More drama (of the theatrical kind)
Friday, 5 August 2016 04:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carose59Chaucer Is Dead, Spenser Is Dead, So Is Milton, So Is Shakespeare, And I’m Not Feeling So Well Myself.*
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Well, I finally hit an Arthur Miller play I like: All My Sons. It's about a family after WWII. The father had been accused—and cleared—of selling defective jet parts to the military. His partner (next door neighbor, and father of the girl his MIA hero son was engaged to) was convicted and is in prison.
Now the younger son wants to marry his brother's fiancee. His mother freaks out; she believes her missing son is still alive. It's one thing for her to marry someone else, but the brother marrying her is stealing his girl—and admitting the hero is dead.
Then the fiancee's brother shows up. No-one in the family has seen the imprisoned father since his conviction, but now he has talked to his father, who has accused his partner of being responsible for the defective parts being sold.
And then everything falls apart.
I found the characters more likable, easier to take. For a long time now I've been evaluating the narrative I consume by how much I want to spend time with the characters. In high school I refused to read The Magnificent Ambersons after two chapters because I could not imagine spending two hundred pages with those horrible people. (The teacher who'd assigned it was amused by this and give me a different book to read.) My attitude is that life is short and there are lots of great books and movies and TV shows, too many for me to experience in my life. So why should I waste any of my time with characters I dislike?
Anyway, I liked the story and I liked the characters. And Julie Harris was in it and I always like Julie Harris.
A few weeks ago I did an adaptation of Adam's Rib. It was strange for a couple of reasons. First, it wasn't updated, but it also didn't feel like it was in the right period. The tone reminded me of the radio adaptions of The Twilight Zone I listened to a few years ago. Those, they updated in a haphazard way, throwing in modern stuff without excising the old stuff.
The other thing was Anne Heche as Amanda. She was trying to sound like Katharine Hepburn, but it came off like a Warner Brothers cartoon Katharine Hepburn, going on about the calla lilies being in bloom again.
Adam Arkin, however, was lovely as Adam. He has that nice, solid, comfortable quality Spencer Tracy had.
I'm now doing The Crucible, which I read in high school but don't remember terribly well. I don't remember liking it. (Yes, I know. I make no sense.)
*Mark Twain
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Well, I finally hit an Arthur Miller play I like: All My Sons. It's about a family after WWII. The father had been accused—and cleared—of selling defective jet parts to the military. His partner (next door neighbor, and father of the girl his MIA hero son was engaged to) was convicted and is in prison.
Now the younger son wants to marry his brother's fiancee. His mother freaks out; she believes her missing son is still alive. It's one thing for her to marry someone else, but the brother marrying her is stealing his girl—and admitting the hero is dead.
Then the fiancee's brother shows up. No-one in the family has seen the imprisoned father since his conviction, but now he has talked to his father, who has accused his partner of being responsible for the defective parts being sold.
And then everything falls apart.
I found the characters more likable, easier to take. For a long time now I've been evaluating the narrative I consume by how much I want to spend time with the characters. In high school I refused to read The Magnificent Ambersons after two chapters because I could not imagine spending two hundred pages with those horrible people. (The teacher who'd assigned it was amused by this and give me a different book to read.) My attitude is that life is short and there are lots of great books and movies and TV shows, too many for me to experience in my life. So why should I waste any of my time with characters I dislike?
Anyway, I liked the story and I liked the characters. And Julie Harris was in it and I always like Julie Harris.
A few weeks ago I did an adaptation of Adam's Rib. It was strange for a couple of reasons. First, it wasn't updated, but it also didn't feel like it was in the right period. The tone reminded me of the radio adaptions of The Twilight Zone I listened to a few years ago. Those, they updated in a haphazard way, throwing in modern stuff without excising the old stuff.
The other thing was Anne Heche as Amanda. She was trying to sound like Katharine Hepburn, but it came off like a Warner Brothers cartoon Katharine Hepburn, going on about the calla lilies being in bloom again.
Adam Arkin, however, was lovely as Adam. He has that nice, solid, comfortable quality Spencer Tracy had.
I'm now doing The Crucible, which I read in high school but don't remember terribly well. I don't remember liking it. (Yes, I know. I make no sense.)
*Mark Twain