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| What An Odd Choice | |
| Posted by: JereNYC (JereNYC@aol.com) 11:33 am EST 03/04/19 | |
| In reply to: TWENTIETH CENTURY at Roundabout starring Alec Baldwin & Anne Heche - One-Night Only - Official_Press_Release 08:51 am EST 03/04/19 | |
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| What an odd choice to revive, even for a one night only benefit. Ludwig's adaptation isn't great and Heche was not good as Lily Garland. Perhaps she'll find something in the part 15 years later that she didn't before. I suppose Walter Bobbie can't do much to ruin a reading, but his work on the production was also not very good. Alec Baldwin was, however, ideal as Oscar. |
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| re: What An Odd Choice | |
| Posted by: peter3053 01:11 am EST 03/05/19 | |
| In reply to: What An Odd Choice - JereNYC 11:33 am EST 03/04/19 | |
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| Also, isn;t there an element of farce in Twentieth Century which needs opening and closing doors, not quite satisfying when people are merely opening and closing scripts at a benefit night. | |
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| I had a totally opposite reaction to the stars (as did the NY Times). | |
| Posted by: GabbyGerard 01:54 pm EST 03/04/19 | |
| In reply to: What An Odd Choice - JereNYC 11:33 am EST 03/04/19 | |
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| I would love to see this benefit just to revisit Heche's performance, which I thought was an absolute riot. I found Baldwin (whom I usually like) stilted and underwhelming. Heche's performance--which garnered her a Tony nomination--had some detractors in the press, but also won her praise from some major critics, including the NY Times. Brantley opened his review with several paragraphs of loving words to Heche, writing, "Ms. Heche's self-dramatizing character is a happily unhappy fraud, a shopgirl who became the women she worshiped on the screen, and she can't help wallowing in the theatrics of her good fortune. Whenever she's onstage, this 'Twentieth Century,' set on a New York-bound luxury train, picks up speed." He too found Baldwin a letdown. Some of the less flattering pull quotes include: "[W]hile Ms. Heche is beaming light rays directly into Mr. Baldwin's forehead, he generally fails to respond in kind"; "Yet while he lands every punch line in ''Twentieth Century,'' often with finesse, he does not deliver an Oscar who is the all-controlling nerve center of a madcap universe. Instead, he seems like the glazed eye of a hurricane"; and, "It's understandable that Mr. Baldwin would want to avoid copying Barrymore's manic, flamboyantly mannered performance. But he doesn't meet Ms. Heche's intensity." Variety didn't feel quite as strongly in either direction, but had a similar reaction. Charles Isherwood wrote, "Heche proves to be a deft and adventurous comedienne, flailing her little limbs about with hilarious abandon as the histrionic Lily" and "Baldwin...is an awkward fit for the role of the pompous, flamboyant Jaffe.... Baldwin is an earthy actor with a natural contemporary style, and his hoity-toity faux-British accent sounds more off-key than it should." |
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| re: I had a totally opposite reaction to the stars (as did the NY Times). | |
| Posted by: JereNYC (JereNYC@aol.com) 02:07 pm EST 03/04/19 | |
| In reply to: I had a totally opposite reaction to the stars (as did the NY Times). - GabbyGerard 01:54 pm EST 03/04/19 | |
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| Wow...I wish I'd seen a performance like the critics you quoted did. Perhaps I was there on an off day. At my performance, Heche, whom I'd thought terrific in PROOF a year or two before this, had almost no presence at all, except for one entrance in a fantastic gown that garnered applause. I remember her slouching all over the furniture in ways that did not seem very 1920's to me and certainly not appropriate for someone trying to pass as a movie star goddess. I was very surprised that she got a Tony nomination for the role and wondered at the time if part of that could be leftover appreciation for reinventing the lead in PROOF, following the indelible Mary Louise Parker and Jennifer Jason Leigh, who gave an impressive Parker impression. Or maybe it was just a weak season of leading actresses in plays. |
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| You raise an excellent point regarding Proof. | |
| Last Edit: GabbyGerard 02:36 pm EST 03/04/19 | |
| Posted by: GabbyGerard 02:33 pm EST 03/04/19 | |
| In reply to: re: I had a totally opposite reaction to the stars (as did the NY Times). - JereNYC 02:07 pm EST 03/04/19 | |
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| When I saw Heche in Twentieth Century, she was sensational. But the overall production was highly uneven and the general critical response was that it was mediocre. If, as your experience suggests, Heche was inconsistent as Lily, maybe her well regarded performance in Proof played a role in her Tony nomination. I didn't see Leigh, but I did see Parker and Paltrow, and Heche's insecure, gentle, and occasionally coquettish Catherine was my favorite (especially opposite Stephen Kunken's Hal). | |
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| re: You raise an excellent point regarding Proof. | |
| Posted by: JereNYC (JereNYC@aol.com) 03:26 pm EST 03/04/19 | |
| In reply to: You raise an excellent point regarding Proof. - GabbyGerard 02:33 pm EST 03/04/19 | |
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| Heche was the only one of the three leading ladies in PROOF that I saw who really convinced me that Catherine might be losing her mind, just as her father did. I never really believed that as a possibility with Parker and Leigh. I wonder if she was able to draw on her own experience with mental illness to really get the nuance of not only the possible mental illness in the character but also the shifting between sane and possibly insane. I'd been disappointed with Jennifer Jason Leigh's performance only in that she seemed to be giving a carbon copy of Mary Louise Parker's and I don't think I'd ever seen one headliner replace another without really doing something of her own with the role. It could be that Leigh was directed to do this, because, when she replaced Natasha Richardson as Sally in the CABARET revival, she created her own character much as one might expect. I had no idea what to expect from Heche, who I'd thought of a lightweight movie star, which she was for about 5 minutes in the 1990's. To be honest, Heche was most famous for her brief relationship with Ellen DeGeneres. But she reinvented Catherine from the ground up and, had she originated the role, she might also have won that Tony. I wish she'd done more work on Broadway, especially since, as stated above, I did not care for her performance as Lily Garland. By the way, I saw Heche opposite the Hal of Neil Patrick Harris, who was superb and had great chemistry with her. NPH was the primary reason I went to see the play a third time. I wanted to see how putting a star name in as Hal affected the balance of the play. Turns out, it didn't. Harris fit right into the ensemble, maybe because he and Heche had likely rehearsed together since they went in at the same time. And it turns out it would have been difficult for anyone to overshadow Heche's Catherine. |
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| I love reading your posts! (And I agree/disagree...) | |
| Posted by: GabbyGerard 04:26 pm EST 03/04/19 | |
| In reply to: re: You raise an excellent point regarding Proof. - JereNYC 03:26 pm EST 03/04/19 | |
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| I totally agree with your interpretation of Heche's Catherine as legitimately posing the possibility that she is mentally ill. For me, it raised the stakes of the entire play to a thrilling high. She brought a sense of danger to the role without being as confrontational as Parker or depressive as Paltrow. And I'd say this quality was present from the very moment that lights came up: the way her Catherine laid on the stage while napping was so...I don't know...slovenly?...it first elicited laughter from the audience...before an uncomfortable silence set in. While I agree that Harris fit right into the ensemble, I found his Hal underwhelming. The romance played nicely, but I didn't feel a sense of urgency to make something of his career, as I did with the fantastic Shenkman and Kunken. How was Seana Kofed opposite Leigh? I remember watching her play Rhoda to Heche's Mary on "Men in Trees" and feeling amused that they had been two ships passing on the porch of the Walter Kerr. I always wondered if they compared notes about their experiences. |
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| re: I love reading your posts! (And I agree/disagree...) | |
| Posted by: JereNYC (JereNYC@aol.com) 02:40 pm EST 03/05/19 | |
| In reply to: I love reading your posts! (And I agree/disagree...) - GabbyGerard 04:26 pm EST 03/04/19 | |
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| I don't remember how Kofed was, although I'm pretty sure she was terrific. My impression of the three Claires I saw (and I couldn't name any of them, except Johanna Day) were that they were all terrific in a tricky part. I don't recall a lot reinvention going on there, so I imagine they were all in the Day mold. I never saw MEN IN TREES, so I never put together that Heche and Kofed had both been a part of PROOF. I'm kind of surprised that Paltrow wasn't better. The part would seem to have been right up her alley. I was surprised that she didn't replace Heche, because that would have been a publicity bonanza ahead of making the film, but I also remember that the London production was not the same production we had in New York. I wonder if it would have been too difficult for her to fit her performance into the New York production. I'm also very curious about the Hal of Richard Coyle, since I've been a fan of his since COUPLING. I remember almost nothing about the film, but I'm positive that I must have seen it at some point. |
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