The Good Doctor (Broadway Theatre Archive) (1978) Review

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(More customer reviews)The cream of the Broadway Theatre Archive, this production has it all--the stories of Anton Chekhov, Neil Simon to mold the stories into exquisitely timed and hilarious theatre, and a cast that is hard to duplicate. Starring Marsha Mason, who plays everything from a maid to a lady of the night; Ed Asner who is a terrific, blustering general; and Lee Grant, who ranges from a wily and assertive employer to a wild woman with a "nervous disorder," the production also includes Bob Dishy, who has an elastic face and expressive eyes, starring in "The Sneeze" and "The Seduction," and Gary Dontzig as the "Drowned Man" and a 19-year-old son about to be introduced to sex for the first time.
The seven Chekhov stories which become one-act plays here are filled with dry humor, surprise endings, and clever common people in confrontations with "superiors" which end in absurdity. "The Sneezer" cannot apologize enough to the general who is his boss at work, then believes that he himself has been humiliated. In "The Governess," an employer (Grant) tricks a subservient governess (Mason) out of 80% of her pay. "The Seduction" shows a man-about-town (Chamberlain) using a husband as the conduit for his seduction of the man's wife, a story with a twist at the end. "The Drowned Man" (Dontzig) claims to be in the "maritime entertainment business" and will "drown" for a small fee. "The Defenseless Creature" gives Grant her star turn, and she is hilarious as the clever wife who wants money from a banker (Chamberlain), threatening him with a curse if he refuses. In "The Arrangement" a father takes his shy, 19-year-old son to a house of ill repute, then realizes that the son will no longer be a boy.
The most stunning episode is "The Audition," and anyone interested in acting would do well to study Marsha Mason, who is magnificent here. Playing the parts of all three sisters from the conclusion of Chekhov's The Three Sisters, she is sensitive, bursts into tears on cue, then becomes rational and straightforward. As Mason convincingly plays the three different roles, one witnesses a truly great acting moment. Each of the scenes is beautifully produced and sensitively acted, and the viewer comes away from the production awed by Chekhov's writing, Simon's dramatic sense, and the ensemble cast's incredible talent. Mary Whipple


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Theater of War (2009) Review

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(More customer reviews)Imagine the best professor you ever had just gave you the greatest class you ever took. And now you're sitting somewhere with five other people who just took the class and you can't stop talking about it and these other people are smart, funny, thoughtful, great thinkers whose politics you find fascinating...that's a little bit what watching this film is like. It's more of an immersion in a creative endeavor. You are participating. It is about participating.
Somehow, this documentary is able to crystallize so many ideas, it becomes the crystal itself: a multifaceted thing of beauty + a structural marvel.
The film is about theater, about art, about the role of art, about roles within theater, about roles within war.
It's about the making of the Public Theater's 2006 production of Mother Courage, (which ran at Summer Stage in Central Park during the Iraq war), starring Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline, based on Tony Kushner's new translation, directed by George Woolf- and also features the artistic director of the public theater, Oskar Eustis. So it's a valuable film if you're interested in theater. It also gives a lot of great information about Brecht and why all of these people are so passionate about his work, so no matter what your level of knowledge is on the topic, this is enlightening on that issue as well.
It's a film about a labor of love by artists who continue to labor, to love labor and to love to labor at something they love.
It also shows Meryl Streep's process as she prepares for a role- amazing documentation and a great scene of her working on a song. Definitely would recommend it to directors, actors, playwrights, dramaturges and students... and journalists- not to say that it's a 'lesson.' It's more like a revelation.
It's not easy to describe this film but it is riveting.
See it with someone you love talking to. Be prepared to feel like you've been played like a great instrument by a great musician.
In other words, two thumbs, way up.

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Academy Award Winner Meryl Streep (Mamma Mia!, Its Complicated) is an unforgettable Mother Courage in Tony Kushners adaptation of Bertolt Brechts masterpiece, Mother Courage and Her Children. Along with Academy Award Winner Kevin Kline (Wild Wild West, A Fish Called Wanda), this gripping documentary pulls the curtain back and digs deeply into Brechts motives and politics, unearthing the playrights famed (and famously clever) testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee. For the first time in Meryl Streeps career, the film offers both an exclusive look into the actresss craft, and also on the play itself--whose themes of warfare and violence have both parallels to life in the 21st Century and Brecht's tortured history in America. DVD includes commentary from Academy Award Winner Michael Moore.

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