"...it's the best two hours of music on Broadway!"
-Entertainment Weekly
The Ann Arbor
Summer Festival
presents a
benefit
concert
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'Camping With Henry And Tom'
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PATTI LuPONE
sinnsirbor Symphony Orchestra
with the
Samuel Wong, Conductor
r
February 17, 1996 8 p.m.
Hill Auditorium
Al l seats reserved. A limited number of benefit tickets are
available which include the Season Announcement Party at
6:00 p.m., choice concert seating and dessert afterglow.
Call (313) 747 2278 for tickets.
-
Sponsored by
Michigan Radio, WUOM 91.7 FM & Northwest Airlines
with
Henry
Q.)
by Mark St. Germain
JANUARY 3-28
An inventive comedy about Henry Ford,
Thomas Edison, and Warren G. Harding
"A minor masterpiece" — New York Magazine
Supported by the
1111, ?Mall I mined p..
art, and cultural affarn
Meadow
Brook
Theatre
Oakland University's
Professional Theatre
For tickets call
Meadow Brook
Box Office
(810) 377-3300
Ticketmaster
(810) 645-6666
Hudson's.
Harmony House and
Blockbuster Music
Advertise in our new
Entertainment Section!
(810) 354-6060
suit is amusing.
ly, a Model T — ran
The evening is pleas-
down a deer; that the
ant enough with neatly
three men eluded the
tuned impersonations.
president's Secret Service
As Edison, Booth Col-
agent because Ford cut
man is dandy, his line
his battery cables; and
deliveries honed to a ra-
that Ford and Harding
zor-sharp edge; Arthur
faced off about their re-
MIC HAEL
J. Beer gives Harding
spective political weak-
MAR GOLIN
just the right touch of
nesses and ambitions —
SPECIA L TO THE
well-meaning but inept
Ford wanting to become
JEWIS H NEWS
qualities; William J.
president, Harding wish-
Norris makes Ford
ing to wash out and get
rid of his wife. To all this, Edison cocky and odious. Finally, the
hapless agent assigned to Hard-
acts as a kind of Greek chorus.
There is a promising premise ing is as officious and smarmy as
for a comedy of ideas. But it be- one imagines in the creation of
comes less than it seems — more John Michael Manfredi.
The director, T. Newell Kring,
like a comedy of idea.
Harding wallows in self-pity has not gone for the jugular in the
and is so self-effacing as to give stereotypes St. Germain has writ-
humility a bad name. Ford with ten. He could have pushed for
his arrogant self-es- more wallow from Beer, much
teem and his violent more menace from Norris suss-
prejudices — he is ra- ing out the subtext of politics-as-
personality. He
bidly anti-Semitic —
has gone for gen-
make even the simi-
tler notions of
larity to Ross Perot
this little after-
odious.
So, here we have noon outing, not stretching the
the confluence of pos- play of the considerable talents
sibilities for dramatic of his actors. Maybe he's right;
conflict with the ideas but I felt the need for a jolt, some
of democracy, govern- juice.
The neat set is credited to Car-
ing, policy-making, vi-
sion, leadership. ol Stavish; her Magritte-like
Instead, what ensues woods were well-lit by Paul Won-
is a kind of domestic sek; Barbara Jenks' costumes
drama: Who will dis- seemed right for the time, but one
(Left to right) Booth Colman (Thomas Edison), William patch the mortally wonders about going camping in
wounded deer? Will a three-piece suit. But then, this
J. Norris (Henry Ford) and Arthur J. Beer (Warren G.
Harding) are featured in Meadow Brook Theatre's
three matches be play doesn't ask too many ques-
production of Camping With Henry and Tom, through
enough to light a fire? tions of itself. Taken on face val-
Jan. 28.
Will the tins of carrots ue, as we must, it is mildly
be sustenance enough diverting.
what happened on that expedi- for them until the Secret Service
arrives?tWith Edison comment-
tion:
—Michael H. Margolin
That Ford — driving, natural- ing on each man's foibles, the re-
here have been successful
works based on the fictive
creation of imagined events
and real persons: Caleb
Carr's novel The Alienist recent-
ly and E.L. Doctorow's novels,
and subsequent films, ofRagtime
and Billy Bathgate.
So Mark St. Germain's re-cre-
ation of the events of July 24,
1921, in the woods outside Lick-
ing Creek, Md., has a literary tra-
dition, or at least a sub-genre,
going for it. Camping With Hen-
ry and Tom, a comedy, has
opened at Meadow Brook and in
it, Henry Ford and Thomas Alva
Edison take part in their annual
camping expedition, this time
inviting then-President Warren
G. Harding.
And St. Germain imagines
THE J .Ei T H NEWS
'Eye For An Eye'
Rated R
I
here are some horrifying
moments in Eye for an Eye,
most notably watching it
with an audience that was
rooting for the heroine to enact
her own brand of vigilante justice.
But that's what it's all about —
goading an audience into want-
ing to circumvent our bloated,
technicality-challenged criminal
justice system. At last, an ex-
ploitation film for the '90s — a vic-
tims' rights film.
While trapped in a traffic jam
in a mortifying opening sequence,
supermom Karen McCann (Sal-
ly Field) places a cellular call to
her home, only to listen helpless-
ly as her teen-age daughter is
raped and beaten to death by an
tent cinematography, an
intruder. This senseless
effective score and a
MOVIES
act sets in motion a chain
front-page storyline, Eye
of events that play on our
society's worst fears and demor- for an Eye never rises above its
cookie-cutter plot. Its sole purpose
alize our self-images.
Fortunately, the police are able is to tick us off about incompetent
to quickly arrest a suspect, Robert prosecutors and a justice system
Doob (Keifer Sutherland), whose that seems weighted against law-
DNA matches the evidence left at abiding citizens.
Keifer Sutherland will make
the scene. Unfortunately, due to
a procedural error, the DNA ev- your skin crawl as Doob, a scum
so despicable that he marks his
idence is inadmissible in court.
The judge throws out the case territory like some stray animal.
and releases the guilty, and Sally Field, assuming the mantle
morally irredeemable, perpetra- once worn by Charles Bronson in
tor. As Doob files past the grief- his Death Wish series, is hardly
stricken parents, his smarmy a force to be reckoned with in the
smile exudes sociopathic bile. En- WWF, but she gets the job done.
raged, McCann's husband, Mac Ed Harris, as her compassionate
husband and a grieving steppar-
(Ed Harris), decks him.
Despite a brand-name cast, ent, shows tremendous reserve
hig,-h production values, compe- and inner strength.