"...it's the best two hours of music on Broadway!" -Entertainment Weekly The Ann Arbor Summer Festival presents a benefit concert 0 z m z 'Camping With Henry And Tom' I ,,a ■o \e‘ es tsx\se, Go s ‘‘ „-p\M\7' O\'\ C),<`‘ ose Goes 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.