Paroo has a terrific voice. Her renditions of numbers as different as, “Goodnight My Someone,” “My White Knight,” and “Till There Was You” were not only technically accomplished, they were emotionally riveting. That is not all. Ms. Berry’s acting in the role of Marian was an understated thing of beauty, resulting in a rounded portrayal that was for this reviewer the highlight performance of the show. Brava!

There are, of course, other attractions in the TriArts production of the show. Three engineers and a retired policeman (Ron Pierson, Mark Courtney, bass Bud Fair, Jack Ostmark), a barbershop quartet offstage since 1975, provided accomplished four-part harmonies in their numbers, “Ice Cream,” “Sincere,” “It’s You,” and  “Lida Rose.”

Stephen Nachmamie’s direction and choreography had his performers and dancers weaving ingenious and intricate group numbers around the stage, back by lilting vocal accompaniment from the cast. Lee Harris’s accomplished musical direction of eight musicians in the pit added to the overall appeal of song and dance numbers, while Chris Dallos’s Lighting Design brightened the action. Erik D. Diaz’s Scenic Design was not only apt for The Music Man, it was skillfully adapted for rapid scene changes, which took place swiftly, and without the inordinate delays on a darkened stage hampering productions elsewhere.

Finally, the company handled several of Meredith Wilson’s rapid-fire lyrics in such sprightly numbers as “Rock Island,” (where a group of traveling salesmen on a train have at each other while bouncing around in recitative) and “Ya Got Trouble” in a cracker-jack way. Go see this show if you’ve got a hankering for Captain Billy’s Whiz-Bang on the road to perdition, if not the fast track. Even if you don’t, see it anyway.     

The Music Man opened at the TriArts Sharon Playhouse, on August 6, and continues through August 23, 2009 at Sharon’s TriArts Playhouse. Tickets range from$13 (child matinee) to $44 (premium: front and center). Family Fridays on August 7, 14 and 21 are $10 for children and $20 for adults. Tickets can be purchased on the internet at www.triarts.net or by calling the box office at 860.364.SHOW (7469).

 

 

 

      

 

 

 

“The Master:” Seafaring Messiah and Broken Vet

David Begelman

Film Critic

Don’t feign surprise when someone tells you that Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film “The Master” is a riff on Scientology. The movie, about a cult leader, Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and a World War II veteran swept up in his zany world, Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), bears too many similarities to L. Ron Hubbard’s brain child to prevent us from drawing parallels.

Scientology makes for headline news in the media these days, primarily because of the split between Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. And in the film Freddie encounters Lancaster, a guru peddling a consciousness-raising system called “The Cause,” by jumping aboard a yacht. The ship is only too reminiscent of the original flagship of Hubbard, the “Royal Scotsman” (later renamed “Apollo”) of Sea Org fame.

Lancaster Dodd’s convictions also include a belief in reincarnation, a staple of Scientology, as well as such a mixed bag as the Hindu faith, philosophers Protagoras and Nietzsche and Shirley MacLaine. And Dodd’s conflicts with the law in Anderson’s 70 mm film have him winding up in jail for financial irregularities. Hubbard’s career was similarly peppered with legal problems, including getting kicked out of countries like Morocco, Greece, Spain and England. These were euphemistically dubbed “disconnection cruises” by Ron on transoceanic trips in his flagship Apollo.

In “The Master,” Freddie is a veteran of war in the Pacific. It left him a person of turbulent emotion, violent mood swings and impending violence. He is also a raging alcoholic given to frequent drinking binges. In the eyes of Lancaster Dodd, Freddie becomes a test case for the power of The Cause. The guru first attempts to meet Freddie on the latter’s own terms. He quaffs a toxic brew concocted by Freddie to show his new acolyte he can mix it up with the best of the guzzlers.

Anderson’s film is expertly directed, with some dazzling cinematography. But its chief attraction is the riveting portrayals of its two leads. Hoffman turns in a charismatic performance as Lancaster Dodd. Is this star even capable of mediocre acting?

But the real surprise is Phoenix, whose very name is apposite for an actor risen from the ashes of several past second-rate scripts, not to mention a brief and useless stint as a rap singer. In “The Master,” Phoenix’s portrayal is the most accomplished one of his film career—even if his sagging shoulders and disjointed ambulation in the role are a bit over the top for his character.

Mention should also be made of Amy Adams’ portrayal as “Peggy,” Lancaster Dodd’s wife. The actress radiates a steely reserve, marking the resoluteness of her commitment to her husband’s philosophy. She maintains an unflinching dedication to The Cause even when Dodd loses his cool. On one occasion, he suddenly erupts in anger when questioned by a follower, Helen Sullivan (Laura Dern) about a change of doctrine. His revisionism calls for replacing the memory of true events with the creative play of imagination.

The change, once commemorating a similar modification in L. Ron Hubbard’s system of Dianetics—not to mention Freud’s psychoanalysis—was broached by an early Scientologist, Dr. Joseph Winter. He speculated that aspects of “prenatal engrams” might have been “imagined” rather than being “true memories.” Of course, once you entertain the possibility that fantasy might replace what you once deemed to be reality, the collapse of your conceptual house of cards is just around the corner. There’s nothing like getting real to tarnish a theory’s fondest aspirations.

The subtext of “The Master” is Dodd’s faith in the spiritual rehabilitation of Freddie under his tutelage. But Freddie’s wayward path through alcoholism and his sex-obsessed interactions with women clash with the devotional path charted by The Cause. Yet from another angle, these frailties might be considered advantages. After all, they are stumbling blocks to a “religious” conversion that is only another form of slavery in disguise. Or is there something else percolating in Freddie that resists Dodd’s version of the true calling? 

At the end of the film, Dodd forewarns Freddie that the next time they meet, he will show no mercy. It’s an expected apostrophe for a leader whose world view demands nothing less than a mind-set confusing purity with mindlessness.       

 

 

 

        

‘The Liar’ is hilarious comedy in Lenox 

By David Begelman

Theater Critic

 

           Pierre Corneille was one of those writers of French tragedy for whom humor

 

 was a sleeping giant. After all, his first drama, “Mélite” was a comedy. It represented

 

 a deviant example of the farcical style in disfavor among seventeenth century French

 

 intelligentsia, and was peddled to a group of traveling players in 1629. They happily

 

 incorporated it into their repertoire.

The playwright was forever hassled by authorities like Cardinal Richelieu (the real life prelate who was the nemesis of “The Three Musketeers” in the fictional Dumas novel) and his hand-picked toadies in the Académie Francaise. Corneille refused to abide by the dramatic conventions of the day, leaning as they did on Aristotle’s rules for drama. He went so far as coauthoring a work with Molière, a playwright who likewise had to deal with accusations of immorality. (In those days, bad drama was an affront to heaven.)

But there was light at the end of the tunnel: witness “The Liar” (Le Menteur), authored in 1643. Today it may be hard to capture the flavor the play had for audiences of its time. After all, it was penned in French, and debuted in the early modern period of history.

Whatever the separate contributions of author, a riotously clever adaptation of the play by David Ives (in rhyming blank verse, to boot), and the hugely inventive direction of Kevin G. Coleman, Shakespeare & Company’s current version of the comedy is something to savor, whatever the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” audiences must cope with these days, to quote a contemporary of Corneille’s.

Coleman has hit just the right note with his company of eight seasoned performers. And he couldn’t resist the temptation to lace the dialogue with quotes from the dramas of the English guy. Included in the Ives adaptation are lines borrowed from “Antony and Cleopatra,” “Othello,” “As You Like It,” and other familiar plays of the bard. Oddly enough, they work beautifully in this comedy, a play in which all characters have to bounce—happily or otherwise—off the fabrications of its central character, Dorante.

David Joseph tackles the role of intransigent liar with gusto, as though telling whoppers were second nature to him. He and his fellow performers maintain a perfect pacing in the dialogue, often a rapid-fire verbal barrage in which all characters face the challenge of coming up for air.

Ives and Coleman are not above the use of contemporary idiom to spruce up interactions. “She called you a liar,” says one character. “Why?” queries another. “Maybe because your pants are on fire” is the response. Not exactly in the seventeenth century mode, but funny all the same.

Douglas Seldin is Cliton, Dorante’s stocky servant, whose asides to the audience have you on the floor. Emily Rose Ehlinger and Alexandra Lincoln are Lucrece and Clarice, alternating deliciously as objects of Dorante’s shifting attentions. Enrico Spada is fittingly agitated and furious as Dorante’s competitor, while Jake Berger as Geronte and Marcus Kearns as Philiste attempt to make the most of the paternal and friendship mode in the topsy-turvy world manufactured by Dorante’s continuing vacations from the truth. Dana Harrison supplies exceedingly comic interpretations of her double role as Isabelle and Sabine.

All in all, a production to tickle your funny bone to the max.

“The Liar” runs through March 24 at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre at Shakespeare & Company, 70 Kemble Street, Lenox, MASS. Performances are Friday and Saturday 7 p.m., Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2:00  p.m. Tickets are $15-$50, and can be purchased by calling the box office at (413)-637-3353, or contacting www.Shakespeare.org

 

 

‘The Last Five Years’ disappoints at the Berkshire Theatre Festival

David Begelman

Theater Critic

Jason Robert Brown’s ‘The Last Five Years’ is a two-character study of a romantic relationship dramatized in song. It features what the playbill calls a “mirrored internal timeline.”

A woman, Cathy, sings seven numbers the first of which coincides with the end of her five-year relationship with a man, Jamie. His numbers, alternating in sequence with hers, begin at the start of his relationship with her.

Cathy’s torch song “Still Hurting” starts the show at her “Year Five,” and ends with the more optimistic “Goodbye Until Tomorrow,” at the outset of the relationship at “Year One.” Jamie in turn starts out with “Shiksa Goddess,” a celebration in “Year One” of his new found love, and winds up with the disconsolate “I Could Never Rescue You” at “Year Five.”

The conceit of timelines going in opposite directions may be a fascinating one to explore, were it not for one problem. As performed, and because of the nature of the individual numbers, separate timelines are not apparent from an audience perspective. Rather, the experience is of two people who are having a difficult time in their relationship, purely and simply. So much for the conceit that is the most original idea of the show.

Cathy Hiatt (Julie Reiber) is an aspiring actress, while Jamie Wellerstein (Paul Anthony Stewart) is a budding author who is not above some name-dropping in the course of reminding us how elite his tastes actually are. At one point in the dialogue, he indicates that a piece by John Updike appeared in the New Yorker (just in case you made the mistake of assuming his literary appetite ran to such lesser fare as Jack London or Mickey Spillane).

Jamie is Jewish, and his initial attraction to Cathy is partially based on her being a blond-haired, blue-eyed “shiksa.” The theme was paralleled in film in the 1972 “The Heartbreak Kid,” in which newly hitched Jewish Lenny (Charles Grodin) falls for a similarly alluring Gentile girl, Kelly (Cybill Shepherd).

Reiber and Stewart are capable vocal artists with unmistakable charisma. It’s the show that they’re in that seems to obscure their talents. Their songs are not particularly memorable, while some of them, like Jamie’s “The Schmuel Song” go off on an ethnic tangent with little import for his relationship with Cathy. She in turn delivers numbers contrived to make her seem a tad on the depressingly repetitious side, with little recourse from tedious iteration of her predicament.

Anders Cato’s direction had his two principals pushing around beds, chairs, and tables in seemingly arbitrary ways in order to individualize the settings for songs.

The backup orchestra for musical numbers appeared on stage throughout the course of the show. It included a quite talented group of performers: Rick Bertone on piano, William Hack on bass, Bing Liu on violin, Jonah Thomas on cello, and Evan C. L. Randall on guitar.

‘The Last Five Years’  runs till July 10 at the Main Stage of the Berkshire Theatre Festival, 83 East Main Street, Stockbridge, MASS. Performances are Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., and Wednesday at 7p.m. Matinees on Thursday and Saturday are at 2 p.m. Tickets are $15-$63 and may be purchased by calling the box office at413-298-5576 or online at www.berkshiretheatre.org.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘The Irish Curse’ opens at New Milford’s TheatreWorks 

By David Begelman

 

Theater Critic

The premise of Martin Casella’s comedy “The Irish Curse” is that the presumably unfortunate genetic condition of having a small penis is reason enough to organize a support group whose five members can grouse about the blight that has brought them down at every turn in life.

The theme may be fodder for some stand-up comedian’s occasional quips, but a full length play? Evidently, the tide of critical opinion since the debut of the comedy at the New York International Fringe Festival in 2005 has it that Casella’s ode to the idea that size matters is indeed a successful venture. It has been hailed as a “scathingly funny and poignant modern comedy” by some or “sharp,” “delightful,” “wonderful theater,” whose characters are “well drawn and immensely endearing.”

The sour critical notes—largely in the minority—are mordantly negative: “Mind-numbingly stupid,” or “ham-fisted,”  “clichéd” and “formulaic.” Playwright Casella, it seems, may also be cursed with a genetic failing: an inability to stimulate critical opinions other than those at the extreme poles of positive or negative reaction. The former category of response was obviously in evidence at the opening night of the play at New Milford’s TheatreWorks. Audiences clearly were having a good time of it—judging by the howls of laughter that greeted what was happening on stage.

There is no denying Casella’s gift for humorous one-liners, with which “The Irish Curse” abounds. But there are stretches in the play that cause one to wince at the crassness of the dialogue, as when assessments of anatomical size make the rounds invidiously through comparisons of ethnic groups from eastern Europeans to African-Americans.

Another play vaguely reminiscent of Casella’s comedy, Jason Miller’s “That Championship Season,” likewise contains broadsides against Jews, Poles, Italians, African-Americans and women. Even while expressing the attitudes of fictional characters, they are delivered like cannon shots, the response to them often being on the shamefaced side.

In “The Irish Curse” five Irish-American men convene as a support group in the basement of the St. Sebastian Catholic Church in Brooklyn Heights. Father Shaunessy (Glenn R. Couture) leads them in ventilating about how their meager anatomies have disadvantaged them.

Efforts to come to terms with being less endowed take the form of disparate coping strategies within the group, from padding the trousers or becoming abstinent to contemplating suicide

Rick (James Hipp), is a braggart in a long relationship with a woman despite a roving eye, Stephen (Michael Wright) is a gay and promiscuous undercover NYPD cop, Joseph (Jonathan Ross), whose wife has abandoned him and his daughters, traces his misfortune to biology being destiny, and Keiran (Charles Roth), a newcomer to the group, is on the verge of a meltdown fantasizing that his true love will come to reject him because of his diminutive member.

All of director Robin Frome’s performers put in credible characterizations in a script much like our redoubtable, even if undersized, organ. It has its ups and its downs.

“The Irish Curse” runs through March 24 at New Milford’s TheatreWorks, 5 Brookside Avenue, New Milford. Performances are Friday and Saturday 8:00 p.m., with a Sunday matinee on March 18 at 2:00 p.m. Tickets are $20 and may be purchased by called the box office at 860-350-6863 or online at WWW.THEATREWORKS.US.

 

 

 

 

 

‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ is a bellyful of laughs

By David Begelman

Theater Critic

Those master performers of farce at Shakespeare & Company are at it again. I can only assume they know a good genre when they see it. Need we mention the company’s stellar productions of Tom Stoppard’s “Rough Crossing” and “The Real Inspector Hound,” George Feydeau’s “The Ladies Man,” and the Charles Ludlam spoof “The Mystery of Irma Vepp”? They were all staged with an exuberance that has more than tickled audience funny bones.

This time, it’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” a zany take-off on Arthur Conan Doyle’s tale spun around an adventure of the sleuth extraordinaire, Sherlock Holmes. The play was authored by Steve Canny and John Nicholson, and had its premiere at Shakespeare & Company in 2009.

It hardly matters that the script and the current production bear little resemblance to the original short story. Fidelity to literary sources is the last thing audiences will have on their mind in treating themselves to this spoof. The adaptation—outrageously derivative is its proper designation—is simply too funny to make you care one way or another.

The credit for the riotous confection goes directly to Director Tony Simotes. He displays a deft hand at creating delightful bits of situational humor and physical artifice that distinguished his work in this season’s marvelous “As You Like It.”

This time, the same three performers who starred in the 2009 production have joined hands to give audiences what the company excels at delivering. They are Jonathan Croy, Ryan Winkles, and Josh Aaron McCabe. The latter two actors tore up the scenery in episodic grandeur in “Irma Vepp,” just as they do in “Hound of the Baskervilles.” The two team up with Croy as the venerable (but usually addled) Dr. Watson.

Winkles and McCabe have the lion’s share of costume changes and switching characters—often hilariously. McCabe is wildly funny, whether as a sedate Holmes, a suspicious character bulleting across the stage on a crutch, a diminutive and bearded troll-like creature who seems barely three feet high, or a seductive Spanish temptress who wields two noisy fans to emphasize her dramatic, but scarcely consequential remarks.

Winkles likewise draws a hugely appreciative audience response as a cowering coachman whose frayed nerves are evident in the vibrating horsewhip he holds while being intimidated, as Sir Henry Baskerville being taken aback by the sudden disappearance of his trousers, or being framed in a devilish portrait of himself beaming with self-satisfaction.     

The humor in this show is pretty much divided between the dialogue and the situations characters find themselves embroiled in—or ditzy combinations of both.

In the character of Holmes, McCabe radiates the smugness of the famous sleuth. When queried by his sidekick what school it was in which all the students were found poisoned, you can see the answer coming from a mile away: “elementary, my dear Watson!”

“The Hound of the Baskervilles” runs through September 4 at Founders’ Theatre, Shakespeare & Company, 70 Kemble Street, Lenox, Mass. Performances are Wednesday, Friday and Saturday 7:30 p.m., Sunday matinees 2 p.m. Tickets are $21.60-$48 and may be purchased by calling the box office at 413-637-3353 or online at www.shakespeare.org.              

 

   

 

‘The Great American Trailer Park Musical’ is a smash in New Milford 

 David Begelman

Theater Critic

Maybe it’s a no brainer that the productions at New Milford’s TheatreWorks seem to be getting better all the time. But its current offering, the Betsy Kelso and David Nehls two-act show, “The Great American Trailer Park Musical” goes the extra mile. Its production staff and cast led by director Glenn R. Couture are even more impressive than the vehicle they are in.

It’s a surprising reversal of the usual expectations, since critical reception of a show routinely gauges whether a production measures up to the demands of a script.

The script in this case offers some pretty thin stuff: a parade of cartoon characters whose lives are so peppered with painfully trite foibles, the musical seems to be concoction of authors enamored of soap opera, or who have it in for rednecks—if not a manufactured version of them.

The New Milford production of the show, on the other hand, is a high energy array of performing talent led by Elyse Jasensky, who, in the role of Betty, spearheads a cast of vocal accomplishment that is truly impressive. She is followed by Beth Harvison (Lin), Deanna Chorman (Pippi), and Tracy Hurd (Jeannie), all of them with sets of pipes that would grace any professional stage.

The musical begins with a trio of characters, Betty, Lin, and Donna (Abby Nissenbaum) sitting in folding chairs, languidly delivering the number, “This Side of the Tracks,” their paean to life in Armadillo Acres, a trailer park in Florida.

The three may be decked out in tattoos, and addicted to beer swilling and expletives, but make no mistake about it; they are the redneck version of a Greek chorus commenting on the ongoing action. This turns out to be a triangulated love affair between Norbert (Michael Wright), the new object of his affection, a bump and grind stripper, Pippi, and his estranged agoraphobic wife, Jeannie.

Norbert becomes conflicted about his marital double-dealing—proving that even trailer trash sensibility is not above a timely infusion of middle class morality. Even the chorus of The Girls, a sleazy trio celebrating the virtues of promiscuity, have it in for Norbert because of his philandering. It’s a clear case of double dealing sparking a case of double standards.

Duke (Justin Boudreau) is a like-minded player. He is a gun-toting, glue-sniffing, tattooed firebrand out for payback when he learns his girl friend Pippi has been cavorting with another man. In a surprise ending, Duke is exposed as considerably less than the macho menace he appears to be.

The TheatreWorks production is distinguished by the high caliber performances of every member of its cast, a set design that is easily among the most memorable in its theater’s history, Regina Sweeney’s terrific choreography (especially in group numbers), and Dan Ringuette’s stellar musical direction, backed up his four-piece band.

Lighting Design by Richard Pettibone and Scott Wyshynski was up to its usual professional standards. Contributions to Sound design by Tom Libonate and ten backstage builders enhanced an already rousing production. See it!

“The Great American Trailer Park Musical” runs through June 19 at New Milford’s TheatreWorks, 5 Brookside Avenue, New Milford. Performances are Friday and Saturday 8:00 PM,  Sunday matinees 2:00 PM. Tickets are $28 for reserved seating, and may be purchased by calling 860.350.6863 or online at www.theatreworks.us.

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

     

   

“The East:” freeganists on the march

AT THE MOVIES

David Begelman 

Like Robert Redford’s 2012 “The Company You Keep,” Zal Batmanglij’s 2013 “The East” loses the ball somewhere along its 116-minute length. The former film dropped it when it came to exploring in depth the sometime conflict between the law and individual conscience. The latter film wanders away from the promising challenge of addressing why people become transformed in different circumstances.

Both films depict events in the lives of political activists. In the Redford movie, the central characters are a group of anti-war protesters long in the tooth, whose past activities resulted in the death of a bank official. In Batmanglij’s film, they are a group of anarchists whose “jams” involve the self-professed goal of punishing the corporate polluters of the commonwealth. And we’re not mincing words here. On one occasion retribution amounts to poisoning a group of industrialists at a party; on another, it means forcing an entrepreneur and his wife into their own creation: a pool of toxic industrial wastewater that has already infected an entire town.

The contrarians in “The East” live in a commune and, as in all insular cultural enclaves, develop rituals that seem to be on the somewhat dotty side. These include an inane love fest involving a spin-the-bottle game, or a dinner in which the participants come to the table in straight-jackets, feeding each other with long wooden spoons held in their mouths. On another occasion, they assemble in the woods adorned with strange masks. It’s as if their tiny civilization were destined to undergo mutated life forms, Darwinian style.

Batmanglij and Brit Marling, who is also the lead character in the film, wrote the screenplay. In preparing for it, they both spent two months in 2009 engaging in “freeganism,” or the habit of eating food discarded by others in order to celebrate the virtues of a penniless existence. At one point in the film, Marling’s character illustrates the practice by taken a bite out of someone else’s throwaway fruit.

 Marling plays “Jane,” a woman who lives a quiet, bourgeois existence with her boyfriend, Tim (Jason Ritter). But she also doubles as Sarah Moss, an undercover agent for a private intelligence agency headed by “Sharon” (Patricia Clarkson). The latter is as smoothly calculating a boss as you’re likely to see on any intelligence circuit. Her agency is dedicated to rooting out “terrorist” enemies of the commonwealth, like the group Sarah has infiltrated. Subsequent conflicts between the two are sparked by her transformation as a member of a group she starts to feel might have a point. Among her accoutrements are a crucifix, regalia and capabilities any well-appointed secret agent should possess. These include a microchip that can be swallowed and then vomited up to be retrieved, as well as dandy a set of karate skills you’re likely to encounter in any Tokyo dojo.

Moss’s personal transformation involves a growing ambivalence about her role as an agent for the powers that be. Maybe this is to be expected, since public statements by Batmanglig and Marling register political distaste for multinational corporations, especially the pharmaceutical industry. More than anything else, “The East” is a depiction of Sarah Moss’s ever-shifting sympathies as she grapples with the complexities of a role that sees both sides of the moral equation. Yes, the polluters are doing bad things; but is murdering them the proper way to address the grievance?

Moss more often than not is depicted as a bystander to the action of others, watching it unfold as though inner parts of her were going in different directions. The last half of the film abandons the moral narrative altogether, and devolves into a cops-and-robbers chase in which anarchists are chased hither and yon by skillfully coordinated F.B.I teams.

Needless to say, the compelling issues raised in the film are in no way resolved through having Sarah fall in love with the anarchist Benji (Alexander Skarsgard) or having Sharon remain as impervious to human feeling as she seems to be.

The talented Canadian actress Ellen Page stars as “Izzy,” a disenchanted member of the clan, with an ax to grind against her wealthy father. It’s quite a come-down from her engaging portrayal in Jason Reitman’s 2007 “Juno.” Roman Vasyanov’s cinematography is polished. Sometimes it seems almost too good for a narrative that is, alas, too often mismanaged.

 

  

The Fantasticks at Long Wharf Theatre

David Begelman

Some shows run for such a long time they deserve to be called “tired.” The Fantasticks is perhaps a stellar exception to the rule. It can still brighten your theater-going day, even after a run of 42 years and well over 17,000 performances to date. It’s the world’s longest running musical.

Of course, the appeal of the show with book and lyrics by Tom Jones and music by Harvey Schmidt can be enhanced by a well designed production. Audiences will have to judge whether the current revival by New Haven’s leading area theater, Long Wharf, strikes a proper balance between more conventional and novel treatments of the show. The team that created this version of the musical draws upon a stockpile of newer ideas that make it a virtual trompe d’oeil of special, and often attractive, effects. Among these is a theme of magical tricks and show time diversions produced by two of its leading characters. These are El Gallo (played suavely and energetically, if not on the occasionally strutting side, by Michael Sharon) and The Mute (played brilliantly by the fetching—even if forever silent—Jonathan Randell Silver).

It’s a no brainer that director Amanda Dehnert strives to regale her audiences with a dazzling display some might consider piles up unnecessary business atop what ought to be a more modestly appointed show. After all, The Fantasticks explores elemental themes of idealism, and romance (both in its youthful exuberance, and when disillusioned by experience), parental oversight, and a world that bursts with deceptively enticing surprises.

All the same, The Fantasticks is the kind of show that’s been around so long, saddling it with fresh approaches to production values might be deplored when they overburden the Jones and Schmidt vehicle. But the issue is not whether a novel approach departs from time-honored conventions, but whether it works on its own terms. (The inevitable reminder to keep in mind is the Shakespearean canon.)

In this reviewer’s opinion, the Long Wharf example is a worthwhile excursion into a newer approach to the show, despite its occasional excesses of staging. As an example, young Matt is imprisoned in a box-like contraption, while The Mute thrusts swords into at as a metaphorical assay at punishment. Overkill, on any accounting.

Director Dehnert’s production expands the action in several ways. Performers do their thing in a somewhat larger setting than the kind of original mounting at the Sullivan Street Playhouse in New York City. The example set by that past run virtually defined the mold for confinement to a limited stage space in most subsequent productions. At Long Wharf, the action takes place in an amusement park, Rocky Point, while performers have more room to move around an ample circular stage. The magical tricks staged by El Gallo and The Mute were designed by Jim Steinmeyer and Jeff Crow, and enhance the carnival atmosphere. The question is; do they detract unduly from ongoing action? The answer may depend upon one’s standard of production for The Fantasticks.

In the present revival, even stage movement takes on a larger dimension, and performers move more gymnastically than in conventional adaptations of the musical. To meet the demands of modern sensibility, in the sixth and eighth musical numbers of the show, the term “rape” is exchanged for “abduction”—a more politically correct term, to be sure—although the elision had already been incorporated in productions prior to the present one.

The Fantasticks tells the story about how two fathers who pretend to dislike each other contrive to have their son and daughter marry. Except they have to manufacture the enmity between their families. Knowing youngsters the way they do, any other overture would meet with opposition. As Dan Sharkey as father Huckelbee and Ray DeMattis as father Bellomy sing, “Children, I guess must get their own way/The minute that you say no.” So the strategy is to protest the union between Matt (played convincingly by David Nathan Perlow) and Luisa (acted and sung beautifully by Jessica Grové) so that the couple would balk at the faux parental advice.

To bring about the desired scenario, the parents hire El Gallo, an adept at masquerade, swordplay, and prestidigitation, who, with such enfeebled accomplices as Henry (played hilariously by William Parry), an arthritic Shakespearean ham who cannot even remember his most notable lines, and Mortimer (played devilishly by Joseph Tisa), a hireling given to donning Indian head pieces and staging wildly improbable expirations at the hands of Matt.

All goes according to plan, but not without Matt’s experiencing a crueler world than he bargained for after abandoning Luisa. The snit that led to his elopement turns out to be only a momentary glitch in their romance. The lovers are finally united in a renewed pairing embodying a better understanding of the mixed picture of life they have experienced.

Sharon Jenkins’ choreography graced stage movement in musical numbers, while Nancy Schertler’s Lighting Design sharpened ongoing action on stage. Eugene Lee’s Set Design capitalized on multi-levels possibilities for the show, although the stockpiles of carnival detritus off Stage Right and Stage Left seemed on the redundant side. Jessica Ford’s Costume Design was imaginative, right down to El Gallo’s colorful overcoat.

It may be that deep in December it’s nice to remember the fire of September, although it’s just as nice to savor much in the current show that runs at Long Wharf this October and November. 

The Fantasticks opened at Long Wharf Theatre’s Stage II at 222 Sargent Drive, New Haven, on October 7^th and runs until November 1, 2009. Curtain times are Tuesdays at 7 PM, Wednesdays at 2 and 7 PM, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 PM, Saturdays at 3 PM and 8 PM, and Sundays at 2 PM and 8 PM. Tickets are $30 to $70, and may be purchased by calling (203)-787-4282. Website: www.longwharf.org.  

    

        

‘The Crucible’ a disappointment at Barrington Stage

David Begelman, Theater Critic

There are surprises in store for anyone immersed in the history of witch panics. Arthur Miller relied on one study of an American version of the craze in crafting his powerful drama, “The Crucible.” One of his motives in writing the play was to highlight affinities between the events in Salem Village in 1692, and our national obsession with rooting out Communists during the McCarthy era.

One surprise is that the analogy goes only so far. Confessing to pacts with Satan was a product of torture, a fear of execution, or a voluntary false confession inspired by delusion. That there were Communists in our midst was hardly a fiction, although the “hysteria” of the fifties could be construed as the overreach exploding in a national epidemic of suspicion about one’s neighbors.

Another surprise is that the injunction in the King James Bible, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” may be a mistranslation of a Hebrew term referring to a person more akin to a spiritual channeler or poisoner, rather than women entering into pacts with the devil in exchange for magical powers.

Director Julianne Boyd’s production of “The Crucible” at Barrington Stage falters because it delineates characters in Miller’s drama as embodiments of good and evil. As a result, her performers emerge as caricatures of persons caught up in the hysteria, rather than as human beings grappling with events that terrify them.

The pace of the show was altogether too rapid, with characters hurtling forward in action as if a reflective attitude were somehow beyond their ability. The result was an absence of breathing time for events to simmer before building to a shattering climax.

In Miller’s play, several teenage girls, including Abigail Williams (Jessica Griffen) are discovered practicing pagan rituals with Tituba (Starla Benford), a slave originally from Barbados, but now a servant in the home of Reverend Parris (Peter Samuel). Caught in the act, the teenagers start experiencing “spells” attributed by such religious authorities as Reverend Hale (Fletcher McTaggart), Governor Danforth (Robert Zukerman), and Judge Hathorne (Edward Cating) to witchcraft. Events escalate to a point at which the entire community becomes involved in the arrest, imprisoning and hanging of alleged witches.

Miller’s drama deals with actual historical figures caught up in the hysteria, albeit with a novel spin on their relationships. In the play, Abigail, the leader of what some scholars and the playwright believe to be a conniving brat-pack, hardly a bevy of mentally disordered adolescents, contrives to implicate John Proctor (Christopher Innvar) and his wife Elizabeth (Kim Stauffer) in the cycle of accusations. The result is catastrophic for all involved.

Unfortunately, the acting in the production tended to be histrionic at crucial points in the action, with the result that the show took on a hurried, melodramatic aspect. Characters like Reverend Hale make entrances as though they were bursting on a stage in a Rossini opera. In his case, he enters in a tizzy laden down with a pile of arcane theological books.

Someone should have told him that the author of one of them, Cotton Mather, was understandably skeptical about spectral evidence—verbal disclosures by a victim that she was being invisibly assailed by a witch—relied on exclusively in sentencing the witches of Salem. So much for missed opportunities.

“The Crucible” runs until Oct. 24, at Barrington Stage Company’s Mainstage Theater, 30 Union Street, Pittsfield, MASS. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 3 p.m. There is an additional matinee performance on Wednesday, October 20 at 2 p.m. tickets are $15-$35. Tickets may be purchased by calling the box office at 413-236-8888, or online at www.barringtonstageco.org.       

 

 

     

 

  

 

The Canterville Ghost at the Elayne Bernstein Theatre: Otherworldly and Hounded

David Begelman

Oscar Wilde had something to say about many of the pretensions of his day, not the least of which was the British pride of Empire. What better way to do this than to have English traditions bump heads with those crass folks from across the ocean, Americans?

Shakespeare and Company’s current production of The Canterville Ghost resurrects Wilde’s humorous spin on the enduring British preoccupation with ghosts. There’s a lesson to be learned about a departed aristocracy forever haunting dark corridors of musty castles. The conceit may be a metaphor for keeping an imperial past alive in an empire that fears the sun is fast setting on everything old and honored.

In his novella The Canterville Ghost, the Irish wit inaugurated a literary tradition of ghosts as put upons. However scary in past centuries, Wilde’s Sir Simon de Canterville has one hell of a time living up to the spine-tingling reputation he was supposed to cut in his haunted manor with its newest family of invaders from across the Atlantic.

In the current production, Michael Hammond, Assistant Director of Shakespeare and Company, plays the ghost, Sir Simon. He also doubles as Mrs. Umney, the manor housekeeper, and Lord Canterville, the surviving relative who introduces the Otis family to their new home. Mr. Hammond exhibited his customary ingenuity in roles calling for disguises or character-change, and his opening remarks to the audience were for this reviewer one of the delights of the production.

In Wilde’s story, the Americans included a “minister” with some influence in the Democratic Party, whereas in Ms. Brook’s production, the Americans sport Stetson hats, talk in southern drawls, pitch commercial products like lubricants and stain removers, not to mention break out suddenly into line-dance numbers to the tune of Billy Ray Cyrus’s “Achy Breaky Heart.” The antics are destined to tax to the hilt the residual patience of any medieval ghost.

Michael F. Toomey plays Hiram Otis II with a brash and effusive élan laced with a perfect southern accent. He and his high energy, intellectually challenged family drive the 300 year-old apparition to distraction. As for their American reverence for British pedigrees, the hayseed foursome, on perusing the gallery of portraiture decorating the walls of the ghost’s manor, remark, “There’s not a lot of variety in the gene pool.” Enough to cut even a fearsome spirit to the very quick. 

Sir Simon’s numerous guises horrified his ancestors. In Wilde’s story, the Honorable Thomas Horton was reduced to idiocy after the ghost turned himself into a black dog; whereas old Lady Startup in 1764 was given to piercing shrieks culminating in a stroke when confronted by The Vampire Monk, or the Bloodless Benedictine. And Colonel Carbury, who had the audacity to play dice with the ghost, was discovered the day after in a paralytic state, unable for the remainder of his days to say anything but “Double Sixes.”

Sir Simon’s hauntings are hopelessly ineffectual on the Otis family. In both the story and the current production, they offer the ghost commercially marketed oil, Rising Sun Lubricator, to soften the sound of his clanging chains, Dr. Dobell’s Tincture for his pale complexion, and Paragon Detergent for a bloody stain that keeps reappearing on the very spot on which the ghost’s wife was murdered in 1575. As Wilde and Ms. Brook observe, the Otis family “were evidently people on a low, material plane of existence,” albeit not without a flair for the commercial pitch. All the same, they drive Sir Simon to the heights of exasperation, until their youngest and most sympathetic member, Virginia, redeems the ghost.

 Dana Harrison as Libby-Boo and Lucretia Otis provided a stalwart back-up role for her husband. Alexandra Lincoln as Chastity and Washington radiated exuberance, and like Alyssa Hughlett as Virginia, showed how capable she is when it came to the challenges of stage movement.

Unfortunately, Ms. Brook’s and Ms. Brownsted’s script has several problems. Character changes across time frames were confusing (why and when does the girl Chastity transform into the boy Washington Otis, and do the hand puppets the latter wield represent the family twins? When are characters their present day or past incarnations, and how is the audience supposed to tell the difference?)

Ms. Brook’s improvisational style of directing may be a creative challenge for her performers, although it may have a down side for production values. Humorous moments, while plentiful, seemed to alternate with others in which the action dragged, or seem to function as a time-filler between more developed sketches. And some devices, foreign to Wilde’s story, seemed out of keeping with its stage adaptation, like Virginia’s sudden burst of ballet dancing. Tour jetés around the medieval helmet the Otis family calls “the rust bucket” seem oddly out of whack with ongoing action. Lines such as, “Oh, the horror, the horror!” are too close to those in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to avoid uncomfortable comparisons.

Yet the comedy on balance was an enjoyable one, and enhanced by Katy Monthei’s set design, Shelby Rodger’s costumes, and the ample lighting and sound design of Tina Louise Jones and Michael Pfeiffer.

The Canterville Ghost opened on September 19 and runs through November 9, 70 Kemble Street, Lenox, MA 01240. Show times are 11:00 AM, 2:00 PM, and 7:30 PM. Tickets are $48 and may be purchased online at www.shakespeare.org or by calling the Box Office at (413)-637-3353.          2008 at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre of Shakespeare & Company,

 

“The Bourne Legacy”  

David Begelman

Film Critic 

What to do when the star power of your franchise suddenly evaporates like water in the desert? You forge on, because sacrificing a killing at the box office just doesn’t compute—even if what you finally deliver is pretty much a mess. Being Bourne-again won’t turn out to be as uplifting as you surmised.

After a grueling stint in three blockbusters, Matt Damon decided to throw in the towel on the fourth time around. Maybe he had enough of Bourne “Identity,” “Supremacy” and “Ultimatum.” Maybe, despite the promise of a huge salary in the fourth retread of a $1 billion dollar enterprise, he opted for something else. Was he looking for a project more artistically compelling than another shot in a franchise that was beginning to sound like a broken phonograph record. Who knows?

Exit Hollywood super star Matt and his director Paul Greengrass. Enter writer/director Tony Gilroy, who with brother Dan has configured an entirely new 135-minute package drawing its inspirational cachet from the older Robert Ludlum novels. Gilroy scripted the three previous Bourne films. But it seems he’s in over his head as director. “The Bourne Legacy” is like an unpredictable microphysical particle. It goes every which way—and no one way in particular.

Matt Damon’s replacement is Jeremy Renner, fresh from his role as Hawkman in “The Avengers.” He plays Aaron Cross, and—as if you hadn’t guessed—a covert operative who has a nose for all the conspiratorial plans to do him in. Like Jason Bourne, he is also adept at martial arts, not to mention racing motorcycles in the Philippines. It’s a thriller in Manila that seems to go on forever (and with Rachel Weisz as sympathetic Dr. Shearing clinging perilously to him for the ride).

Interminable rides in vehicles careening through streets is as indispensable an item in blockbusters as anything else. The conceit was handled much more compellingly in “Bullitt” and “The French Connection” in the good old days. Today it’s just an extravagant exercise in film footage designed to keep you from nodding off over popcorn. 

Our new hero makes his initial appearance—for no apparent reason—in a mountainous region in Alaska after surfacing from waters so cold Neptune himself would think twice about such a chilling indulgence. He then connects with another superspy who lives in a cabin armed with enough hardware to riddle half of Seward’s Folly.

Other perils of Aaron Cross include eluding drones (and I don’t mean busy bees) monitored to blow him sky high, and keeping wolves at bay in scenes reminiscent of Liam Neeson’s plight in the 2011 “The Grey.”

It seems the inner circle out to dispatch our hero includes the dour team of Eric Byer, a deceptively retired colonel in the USAF (Edward Norton), Ezra Kramer (Scott Glenn) and the seemingly retired Admiral Mark Turso (Stacey Keach). These folks are a mean lot to mess with. And they have an arsenal of equipment to track our hero relentlessly. Where would any blockbuster be without countless computers clicking and flashing away as if they were the real brains behind strategic ploys?

It’s hard to tell how undercover those evil schemers actually are. There’s some suggestion they’re acting outside of officially sanctioned government channels. Upper level functionaries of secret agencies like Pam Landy (Joan Allen) and Noah Vosen (David Strathairn) responsible for all the fuss are seen near the end of the film getting a drubbing from investigatory committees. And Aaron Cross and Dr. Shearing are subsequently seen chugging away in a river boat, as if they hadn’t a care in the world.

It’s marvelous to see how all the problems of high tech conspiracy can be dispatched when you put your mind to it.