Joe's View

The power of The New York Times — when it comes to theatrical productions — has been illustrated yet again by one of the hottest Manhattan tickets of the moment, the Theatre for a New Audience production of “Hamlet.”
The show is playing at the wonderful Duke on 42nd St. venue and there has not been a ticket to be had since Charles Isherwood wrote last week in the Times that Christian Camargo is one of the best Hamlets he’s seen (“virtually perfect,” in the critic’s words).
When I caught “Hamlet” on Sunday there were a large number of people hoping for cancellations, but every seat in the sleek and intimate theater was filled.
I had planned to see the off-Broadway show long before the reviews appeared because an actor pal of mine — Alyssa Bresnahan (left, with Camargo) — was cast in the role of Gertrude.
Bresnahan is well known to Connecticut audiences for a series of stunning performances at Long Wharf Theatre and Hartford Stage, including a great Josie in Gordon Edelstein’s “Moon for the Misbegotten” (which played both state venues) and an unforgettable Maggie the Cat in a Michael Wilson production of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” at Hartford Stage (in the latter show, Bresnahan rose to the considerable challenge of acting opposite a legendary Maggie of the 1970s — Elizabeth Ashley — in the role of Big Mama).
People were debating the merits of this new “Hamlet” during the two intermissions — more than once I overheard the word “Olivier” — but I thought it was a wonderfully simple and direct staging. I was glad to hear from Alyssa after the show that the company has been playing to student audiences throughout the run — because of the clarity of the text, and the elegant modern costuming, this would be a perfect first production of “Hamlet” for teenage theatergoers.
By casting many of the parts younger than is standard — Bresnahan is only slightly older than Camargo — this “Hamlet” is much sexier than most productions.
Director David Esbjornson (who staged Edward Albee’s “The Goat” on Broadway a few seasons back) did a fine job of cutting and shifting scenes for a faster and more immediate take on the material.
Was this the near-definitive “Hamlet” Isherwood wrote about last week?
I doubt it.
But then again, it seems to me that the whole point of seeing “Hamlet” regularly throughout your theatergoing life is to enjoy the nearly limitless ways in which it can be staged and to see each new actor’s take on the title role.

One old-time Hollywood mogul spouted an oft-repeated maxim that was something like “If you want to send a message, go to Western Union” but popular entertainment has proven him wrong again and again.
Indeed, the Warner Bros. studio of the 1930s created a niche for itself as a purveyor of exciting entertainment that also carried strong social messages that resonated with Depression era moviegoers.
Paul Levine’s latest thriller, “Illegal” (Bantam), features a smart mix of thrills, wit and strong characters that is given an extra punch from the book’s in-depth treatment of one of our thorniest contemporary political issues — illegal immigration.
The novel is centered on a great new Levine character — Jimmy “Royal” Payne — whose personal life and career both seem to be slipping away from him when we meet the trial lawyer in a judge’s chambers where the judge has just pulled a gun on our hero.
The judge is corrupt and Jimmy is there as part of a sting operation in which it is presumed the judge will accept a bribe of $45,000 (Jimmy was given $50,000 but skimmed $5,000 off the top).
The terrific opening chapters are just a teaser for the main narrative in which Jimmy joins forces with a 12-year-old (illegal) Mexican immigrant named Tino who was separated from his mother in their terrifying journey across the border.
“Illegal” has such a strong page-turning narrative that Levine’s detailed reporting on immigration never gets in the way of the suspense and the black comedy, but the novel also dramatizes the hypocrisy of so much anti-immigrant chatter.
We follow Tino’s mother Marisol into the horror of the meat plant work that depends on immigrants, as well as the California farm jobs that could not be filled without a huge supply of immigrants-without-papers.
In the post 9/11 hysteria, TV pundits and op-ed columnists seemed unable to distinguish between potential terrorists and the huge and covert workforce crossing our southern border that has kept the economy of farming, meat-packing and the “service” industries churning in huge swaths of the U.S.
Levine’s marvelously complicated villain Simeon Rutledge who owns a huge California farm — and much of the town adjacent to it — boils the issue down skillfully in one scene where we get to share his thoughts: “He admired the courage of the men and women who risked death to come north and look for honest work. He couldn’t understand why Europeans who braved an Atlantic crossing in search of a better life should be held in higher regard than Mexicans who crossed the desert last week, pursuing the same dream.”
I wish that Lou Dobbs would read “Illegal.’

It has taken the 2007 French comedy-drama, “Shall We Kiss?,” more than a year to reach these shores, but it was worth the wait.
Writer-director-star Emmanuel Mouret (left) has drawn valid comparisons with Woody Allen for his smart and challenging look at modern love among brainy folks who think they can control their passions.
The picture opens in a deceptively simple manner.
Nicolas (Mouret) sees the attractive Emilie (Julie Gayet) trying to hail a taxi in a rather quiet part of a small French city. He offers the woman a lift to her hotel where they have dinner and drinks.
Although both of these strangers have partners, there is a spark between them.
When Nicolas says he would like to give Emilie a non-romantic farewell kiss, she declines, saying that was how a friend of hers got into a terrible fix.
His curiosity aroused, Nicolas asks Emilie to explain and she tells us the story-within-the-movie that forms the bulk of the running time of “Shall We Kiss?”
We are introduced to longtime platonic Paris friends, Judith (Virginie Ledoyen) and Gabriel (Michael Cohen), who slowly drift into a very complicated romantic/sexual entanglement. They both think they are sophisticated adults who are in control of their emotions and their desires, but the movie illustrates the way that passion can short-circuit the smartest of individuals.
“Shall We Kiss?” does have the urban intellectual aura of a Woody Allen movie, but the film might also remind you of Rob Reiner’s Woody Allen-like romantic comedy, “When Harry Met Sally” (1989) in the way that it rephrases that Billy Crystal-Meg Ryan hit’s central question — Can men and women be friends without any romantic/sexual entanglements?
Unlike the American films, “Shall We Kiss?” explores some of the serious implications in the material, ending on a slightly melancholy note.
Mouret is sharp enough to see that there is a very fine line between comedy and tragedy when it comes to affairs of the heart.
(“Shall We Kiss?” is now playing at the Bethel Cinema; the Garden Cinemas, Norwalk; and the Avon Theatre, Stamford.)

The Noel Coward comedy, “Blithe Spirit,” might be a tad creaky 68 years after its first production, but the new Broadway revival is serving as a great showcase for the 83-year-old stage and screen legend Angela Lansbury.
After a long absence from the stage — during which she became a TV star on “Murder, She Wrote” — Lansbury returned to Broadway a few seasons ago with a fine, Tony-nominated performance as a long-retired tennis star in “Deuce.”
It was wonderful to see the veteran actress command the stage in the flimsy Terrence McNally two-hander that co-starred Marion Seldes, but I am glad Lansbury decided to come back again in a much more interesting role that allows her to cut loose in a way that is delighting critics and audiences (and will probably earn her a fifth Tony Award in June).
As the medium Madame Arcati, Lansbury is displaying the sort of glorious extravagance that was once a hallmark of stage stars who more often than not had to put flimsy parts across to those 1,500 or so theatergoers on the other side of the footlights. These days, most of the new plays call for a scaled-down, more realistic form of acting, and New York is packed with wonderful actors who can play the hell out of roles in scripts by David Mamet and Neil LaBute and Tracy Letts and other masters of lifelike modern theatre.
Arcati was created by Noel Coward in 1941 and first played by one of the greatest ham actresses of all time — Margaret Rutherford.
Lansbury has followed in Rutherford’s footsteps before, playing the Agathie Christie sleuth Miss Marple in “The Mirror Crack’d” (1980) two decades after Rutherford played the part in a series of four MGM Marple films (Christie was reportedly appalled by Rutherford’s antics but the films remain a hoot and still turn up frequently on TCM).
In the current “Blithe Spirit” you can see traces of Rutherford in Lansbury’s terrifically over-the-top performance, but the way in which the actress delights in the eccentricity of the character reminded me most of Lansbury’s great work in the 1978 film “Death on the Nile” (another Christie mystery).
The actress played a demented romance novelist named Salome Otterbourne. Critic Pauline Kael described the performance as “a superlative caricature of a wreck of a vamp.”
“Lansbury doesn’t walk; she slouches and lists (and not because she’s on a boat). She’s whooping it up one moment and sagging from booze the next. She’s all curves, satin turbans, amber beads that hang to her crotch, and drizzling clouds of chiffon and fringe…Lansbury does a Margaret Rutherford, but with visions of satyrs in her bulging eyes. Talking out of the side of her gargling, sloshing mouth, she bats Fuller Brush eyelashes…You feel she needs a derrick to lift them. It’s a glorious piece of eccentric excess, right down to the love bracelet on the ankle.”
The actress doesn’t wear a love bracelet in “Blithe Spirit” but Arcati, like Salome, is a secret boozer who overdresses for every occasion and delights in her own battiness.
Who knows when there will be another performance this hilariously over-scaled and this sheerly pleasurable on Broadway?

It will be my privilege tonight at the Avon Theatre to moderate a question-and-answer session with the great screenwriter and director Paul Schrader after a 7 p.m. screening of his little-seen 1985 film, “Mishima.”
Schrader broke through as a major force in American film with his script for the 1976 Martin Scorsese classic, “Taxi Driver.” He then went on to direct and write some of the most interesting and most challenging movies of the last 30 years.
When I ran a small art theater on the Delaware coast in the late 1970s, I booked Schrader’s powerhouse directorial debut film, “Blue Collar” (1978) which showcased a shockingly serious performance by Richard Pryor as a Detroit auto worker who finds out his union is almost as corrupt as the company management.
The film blew me away and I have felt a similar emotional gut punch from such subsequent Schrader-directed films as “Patty Hearst” (1988), “The Comfort of Strangers” (1990) and “Affliction” (1997).
I also have admired the filmmaker’s willingness to explore the sexual underworld in bold movies like “American Gigolo” (1980) and “Auto Focus” (2002).
Schrader considers “Mishima” his finest work as a director. It is a characteristcally smart and challenging attempt to blend a biographical study of the Japanese writer Yukio Mishima with dramatizations of three of his stories.
The film is set on the day in 1970 when Mishima committed ritual public suicide — seppuku — as a protest of the modern erosion of the values of Imperial Japan.
“Mishima” has stunning cinematography by John Bailey and an intense musical score by Philip Glass.
The film was admired all over the world in 1985, but proved too esoteric for U.S. audiences. Schrader has supervised a restoration of the film and tonight the Avon will be screening the director’s personal print.
My plan is to throw the floor open to questions almost immediately after “Mishima,” so this should be a great night for movie lovers.
(The “Mishima” screening will begin at 7 p.m. Tickets are $10, with a $3 discount for students and seniors. Advance reservations can be made by calling 203-661-0321. The Avon Theatre Film Center is at 272 Bedford St. in downtown Stamford.)

IFC Films has generated controversy in the world of independent film exhibition because of their policy to make movies available through cable on-demand services at the same time IFC pictures debut in New York and Los Angeles theaters.
While this policy results in a marvelous opportunity for film buffs in areas without art houses — a friend who lives in the suburbs of Philadelphia recently saw (and loved) IFC’s “Gomorra” in the comfort of her own home — the pictures don’t get the opportunity for the sustained word-of-mouth that used to give foreign films a broad cultural reach in this country.
20 or 30 years ago, pictures such as “Diva” and “Seven Beauties” built large audiences through slow and steady release patterns that kept them in theaters for many months.
But these are business matters. The bottom line for movie lovers is that IFC is making some of the very best international films widely available in this country.
“Gomorra” is the best picture I’ve seen so far this year, but the new IFC release “Hunger” is a very close second.
British art photographer Steve McQueen has made a smooth crossover to film with this stunning, impressionistic look at the final weeks in the life of Bobby Sands, the imprisoned Irish Republican Army icon who decided to become a martyr to the cause through a hunger strike in 1981.
Sands and his fellow jailed IRA members wanted to be classified as political prisoners, but the government of Margaret Thatcher insisted they were nothing but terrorists. A series of jailhouse protests escalated into Sands’s decision to make the ultimate sacrifice; he spent 66 days starving himself to death.
In the U.S. The New York Times endorsed Thatcher’s refusal to grant political prisoner status but in typical “on the other hand” editorial page boilerplate agreed the decision made the British government look “unfeeling and unresponsive.”
“Hunger” sidesteps most of the politics to observe the conditions of Sands and his fellow prisoners and to examine the states of mind that lead to self-destruction in the name of a cause.
McQueen found the perfect collaborator in actor Michael Fassbender (above) who — with a minimum of dialogue — makes us feel an emotional connection to the ultimate political extremist.
I think the experience of “Hunger” is more powerful in a theater, where your attention is completely focused on the screen, but anyway you look at it, this is a very important film.