April '25 Digital Week I

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

Audrey’s Children 

(Blue Harbor Entertainment)

This earnest biopic about Dr. Audrey Evans, a pioneer in researching childhood cancers and leader of the movement to create the Ronald McDonald House for families needing a cost-free place to live while their child is undergoing lengthy and expensive treatment is dominated by Natalie Dormer who, as the titular character, is unfussily focused and understatedly expressive. Director Ami Canaan Mann and writer Julia Fisher Farbman avail themselves of familiar sentimental and melodramatic biopic tropes, but Dormer and terrific support from Jimmi Simpson as Audrey’s colleague and later husband Dan D’Angio and Clancy Brown as Audrey’s boss C. Everett Koop (yes, that Koop) make it an inspiring watch.

The Friend 

(Bleecker Street)

Based on the award-winning 2018 novel by Sigrid Nunez, Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s latest shows how book editor Iris responds to what author (and former lover) Walter leaves her after he dies: his Great Dane, Apollo. Iris lives in a small NYC apartment that doesn’t allow pets, and she must finesse many things at once: editing a final book of Walter’s letters, learning to live with—instead of getting rid of—Apollo and dealing with Walter’s three wives. This small-scale dramedy is perceptive at times, clichéd at others; it’s well-acted by Naomi Watts (Iris), Bill Murray (Walter), Carla Gugino (Walter’s first wife) and Sarah Pidgeon (Walter’s daughter)—but it’s stolen by the miraculous canine Bing as Apollo. Too bad McGehee and Siegel soften the book’s hard edges, especially the unsentimental ending, with something more conventional.

Holy Cow 

(Zeitgeist)

Louise Courvoisier’s feature, set in the Jura region of France where she’s from, is a sweet-natured but gritty chronicle of how shiftless 18-year-old Totone must mature quickly when tragedy befalls the family and he and his 7-year-old sister must fend for themselves on the faltering family farm. It has all the trappings of a corny, feel-good tale—especially when Totone begins a cute romance with Marie-Lise, who tends cows on a neighboring farm, and he decides to enter a cheesemaking contest to win the lucrative first prize—but the clear-eyed Courvoisier tells a shrewdly observant human comedy populated with a formidable cast of local unprofessional actors.

A Man and a Woman 

(Rialto)

Claude Lelouch’s 1966 international breakthrough, which won the Oscar for best foreign film, is a pretty pedestrian love story between a race car driver and script supervisor on movie sets whose spouses rather conveniently die. And its famous earworm score by Francis Lai, along with a couple of silly love songs, is saccharine at best. But what it has in spades, however, is Lelouch’s clever editing and photography as well as Jean-Louis Trintignant’s solid performance as un homme and, best of all, Anouk Aimée, who gives a performance for the ages as une femme—how she lost the best actress Oscar to Elizabeth Taylor is an insult of epic proportions.

When Fall Is Coming 

(Music Box)

Prolific French director François Ozon’s latest follows the travails of retired grandmother Michelle, banned from seeing her grandson Lucas after he has an accident while visiting her rural home—but when her daughter Valérie is suddenly gone from the picture, she must deal with that unexpected absence from her and Lucas’ lives. There’s a welcome matter-of-factness to Ozon’s storytelling, but it’s too one-note when a fateful twist upends everyone and everything. Ozon gets uncluttered performances from his cast, led by Hélène Vincent (Michelle), Ludivine Seignier (Valérie) and Josiane Balasko (Michelle’s friend and neighbor Marie-Claude).

Streaming Releases of the Week

The Oldest Profession 

(Film Movement Classics)

Japanese director Noboru Tanaka was a master of “Roman porno,” or pink films, which were sexually charged dramas popular in Japan in the ‘60s and ‘70s—this 1974 entry, shot in black and white, is one of his most memorably disturbing excursions into the sordid lives of prostitutes who endure beatings, brutal clients and social ostracism as they scrape together meager livings. His actresses Meika Seri and Genshu Hanayagi, who play daughter and mother prostitutes, powerfully bare their bodies and souls in this mesmerizing portrait of a bleak existence. 

Thank You Very Much 

(Drafthouse Films)

When Andy Kaufman died, at age 35 of cancer in 1984, many people thought it was a hoax, another crazy act in a career filled with them—from Latka in the sitcom Taxi to wrestling with women and alter egos that were aggressively more obnoxious,  Kaufman rewrote the rules of and went beyond comedy to a place few others dared to go. Alex Braverman’s loving portrait has archival clips and interviews with Kaufman along with amusing and even poignant reminiscences by friends and colleagues Danny DeVito, Marilu Henner, Steve Martin and Laurie Anderson (who tells one of the best Andy stories). Most personal are appearances by several women in his life, including his last girlfriend Lynne Margulies. There are missteps—Garry Shandling’s name is misspelled at one point—but this is a touching tribute to a unique talent gone too soon.

4K/UHD Releases of the Week

Companion 

(Warner Bros)

Iris, a companion robot purchased by Josh for his pleasure, develops a mind of her own in this strangely compelling black comedy written and directed by Drew Hancock, who stuffs his script with too many obvious twists to be fully satisfying. Still, it’s fun to watch, and Sophie Thatcher is spectacularly good as Iris, but even she can’t overcome the contrivances Hancock adds that make his tongue-in-cheek cautionary tale of humans being overrun by AI. The film has a first-rate UHD transfer; extras include short on-set featurettes.

Delicatessen 

(Severin Films)

Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro codirected this deliriously scattershot 1991 black comedy, set in a French village following an apocalypse and centered around the local butcher’s shop, which serves human flesh to its customers due to a food shortage. There are dazzling set pieces and remarkable visuals, yet the overwhelming sense of style over substance ultimately becomes enervating, particularly in a final 30 minutes of wanton destruction. Its mix of frightful and frivolous would become Jeunet’s stock-in-trade for the next couple of decades in films from A Very Long Engagement to Amélie. The film looks precisely detailed in 4K; extras include Jeunet’s commentary, Jeunet and Caro interview, interviews with Caro and Terry Gilliam, and a makinf-of featurette Fine Cooked Meats.

Love Hurts 

(Universal)

Fast-paced if ridiculous action sequences dominate Jonathan Eusebio’s offbeat rom-com about Marvin, a real estate agent in a quiet suburb, who reverts to his previous job as assassin when his former love interest (and target) Rose returns, along with the henchmen of his brother Alvin, who wants to clean up messes left behind by Marvin’s departure. Ke Huy Quan and Ariana DeBose are highly energetic and there’s silly fun to be had in the hyperkinetic fight scenes, but there’s too much crammed into too little time: this 83-minute flick moves swiftly in order to hide that there’s not much there. There’s a superb UHD transfer; extras include an alternate ending, deleted and extended scenes and short on-set featurettes.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

Dogman 

(Dreamworks)

In this frenzied animated adaptation of Dav Pilkey’s graphic novel series, the title character—grafted together from an injured police officer and his pet dog—is a relentless cop chasing Petey, the evilest cat around. Director-writer Peter Hastings smartly paces the action briskly and relentlessly, which glosses over some of the less funny parts—there’s fun, too, in the gleeful voice performances, from Pete Davidson’s Petey to the director’s own squeals and barks as Dogman. The hi-def transfer’s colors pop nicely; extras are a director’s commentary, deleted scenes and behind the scenes interviews.

Rose 

(Cohen Media)

In actress and screenwriter Aurélie Saada’s pithy 2021 directorial debut, the great Françoise Fabian essays the title role of the Goldberg family matriarch, whose life changes profoundly when her beloved husband of many decades dies suddenly and she must face widowhood and judgmental adult children. Even if some of what Saada shows of Rose not acting her age is borderline soap opera, Fabian commands the screen as she did as the irresistible Maud in Eric Rohmer’s 1969 My Night at Maud’s—until the very last image of Rose (and Fabian) fiercely looking directly at the camera…at us. The Blu-ray transfer looks good; lone extra is a Q&A with Saada.

CD Releases of the Week 

Reynaldo Hahn—Piano Quintet, Songs, and Piano Quartet 

(Chandos)

Hahn—Le Dieu Bleu (B Records)

Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947) is best known for being the lover of Marcel Proust, whose fictional composer Vinteuil in the great novel In Search of Lost Time wrote a sonata whose haunting theme (borrowed from Saint-Saëns) was suggested by Hahn. The Venezuelan-born, French-raised Hahn was also a prolific composer of attractive music that, at its best, could compete with works by the likes of Fauré and Chausson. 

That’s especially apparent on the Chandos disc of chamber works: the piano quintet and piano quartet owe much to late Fauré works, while the lyrical songs echo the vocal textures of both Fauré and Chausson. Tenor Karim Sulayman and the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective give impassioned performances of these chamber works and mélodies. 

As for Hahn’s one-act ballet Le Dieu Bleu (The Blue God), which premiered in 1912, it was not entirely successful in the theater, but—at least on this recording by the Orchestre les Frivolites Parisiennes led by conductor Dylan Corlay—its eminently tuneful and even dramatic qualities are enjoyably brought out.

NYC Theater Review—“A Streetcar Named Desire” with Paul Mescal at BAM

A Streetcar Named Desire 

Written by Tennessee Williams

Directed by Rebecca Frecknall

Performances through April 6,2025

BAM Strong Harvey Theatre, 651 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, NY

bam.org

Patsy Ferran and Paul Mescal in A Streetcar Named Desire (photo: Julieta Cervantes)

Although A Streetcar Named Desire hasn’t fared well on Broadway—if anyone even remembers botched revivals like the 2005 disaster with Natasha Richardson and John C. Reilly and stillborn 1992 production with Jessica Lange and Alec Baldwin—things have been different in Brooklyn, where in 2009 a fresh take on Tennessee Williams’ classic drama at BAM gave it back its poetry and poignancy: anchored by a surprisingly unmannered Cate Blanchett as Blanche Dubois and directed with unadorned realism by Liv Ullmann, the Sydney Theatre Company production was as good a Streetcar as could be wished for.

Now, London’s Almeida Theatre stops at BAM with its Streetcar, directed with arrogant assurance by Rebecca Frecknall, whose deconstruction of Williams’ familiar drama has some interesting detours but is burdened by too much distracting, unnecessary gimmickry. Heading her mostly capable cast and making his American theater debut, current heartthrob Paul Mescal plays Stanley Kowalski intelligently, letting us see the humor as well as the rage of this self-styled “Pole” (not “Polack,” as he corrects Blanche) who loves his wife Stella fiercely—so much so that he at times lets his passions spill over into brutishness and violence. 

As Stella, Blanche’s younger sister, Anjana Vasan is a sympathetic presence. And at the performance I attended, a solid Eduardo Ackerman subbed for Dwane Walcott as Stanley’s poker-playing buddy Mitch, who is sweet on Blanche until things go sour. But things get problematic with Patsy Ferran’s Blanche, a strangely off-putting performance that has little of Williams’ poetry and a surfeit of nervous energy. Most damaging, however, is that Ferran and Mescal have little chemistry together; at one point, Mescal gets on all fours and prowls around like a literal beast to try and underline the feral attraction between these memorably mismatched characters. It doesn’t really work.

Frecknall seems to sense this; she all but eclipses Stanley and Blanche’s relationship with busy stage business. Madeleine Girling’s set, a square wooden platform with a walkway surrounding it, resembles a boxing ring sans ropes. When actors are not in a scene, they mill around and hand props to those performing, like trainers giving the boxers a towel or a bottle of water during a match. Lee Curran’s lighting and Peter Rice’s sound design strongly contribute to the claustrophobic atmosphere.

Occasionally, the cast breaks into stylized dance moves that aren’t integrated enough to be effective—only the movements of the cast’s male actors closely surrounding Blanche when Stanley rapes her is memorable. And although Williams asks for a “blue piano” in his stage directions, Frecknall provides music that almost entirely comprises a drummer on a second tier above the stage (the talented Tom Penn, who also plays the doctor in the final scene) pounding away throughout, needlessly underscoring the dramatic beats, so to speak. And a repeated ghostly image of Blanche’s dead first husband needlessly clutters her monologues without any additional illumination.

One thing this Streetcar shares with the superior Blanchett/Ullmann production is a misconceived ending. In the 2009 Sydney Theatre staging’s biggest misstep, Blanchett rode Williams’ poetry too hard and director Ullmann allowed Blanche the indignity of being led away while not properly dressed. Here, Frecknall turns what should be a shattering ending into mush, the mass of performers onstage obscuring Blanche’s final tragedy—it misses the theatrical magic that Williams’ most indelible creation always yearned for. 

March '25 Digital Week III

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

Black Bag 

(Focus)

In Steven Soderbergh’s typically stylish espionage flick, a married British spy couple (Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett) attempt to root out the traitors in their midst when they realize they’re being set up from within the agency. David Koepp’s clever script withholds just enough info to maintain interest, while the double crossings are recorded by Soderbergh’s sleek camera, which along with his editing is unsurprisingly impeccable. It all builds up to not much, but it’s a fun 90-minute ride, enlivened by Fassbender’s sturdy presence and Marisa Abela’s scene-stealing drone operator. Only Blanchett’s icy operator seems off-base.

Any Day Now 

(Blue Harbor Entertainment)

The brazen 1990 robbery of Boston’s Gardner Museum—which netted Vermeer and Renoir paintings along with other priceless objects—has never been solved and the artifacts have never been found; Eric Aronson’s cleverly mounted drama imagines how the heist was planned and executed, with the film’s runtime the exact length of the actual theft. It’s more a stunt than a full-blooded story, but it’s enacted compellingly by a cast led by Paul Guilfoyle (usually cast in subordinate roles, he’s given a chance to be the anchor), Taylor Gray and Alexandra Templer.

Ash 

(RLJE/Shudder)

This derivative sci-fi flick introduces its heroine Riya, the lone survivor of an attack aboard a space station on the distant planet Ash—her fellow astronauts are dead and she has no memory of what happened. Soon, flashbacks help her piece together the incident along with a rescuer named Brion, whom she supposedly knows but doesn’t completely trust. Director Flying Lotus cleverly conveys Riya’s fraught situation, but even with the gifted and properly intense Eiza González in the lead, the film ultimately doesn’t amount to much more than mere fragments, disappointingly.

The Assessment 

(Magnolia)

In an authoritarian near-future, couples can only have children if they pass rigorous government testing, and director Fleur Fortuné’s stylized debut feature stars Alicia Vikander as Virginia, an assessor who visits the home of Mia (Elizabeth Olsen) and Aaryan (Himesh Patel) to see if they will be worthy parents. The script by Dave Thomas, Nell Garfath-Cox and John Donnelly starts out well, but as Virginia acts more illogically infantilized and, finally, dangerously reckless, the extremes in everyone’s behavior are less than plausibly developed. The final half-hour is a mess, and the committed cast—led by the always magnetic Vikander, a captivating Olsen and Minnie Driver in a memorable cameo as a centenarian—keeps this watchable as it stumbles to end.

Bob Trevino Likes It 

(Roadside Attractions)

Despite the mawkish premise—a young woman, Lily, with a mostly absent father Bob reaches out on Facebook desperate for a connection and finds a man without children (and with her dad’s name) who becomes an unlikely correspondent and, later, friend—writer and director Tracie Laymon has made a sweet-natured study of two lonely people who fulfill each other’s needs, at least for a little while. Most of the credit goes to the quietly affecting John Leguizamo and Barbie Ferriera, with good support from French Stewart as Lily’s deadbeat dad and Rachel Bay Jones as her friend Bob’s wife.

Misericordia 

(Sieshow/Janus)

French director Alain Guiraudie’s latest slow-burn drama shows the complex underside of placid village life as a young man returns to his hometown after his employer, the local baker (whom he had a crush on), dies—he is soon at odds with the baker’s son, spends time with his widow and begins a reciprocal relationship with the local priest. In Guiraudie’s world, sexuality brazenly intrudes on a seemingly conservative lifestyle, but here contrivance overpowers a more nuanced exploration of human behavior. Instead of finding depth in these characters, Guiraudie moves them around like pawns; even the quiet ending isn’t as affecting as it wants to be.

Blu-ray Release of the Week 

A Woman in Paris 

(Criterion)

This 1923 silent feature was Charles Chaplin’s Interiors—an attempt by a one-of-a-kind comic voice desperately wanting to be considered a Serious Artist. Despite the baggage, it’s an entertaining melodrama notable for not starring Chaplin; instead, Edna Purviance stars the eponymous heroine. While not a disaster like Chaplin’s final film, A Countess from Hong Kong, it’s nowhere near the level of Chaplin’s legendary comedies that would come right after this. The restored film (which is the 1976 rerelease version featuring a score composed by Chaplin) has an excellent hi-def transfer, and the extras include an alternate score by conductor Timothy Brock, based on music by Chaplin; intro by Chaplin scholar David Robinson; new video essay by Chaplin biographer Jeffrey Vance; Chaplin Today: A Woman of Paris, with interviews of Liv Ullmann and Michael Powell; an audio commentary; audio interview excerpts with Chaplin Studios cameraman Roland Totheroh; deleted shots from the original film; and archival footage.

Streaming Release of the Week

Invader 

(Doppelgänger Releasing)

What begins as a reasonably diverting mystery—a woman named Ana goes to her cousin’s home in suburban Chicago and finds someone else there—quickly degenerates into a ridiculously unpleasant study of a maniac terrorizing innocent people as if Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs was given too much screen time. Director-writer Mickey Keating doesn’t seem to be simply showing such abhorrent behavior but actually reveling in it, negating the sympathy afforded Ana (a nice turn by Vero Maynez) in the beginning.

CD Releases of the Week 

Kate Lindsey—Samsara 

(Alpha Classics)

“Samsara” refers to the recurring cycle of death and rebirth, which is why mezzo Kate Lindsey chose it as the title of her latest recital disc—and the major song cycles she sings so beautifully, by Robert Schumann and Gabriel Fauré, take women’s points of view about the joys and sorrows of life. Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben, which was composed in 1840 (his celebrated “year of lieder,” during which he also wrote his other great cycles Dichterliebe and the two sets of Liederkreis), is remarkable in its piano writing, which in no way sounds like mere accompaniment. Fauré’s La Chanson d’Eve, an autumnal work of uncommon grace and sensitivity, is also the fastidious French master’s longest cycle. Several other Schumann lieder and Fauré mélodies round out the recording, and pianist Éric Le Sage provides delicate and thoughtful playing to complement Lindsey’s lovely vocal performances.

William Walton—Violin Concerto and Other Orchestral Works 

(Chandos)

British composer Wiliam Walton (1902-83) had so much success early on with Façade and his First Symphony that he had to live in their shadows for the rest of his long career—but, as this disc of a trio of his flavorful orchestral works shows, at his best, Walton was as formidable a composer as his contemporary Benjamin Britten. The rousing Portsmouth Point Overture is the earliest piece here (written when Walton was in his early 20s), while the Symphonic Suite from Troilus and Cressida—Walton’s wonderful opera that has never gotten a foothold in the repertoire (I don’t think it’s been staged in New York City since its 1955 City Opera production)—contains Walton’s music at its most dramatic and gripping. Finally, there’s his masterly Violin Concerto from the late 1930s, lyrical yet technically demanding and containing a surfeit of melodies and inventive ideas throughout. Charlie Lovell-Jones is the accomplished concerto soloist, and John Wilson leads the Sinfonia of London in perceptive readings of all three works.

Off-Broadway Play Review—Chisa Hutchinson’s “Amerikin” at Primary Stages

Amerikin

Written by Chisa Hutchinson

Directed by Jade King Carroll

Performances through April 13, 2025

Primary Stages @ 59 E 59Theatres, 59 East 59th Street, NYC

primaryStages.org

Molly Carden and Daniel Abeles in Amerikin (photo: James Leynse)

Chisa Hutchinson’s Amerikin, an examination of how the country’s racial attitudes haven’t changed much, was written in 2018—during the first Trump administration, which seems like the good old days—and could serve as a cautionary tale of what’s happening now, on an even more devastating scale.

It’s too bad, then, that Amerikin seems a blueprint for a more insightful comic drama, heavyhandedly welding two plays together to form an intriguing but unsatisfying one. (The first act is “Inside Out,” and the second is “Outside In,” which explains it all.) We first meet Jeff Browning (his last name a bad pun) of Sharpsburg, Maryland—near where the Civil War’s bloodiest battle, Antietam, was fought; he’s a blue-collar stiff who wants to give his newborn son a head start in life by taking a genetic test to show his purity so he can join a local white-supremist organization, the Knights. Complicating things are Jeff’s wife Michelle, who suffers from extreme post-partum depression, and next-door neighbor Alma, Jeff’s girlfriend before he married Michelle. 

Jeff discovers his DNA isn’t as pure as he thought, and the play’s first act ends with a cross burning on the front lawn just as the family is leaving to celebrate Jeff joining the Knights. Jeff’s friend, computer whiz Poot, successfully fudged the results but Poot’s latest girlfriend, daughter of one of the group’s leaders, saw the original report and relayed the truth about Jeff’s ancestry: 14 percent sub-Saharan African. 

The second act introduces veteran Washington Post columnist Gerald and his daughter, aspiring journalist Chris. Gerald saw a Facebook post from Alma about how Jeff’s life has been ruined by these events and decides it’s a perfect subject for his column: a white racist isn’t white enough to join a racist organization. So Gerald reluctantly brings Chris along for the drive to rural Maryland (Chris says to her father, “You think I’m letting you go into Confederate territory by yourself, black man?”) to meet Jeff and hear his side of the story—about which he isn’t entirely truthful.

Amerikin traffics in narrative contrivances and cardboard characters. There are shrewd observations and sympathy for everyone in the play, however loathsome they may be personally, but even though there’s much to be said for creating dialogue and bridging differences, there are too many stereotypes, easy jokes and “shocking” moments like Jeff naming his black dog the N word, of all things, or Michelle singing a lullaby to her newborn that goes, “Lullaby and goodnight/Shoulda had you aborted.” Then there’s a suicide that happened a week earlier, which could never be covered up in such a tiny living space. 

Director Jade King Carroll has trouble making it all cohere, but Christopher Swader and Justin Swader’s lively set of Jeff and Michelle’s home—replete with Trump-Pence stickers on a refrigerator filled with Miller beer—and Jen Caprio’s spot-on costumes ground the caricature in an identifiable, and sadly real, America. And though the actors are constricted by the script, Daniel Abeles makes Jeff a likable dope and Molly Carden takes the impossible role of Michelle—who isn’t given much to do except cry and rage, while her ultimate fate occurs offstage—and winds her so tightly and tautly that she deserves a more thoughtful play to bring out her character’s fascinating contradictions.

Off-Broadway Review—Sam Shepard’s “Curse of the Starving Class” with Calista Flockhart and Christian Slater

Curse of the Starving Class

Written by Sam Shepard; directed by Scott Elliott

Performances through April 6, 2025

The New Group @ Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 West 42nd Street, New York, NY

thenewgroup.org

Christian Slater and Calista Flockhart with Lois in Curse of the Starving Class (photo: Monique Carboni)

Sam Shepard was at the height of his powers when he wrote Curse of the Starving Class, in 1977; it’s the first of his dysfunctional family plays of that era: Buried Child, True West, Fool for Love and his masterpiece A Lie of the Mind. However—at least in Scott Elliott’s new staging—Curse is cursed by diminishing dramatic returns and fraught symbolism that turns crushingly literal.

The play revolves around the Tate family living on a desolate farm in rural California—father Weston, a drunkard, is barely home, while his wife Ella is busy planning a new life by befriending a shady real estate agent-banker Taylor with the hopes he will buy the property. Their children are Wesley, their 20ish son who fluctuates between anger and sympathy toward his erstwhile parents, and teenage Emma, who has designs on leaving for good.

For nearly three hours, these people battle one another psychologically and physically as their relationships ebb and flow. Weston—who scared Ella so much the night before the play begins that she called the cops on him after one of his drunken rages ended with him destroying the kitchen door and window—threatens both Ella and Taylor, whom he takes to be her paramour, and who probably suckered him into buying worthless desert property. Meanwhile, the owner of the local bar Weston frequents shows up one day with a lawful deed for the family farm that Weston agreed to sell to while on a bender.

Shepard is a master of poetic dialogue that reveals his damaged characters’ buried secrets, and some of that survives in Curse, but the pregnant monologues by each family member have been staged by Elliott as Shakespearean soliloquies aimed at the audience, blunting their casual immediacy. Elliott also has encouraged the actors to remain in one gear throughout, which Christian Slater (Weston) and Calista Flockhart (Ella) mostly cling to, while Cooper Hoffman (Wesley) and Stella Marcus (Emma) break free occasionally, to their—and the play’s—benefit.

Even the handling of the family sheep, one of Shepard’s most potent metaphors, is inadequate. In the script, the sheep is sick with maggots, and Wesley brings it inside to nurse it, much to his mother’s chagrin.  But in this production, the sheep, played by Lois (sometimes Gladys), looks quite healthy—so much that the animal steals the scene when Weston is telling an anecdote. When the audience giggles over the sheep’s natural reaction to Slater speaking to it, it throws everyone out of the drama. Which might be a good thing, for—despite Jeff Croiter’s canny lighting and Leah Gelpe’s sharp sound design (too bad Arnulfo Maldonado’s kitchen set is less run down than it should be)—Elliott’s staging is too unbalanced to forcefully embody Shepard’s fractured family.

March '25 Digital Week II

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

Queen of the Ring 

(Sumerian Pictures)

Mildred Burke, the first female wrestling superstar in the mid-20th century and the first female sports figure to earn a million dollars, is the focus of Ash Avildsen’s highly entertaining biopic: although it skims over some fascinating material, there’s a lot jammed into its 135-minute running time, as we meet Mildred and her protective mother Bertha, her trainer/husband/ex/adversary Billy Wolfe, the women who join her in the ring and even such colorful male wrestling characters as Gorgeous George and Vince McMahon Sr. (father of the McMahon we all know and loathe). Avildsen obviously learned from his father, John G. Avildsen (Oscar winner for Rocky), how to shoot action in the ring, but can’t keep melodrama to a minimum outside it. But the energetic cast keeps our interest: Emily Bett Rickards (who could be Margaret Qualley’s twin) is a phenomenal Mildred and Josh Lucas a properly slimy Billy, while the sterling supporting cast is led by Francesca Eastwood, Marie Avgeropoulos, Deborah Ann Woll and Kelli Berglund as the women in Mildred’s corner.

Seven Veils 

(XYZ Entertainment)

For his latest feature, Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan cannibalizes his own stage-directing career for a leaden drama that follows opera director Jeanine as she stages Richard Strauss’ masterpiece Salome ostensibly as an homage to her mentor but also as a way to work out her own personal trauma. Amanda Seyfried’s committed portrayal of Jeanine can’t make her more of an individual and less of a metaphor for Egoyan’s own provocative thoughts about creating art on stage and screen, which end up overwhelming the story. And paralleling the opera’s events with what happens offstage doesn’t get much dramatic traction either. There are enticing excerpts from the opera—as staged by Egoyan himself for Toronto’s Canadian Opera Company—but how disappointing that a great singer like Karita Mattila (whom I saw as a sensational Salome at the Metropolitan Opera in 2004) is reduced to a walk-on as Salome’s mother Herodias.

4K/UHD Releases of the Week 

Den of Thieves 2—Pantera 

(Lionsgate)

In this second go-round for Gerard Butler and O’Shea Jackson Jr., an international group known as the Panthers, which brazenly stole a diamond and important files at the Antwerp, Belgium, airport, is planning another major heist in Nice, France. Writer-director Christian Gudegast paces the action decently and there’s a certain fun in watching the complex planning, but trodding very familiar ground for 135 minutes leads to repetition and wheel-spinning. Compensations are the attractive European locales and the easy camaraderie of Butler, Jackson Jr. and cohorts including Evin Ahmad and Salvatore Esposito. There’s a fine hi-def transfer; extras are a commentary featuring Gudegast, making-of featurette and deleted scenes.

Red One 

(Warner Bros)

If your idea of a holiday movie is watching Santa get kidnaped on Christmas Eve while the head of his security detail and a hired hacker track down his whereabouts and, after many implausible chases and stunts, rescue him in time for present delivery, then this has your name all over it. Although it’s way too noisy and clunky in director Jake Kasdan’s hands, it does have a fun cast, from J.T. Simmons’ sardonic Santa and Bonnie Hunt’s endearing Mrs. Claus to the interplay among the rescuers led by Chris Evans, Dwayne Johnson and Lucy Liu, who trade quips and insults from Chris Morgan’s script incessantly. There’s an excellent UHD transfer.

Wolf Man 

(Universal)

Director/cowriter Leigh Wannell had a hit in 2020 with The Invisible Man, a creepy thriller that made a people anticipate his follow-up, but this attempt to reboot a dormant horror franchise unfortunately suffers from a literalness that obscures whatever effective scares might be lurking in the all too familiar material. Wannell concentrates on body horror, display the scale of physical brutishness that results when family man Blake is transformed into a creature preying on his loving wife Charlotte and young daughter Ginger—but that’s no replacement for a lack of sympathy for the victims, something that is almost—but not quite—mitigated by Julia Garner’s usual sturdy portrayal of Charlotte. There’s a terrific UHD transfer; extras comprise Wannell’s commentary and four short making-of featurettes.

Blu-ray Release of the Week

Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth 

(Film Movement)

Legendary television interviewer Bill Moyers sat down with legendary author Joseph Campbell—whose books about the universality of myths were best-sellers for decades—at George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch (Lucas famously admitted he was under Campbell’s influence)—for a series of memorable discussions shown on PBS in 1988, a year after Campbell’s death. This two-disc set collects the six hour-long programs that are still among the most popular in public television history as well as a few enticing extras: Moyers’ episode-length interview with Lucas and two Bill Moyers Journal episodes with Campbell. 

CD Release of the Week 

Georges Antheil—Venus in Africa 

(CPO)

For George Antheil (1900-1959), the American composer known as the “bad boy of music” thanks to his avant-garde compositions of the 1920s and 30s while he lived in Paris and Berlin, it was when he returned to the U.S. that he restarted his career with simpler, more conventional works that still retained a lot of charm. Case in point is this amusing, attractive one-act opera about a couple helped by the ancient goddess. While not earthshaking like his earlier Ballet Mécanique or A Jazz Symphony, Venus has a pleasing tunefulness that’s showcased in this recording, with conductor Steven Sloane leading the Bochumer Philharmoniker and a sassy cast of five singers.

March '25 Digital Week I

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week 

September 5 

(Paramount)

This tense slow-burn thriller recounts that awful day during the 1972 Munich Olympics when a group of Palestinian terrorists took several Israeli Olympic teammates and coaches hostage, culminating in all of their deaths after an airport shootout. Tim Fehlbaum directs straightforwardly, and the mostly no-name cast (with the exception of Peter Sarsgaard as ABC producer Roone Arledge) is formidable and seamless. And if it’s problematic that the men who lost their lives are kept offscreen except for actual news footage, the film still honors their memory by showing how a bunch of technicians and sports reporters told the story of that day as professionals.

Ex-Husbands 

(Greenwich Entertainment)

Three generations of failed relationships are explored by writer-director Noah Pritzker in this alternately amusing and bemusing study of Peter (Griffin Dunne), whose 35-year marriage to Maria (Rosanna Arquette) has ended on the heels of his own father Simon (Richard Benjamin) announcing his six-decade marriage to Peter’s mother Eunice is over. Peter goes to Mexico to compress while his oldest son Nick (James Norton) is having a bachelor party there—and he announces his wedding’s cancellation. Pritzker explores this family—which includes Peter’s youngest son Mickey (Miles Heitzer) confused about his identity after recently coming out as queer—perceptively but also melodramatically, but the cast’s restrained performances (including a lovely turn by Eisa Davis as a woman Peter meets in Mexico) make this a worthwhile watch.

Riff Raff 

(Roadside Attractions)

Despite a stellar cast featuring the likes of Ed Harris, Bill Murray, Gabrielle Union, and Jennifer Coolidge, Dito Montiel’s black comedy about a retired hit man living a placid upstate life with his younger wife and her son who finds his violent downstate past revisiting his home is too gratuitously violent and filled with easy laughs to perform a successful balancing act. Montiel seems to sense that as well for, despite the many shootings, there’s an attempt at a melancholic sort of happy ending—but the bad taste lingers of innocents being killed unceremoniously and being played for laughs, and even committed performances can’t overcome that misstep.

4K/UHD Release of the Week

Amadeus 

(Warner Bros)

Milos Forman’s 1984 adaptation of Peter Schaffer’s Tony-winning play about the supposed rivalry between mediocre composer Salieri and young genius Mozart became an unlikely hit and won eight Oscars, including best picture and best director. It is certainly entertaining and sumptuously made on location in Prague, yet at 160 minutes it wears out its welcome with wearying repetition about Mozart’s vulgarity and Salieri’s delusions of grandeur along with risible recreations of Mozart composing, with Salieri himself writing down the dying young master’s score for his classic Requiem. Tom Hulce and Oscar winner F. Murray Abraham shine as Mozart and Salieri, respectively, while Miroslav Ondricek’s stunning camerawork performs visual wonders that are accentuated on the new UHD release. Extras include two making-of featurettes: a vintage one with Forman and Schaffer (who have both since died) and a more recent one.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

The Mask of Satan 

(Severin Films)

Some giggly young Italian skiers inadvertently uncover the frozen corpse of a condemned devil-loving witch and trigger a long nightmare of demonic vengeance in this goofy but watchable 1989 horror entry by Lamberto Bava, whose father Mario Bava made the classic Black Sunday that this is all but a remake of. Silliness abounds throughout, yet Bava Junior and his attractive cast—including Mary Sellers, Debora Caprioglio and Michele Soavi—are able to somehow keep contrivance at bay for the most part for the 98-minute runtime. The film looks terrifically grainy for its U.S. Blu-ray premiere; extras comprise interviews with Bava, Sellers and Caprioglio.

Tchaikovsky—Eugene Onegin 

(Naxos)

Russian Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s greatest opera is this tragic romance that the composer presciently dubbed “lyrical scenes”: his intimate and subtle music bears the emotional weight of the story, based on a Pushkin verse novel, about young Tatyana, rejected by the arrogant Onegin, only to turn the tables when he belatedly realizes his error. Although everything seems right in this 2023 Brussels staging—Laurent Pelly’s exquisite direction; the singing of Sally Matthews (Tatyana), Stephane Degout (Onegin) and others; the playing of the La Monnaie Symphony Orchestra led by conductor Alain Altinoglu—the performance remains respectable and slightly distant, not emotionally shattering as the best productions of this masterpiece are.

CD Release of the Week 

Satie—Planès 

(Harmonia Mundi)

At age 78, French pianist Alain Planès tackles the deceptively difficult piano music of the idiosyncratic French composer Erik Satie (1866-1925) on the centenary of Satie’s death. Playing on a 1928 Pleyel piano, Planès plumbs the endless depths of these remarkably complex works, bringing to the fore all their bittersweet, mischievous and languidly brooding qualities. Along with perhaps the most famous of Satie’s compositions, the 3 Gymnopédies and the 5 Gnossiennes, Planès also performs pieces like the 3 Morceaux for 4 hands (with pianist François Pinel) and the 3 Melodies (sung by baritone Marc Mauillon)—along with his collaborators, Planès gets to the heart of Satie’s alternately puckish and mysterious music, whose subtlety and elegance repay repeated listens.

February '25 Digital Week III

In-Theater Release of the Week 

Parthenope 

(A24)

Italian director Paolo Sorrentino returns with an exploration of youthful beauty in the form of a beautiful young woman named after a Greek siren, who turns heads—among other things—in her hometown of Naples (aka Parthenope). Celeste Dalla Porta is exquisitely gorgeous; whether she can act is immaterial, since Parthenope is a symbol for whatever the men who ogle her—even her beloved brother and an old, obese priest—want her to be. If the shots of males leering were cut, the movie would probably be an hour shorter. Visually, Sorrentino and cinematographer Daria D’Antonio overload on sumptuousness, but dramatically and thematically it’s trifling. Sorrentino even brings in Gary Oldman to ham it up mercilessly as drunk novelist John Cheever, whose writings Parthenope happens to adore. Meshing religion and sex is Sorrentino’s prime subject, but even Dalla Porta’s great beauty palls after awhile, and the final shots of just-retired anthropology professor Parthenope (Stefania Sandrelli) watching a celebratory float go by make as little sense as the rest of this long perfume ad—even a 30-second commercial would have more depth.

Streaming Release of the Week

Nosferatu 

(Focus Features)

Writer-director Robert Eggers’ latest genre exercise is in many ways his most enervating yet—his unnecessary remake of the old and moldy Dracula/Nosferatu films is overloaded with hysterically overwrought performances; moody but hammy camerawork; more metaphorical packs of rats and shadows than one would expect even from a nervous student film; and a self-indulgent, slow pace that drags this flimsy tale to a torturous running time of 135 minutes. Even Willem Dafoe, often an amusing overacter, seems flustered by his ridiculous character and dialogue; poor Lily-Rose Depp looks elegant but remains relentlessly dour, while Nicholas Hoult is unable to fashion a real character out of disparate fragments. As for the vampire himself, Bill Skarsgård gives a performance that grows more risible as the film continues.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

Last Summer 

(Janus Contemporaries)

French provocateur Catherine Breillat hadn’t made a film in about a decade following her stroke, but her long-awaited return doesn’t disappoint, as she adapts the Dutch film Queen of Hearts to dissect the relationship—initially antagonistic, then sexual, and finally emotional—of a 40ish wife and mother, Anna, and her teenage stepson, Théo. The always rigorous Breillat explores the psychological state of Anna—who is also, ironically, a respected lawyer—and, despite a few narrative misplays (a couple important sequences are elided), allows her to tell her truth, even when it’s based on a torrent of lies. As Théo, Samuel Kircher is simultaneously (and plausibly) a child and a young man, while Léa Drucker gives a towering performance of feminine sexual confidence as Anna, a woman who makes wrong decisions and doubles down on them. The film looks fine on Blu; lone extra is a Breillat interview.

Respighi—Maria Egiziaca 

(Dynamic)

Italian composer Ottorino Respighi’s 1931 theatrical triptych follows the prostitute Maria of Alexandria, whose sacrifice later earned her Catholic sainthood, in a dramatically tense account accompanied by some of Respighi’s loveliest music. Pier Luigi Pizzi’s 2024 Venice production centers on the fiery aliveness of soprano Francesca Dotto’s portrayal of Maria, who could have been merely symbolic but instead is a flawed, fully achieved protagonist. Respighi’s score sounds luminous performed by the Venice State Opera orchestra and chorus under the baton of Manlio Benzi. Hi-def video and audio are first-rate.

Strauss—Arabella 

(Naxos)

German master Richard Strauss’ 1933 operatic romance—his final work with longtime librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal—follows the title heroine, a noblewoman with no shortage of suitors, and her younger sister Zdenka (brought up as a boy to save the family money); the combination of Hofmannsthal’s wit and Strauss’ melodies makes this one of the great autumnal operas. Tobias Krazer’s 2023 Berlin State Opera staging mixes a lush Viennese setting with postmodern touches like film clips and casual contemporary wear for the leads. If the production is less than visually sparkling, musically it’s aces—as Arabella, Sara Jakubiak adds to her glowing portraits of complex heroines, while Elena Tsallagova (as Zdenka) provides superb support. Donald Runnicles conducts an effective reading of Strauss’ sumptuous score. The hi-def video and audio are topnotch.

4K/UHD Release of the Week

Constantine 

(Warner Bros)

In Francis Lawrence’s 2005 supernatural mess, Keanu Reeves sleepwalks through the title role, an exorcist of sorts who visits heaven and hell and who tries to save L.A. detective Angela, whose twin sister Isabel killed herself under suspicious circumstances. Lawrence conjures the look of dankness and gray foreboding that David Fincher did in 1995’s Seven, which was more plausibly and terrifying. Opposite the somnolent Reeves is Rachel Weisz, desperate to make Amanda more than a caricature but defeated by the material and Lawrence’s approach. The UHD images are flawless; extras include new interviews with Lawrence and Reeves as well as archival featurettes and commentaries.

CD Release of the Week 

Supertramp—Live in Paris ’79 

(Mercury/Universal)

On the heels of its biggest-selling album, Breakfast in America, prog-rock group Supertramp released a two-LP live set, Paris, documenting the extensive world tour. That 1980 album has just been reissued on two CDs that include the entire two-hour set with the band firing on all cylinders, from prog epics like “Crime of the Century,” “From Now On” and “Fool’s Overture” to classic cuts like “School,” “Ain’t Nobody But Me” and “Even in the Quietest Moments” and a wide selection of tracks from the then-current smash album: “The Logical Song,” “Goodbye Stranger,” “Take the Long Way Home” and even “Child of Vision.” What’s heard in this impeccably remixed concert is how tight the quintet was, from drummer Bob Siebenberg and bassist Dougie Thomson’s rhythm section to John Helliwell’s saxophone and the coleaders, keyboardist/singer Roger Davies and keyboardist/guitarist/singer Roger Hodgson.  

Off-Broadway Play Review—Shakespeare’s “Henry IV” in Brooklyn

Henry IV

Written by William Shakespeare; adapted by Dakin Matthews

Directed by Eric Tucker

Performances through March 2, 2025

Theatre for a New Audience, 262 Ashland Avenue, Brooklyn, NY

tfana.org

       James Udom, Cara Ricketts, Jay O. Sanders, Slate Holmgren and Elan Zafir in Henry IV (photo: Gerry Goodstein)

When I saw Dakin Matthews’ canny distillation of the two parts of Henry IV at Lincoln Center Theater in 2003, I found it the best Shakespeare I’ve ever seen in New York (and still do)—Jack O’Brien adroitly directed a star-studded cast headed by Kevin Kline as Falstaff, and Matthews’ adaptation subtly distilled the essence of both works into one absorbing four-hour play.

Matthews’ Henry IV returns in a far different staging at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn. Unlike O’Brien’s lush, almost cinematic production, Eric Tucker directs a smaller-scaled version in the round. There are drawbacks to this approach, since the action takes place among dozens of characters in several far-flung locales, including the king’s court, London taverns and a battlefield. The cramped stage area is acknowledged by actors sitting in seats among the audience when not performing, which fosters more intimacy among spectators and performers. And performing in the round by definition has actors facing away from a part of the audience at all times, which has a tendency to swallow important dialogue.

Nicole E. Lang’s lighting illuminates the proceedings on Jimmy Stubbs’ minimalist set both dramatically and psychologically, while Catherine Zuber and AC Gottlieb’s costumes pleasingly mix period and modern. Tucker nicely paces the drama among the king’s council discussions, the rebels’ machinations and the lively tavern interludes among London’s lowlifes. He has also double-cast several roles, so some performers change costumes and become other characters right onstage. It’s a diverting effect, but it also points up the difficulty of doing the Bard on a budget, since such busyness at times detracts from the play itself.

Of those taking on multiple roles, best are the charismatic Jordan Bellow, who adroitly shuttles between Prince Hal’s brother John and Hal’s partner in frivolity Ned Poins; and the winning Cara Ricketts, who makes both a touching Lady Percy and a rollicking Doll Tearsheet. Matthews himself—who played a supporting role in the 2003 Lincoln Center production—gives the title monarch a sturdy royal presence. 

Shakespeare is most interested in the relationship between Hal and his friend, the braggart, womanizer, and self-styled wit named Sir John Falstaff. When Hal prods Falstaff to even greater heights of self-delusion, it makes Falstaff simultaneously funnier and more sorrowful. Elijah Jones finds a nice balance between Hal’s foolishness and budding maturity, and Jay O. Sanders follows in Kevin Kline’s large footsteps to create a Falstaff who is both outsized and normal, buffoonish yet always sympathetic. 

Near the end, Hal—now Henry V after his father’s death—coldly banishes his erstwhile friend and sparring partner from the kingdom; Sanders plays this moment with shock and resignation but also a sliver of pride that the young man Falstaff believes he himself has led to this moment has, indeed, met the moment. This is not an essential Shakespeare staging but it is entertaining, which nowadays is nothing to sneeze at.