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| re: My experience of Channing and Bishop | |
| Last Edit: 15minutecall 12:56 am EDT 06/27/18 | |
| Posted by: 15minutecall 12:46 am EDT 06/27/18 | |
| In reply to: My experience of Channing and Bishop - AlanScott 12:37 am EDT 06/27/18 | |
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| I agree with all you write here (and thank you for the kind shout out). I saw Bishop, as an understudy, in a pretty full house (sold out before the announcement of Channing's sickness). The laughs were not as plentiful or galvanic. But the payoff was sufficient compensation for me. Bishop used her hauteur as a mask for loneliness. Paul was a son to her, and the emotional connection which was created during his discussion of his thesis showed her what she was missing with Flan. Channing played her response to the speech as a joke, though it was wedded to an intellectual respect. Her social grasping was kept in the forefront and that's where she connected with Paul, whether she consciously recognized it or not. They were kindred spirits. That's why her Ouisa was a bad match for insider Flan. This made for a far different kind of connection, with much less emotion. Channing would take the production's only pause before "We're a terrible match" but that didn't create the epiphany that was intimated. | |
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| re: My experience of Channing and Bishop | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 01:06 am EDT 06/27/18 | |
| In reply to: re: My experience of Channing and Bishop - 15minutecall 12:46 am EDT 06/27/18 | |
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| You make me wish I could go back and see them both again. And I have to copy and paste and save your post lower down in the thread. |
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| Channing, Bishop and Marlo Thomas | |
| Posted by: bobby2 12:55 am EDT 06/27/18 | |
| In reply to: re: My experience of Channing and Bishop - 15minutecall 12:46 am EDT 06/27/18 | |
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| I saw all three. Channing was just excellent as was said above. A genuine comedian and a serious actress combined. Rare. I had seen her in The House of Blue Leaves too and that is one of the funniest performances I've ever seen. (granted I was a teenager but and liked sitcoms but she still seemed brilliant to me. Each announcement she had about her various jobs....I didn't work for the phone company for nothing etc!!! were just hysterical exit lines) Kurtz and Mahoney got Tonys but to me Stockard was the engine of the show and why the play never seems to work anywhere else. Baranski seems dull to me in the video. Bishop was adequate. She has a coldness about her that didn't quite work in the final scenes. Marlo Thomas was fine. I remember her being adequate and not a disappointment even after the bravura of Channing. |
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| re: Channing, Bishop and Marlo Thomas | |
| Last Edit: AlanScott 01:10 am EDT 06/27/18 | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 01:05 am EDT 06/27/18 | |
| In reply to: Channing, Bishop and Marlo Thomas - bobby2 12:55 am EDT 06/27/18 | |
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| Obviously, we disagree about Bishop as Ouisa, but I so agree about Channing's Bunny Flingus. I can't imagine anyone ever having been better or funnier in the role, and I think it may be my favorite of her performances. I so wish she'd still been in it when it was shot for television at the Plymouth. Christine Baranski can be brilliant, but I think she was so wrong in every way as Bunny, although I know that some people preferred her. There's a great danger in productions of the play: If Bunny is not likable and tremendously funny and a life force, it will all become too oppressive. Channing was an incredible life force when she played the role. She got it. Her performance was all positive energy, and the play so needs that. |
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| re: Channing, Bishop and Marlo Thomas | |
| Posted by: bobby2 01:24 am EDT 06/27/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Channing, Bishop and Marlo Thomas - AlanScott 01:05 am EDT 06/27/18 | |
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| Yes! Well said. And I just remembered how her scenes with Corrine where she is asking her questions and Corrine's hearing aid doesn't work so she is not answering the questions right.........well Stockard's reactions and glances to the audience indicating she thought Corrine was crazy just brought the house down. | |
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| I so wish Karen Ziemba had had the chance to do it in NYC. | |
| Last Edit: GabbyGerard 01:10 am EDT 06/27/18 | |
| Posted by: GabbyGerard 01:02 am EDT 06/27/18 | |
| In reply to: Channing, Bishop and Marlo Thomas - bobby2 12:55 am EDT 06/27/18 | |
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| Of course, if Allison Janney couldn't sell the show, Ziemba definitely couldn't have either... I had a friend in Ziemba's production at The Old Globe--which, like Janney's on Broadway, was directed by Trip Cullman. I went in skeptical because I thought her middle America warmth was all wrong for Ouisa. And, in some ways, it was. But it paid off in unexpected ways. Her sense of longing was palpable. She was desperate for human connection, a quality that I think is the subtext of Channing's performance in the film. But Ziemba wore her heart on her sleeve. Ouisa's storyline was no longer about a woman who is defrosted by her experience with Paul (which is what I get from Channing in the film), but a woman who learns to accept own humanity and vulnerability. And her realization that she and Flann (an absolutely perfect Thomas Jay Ryan--who ALSO should have done the show on Broadway) were a terrible match was heartbreaking. You saw a woman's entire understanding of her life shattered. |
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