'Fierce Creatures'

So Rollo institutes a new policy:

celebrity endorsements (includ-
ing Bruce Springsteen, Miss Pig-
11 of the major cast members mals only. "Sylvester
gy and Saddam Hussein),
(and a few of the minor Stallone didn't get
corporate sponsorships and
MOVIES
ones) from the wildly corn- where he is today by
Day-Glo theme park uni-
'c film A Fish Called Wan- appearing in Jane
forms are in some ways
return in Monty Austen pictures!" Rollo says.
da
worse than Rollo's fierce crea-
Python-alumnus John Cleese's
The zoo staff (including fellow tures-only policy.
new comedy Fierce Creatures. Pythoner Michael Palm as en-
Eventually Rollo and Willa
And although it's not as good as tomologist "Bugsy" Malone) tries find themselves drawn to each
MIFF
rialfignina
other through their
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Mom
newfound love of
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animals, and join
iimananamogi
murissiminu
the zoo staff in fight-
tormopmatmi
ing Octopus.
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Alas, the resolu-
tion isn't as enter-
taining as the
setup. The humor
turns strictly situ-
ational, sometimes
dropping to the lev-
el of a bedroom
farce (Vince and
Willa keep catching
Rollo in what they
think are compro-
mising positions).
Curtis too (Alen
seems to be on
screen only for a
sexist joke ( \Villa
leans down to look
Michael Palin, John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline in Fierce Creatures.
at some lemurs and
the previous picture, it does have to fight Rollo's decree by con- says, "Don't you just want to fon-
some very funny moments.
vincing him that all of the ani- dle them?" as Rollo stares at her
Cleese stars as Rollo Lee, an mals are dangerous (meerkats, cleavage).
executive with Octopus Inc. and they assure him, are known as
But farce is funny. And even
new director of Marwood Zoo. Oc- "the piranhas of the desert"). though Cleese and Kline get
topus, owned by the Rupert Mur- They start faking bloody animal- most of the good lines, the entire
doch-Ted Turneresque Rod inflicted wounds and staging es-
cast is likeable. Fierce Creatures
McCain (Kevin Kline), acquired capes in front of the public.
won't become another classic, but
Marwood in a merger and wants
But then McCain sends his it's a pleasant 93 minutes at the
to improve the zoo's attendance. ne'er-do-well son Vince (also
movies.
Kline) and new exec Willa We-
Stephen Bitsoli is the former
ct)
1 / 2
ston (Jamie Lee Curtis) to take
entertainment editor of Detroit charge of Marwood. And Vince's
Monthly magazine.
crass commercialism, fake
— Stephen Bitsoli

Rated PG-13

Fierce, potentially deadly ani-

Cheryl Leigh Williams and Terry Fleck appear in Labor Day, at the Purple Rose
Theatre Company through March 8.

'Labor Day

I

n case you haven't seen Who's
Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Edward
Albee's goat play, it's about two
couples — one is young, the oth-
er middle-aged — who spend the
evening and night together drink-
ing and mourning the loss of chil-
dren. One shared, one unborn.
At Purple Rose, something sim-
ilar is being enacted in Kim Car-
ney's Labor Day — the title alone
serving to cover the day/night
in real time, and the event
of birth. Ginny and Ron
come to Aunt Lily's Way-
ward Pines River Lodge (some-
where on the Muskegon River)
each year in the hopes of regaining
their child Angelique, lost eight
years ago. This time, their adjoin-
ing neighbors are Sharon and Matt,
who work and live together.
And may be having a baby to-
gether. Or not. Sharon is as tetchy
as a cat on a hot tin roof and has a
super fastidious, newly minted
sense of smell. The cabin, she says,
has the odor of "vomit, urine, ex-
crement ... and grape gum."
Herein we have metaphor upon
metaphor for birth, babies and
growing up. This will have some-
thing to do with Ginny and Ron's
coming to terms with their loss.
Angelique was at the bubble-gum
stage when she disappeared —13
years old.
The deep compulsion to enact
the loss each year, the grieving un-
resolved, the sheer pain are put on
the stage by playwright Carney.
Her language is strong, bold. But
Albee chose a harder route to make
his play and players come to grips
with grief and loss —they worked
it out in front of us, naked, ugly.
Michael H. Margolin writes about
the arts.

Carney lets her characters get,
well, homely if never ugly. But the
naked truth somehow stays
sheathed in several fantasy se-
quences worked out at a distance
from the characters themselves.
And keeping us, too, from a deep-
er recognition, shock, purification.
Still, Carney has an acute ear for
dialogue, she writes well of both
men and women, and in the Pur-
ple Rose cast she has five
fine performers.
Sharon, coolly vicious
and abortion-bound, is
played winningly by Cheryl Leigh
Williams. (She was the admirable
Helga in JET's Kindertransport
and the tall sister in Social Secu-
rity at JET last season).
As Ginny, the suicidal lost soul,
Terry Heck beats the heck out of
her role. In scenes of raw emotion,
she is impressive. The two part-
ners — decent, good, sensitive men
— are touchingly played by Jim
Porterfield — Ginny's spouse —
and Guy Sanville as Matt, puta-
tive father and loving partner to
Sharon.
In the fantasy scenes which get
Carney into plot-forward mode and
toward play resolution, Tricia
Smith was very fine as the Young
Woman— giving greater reality to
her disparate incarnations than
you'd expect of anyone with a
generic title playing a plot device.
As usual, Purple Rose — along
with Meadow Brook — sets the
standard for production design. The
superior set by Bartley H. Bauer
and costumes by Colleen Ryan-Pe-
ters flourished, as did the actors un-
der Suzi Regan's able direction.

® qt.
— Michael H. Margolin

PHO TO BY R ICHARD BLANSHARD

Ai

'Some Mother's Son'

Rated R

G

oing into Some Mother's
Son, I knew three things
for certain: The film
starred Helen Mirren (The
Madness of King George); the
film was written and directed
by Terry George (co-writer ofIn
the Name ofthe Father); and the
story had something to do with
imprisoned members of the IRA.
So I was able to deduce that
very few laughs would be in
store, but what I didn't expect
was a fairly briskly paced and
engaging glimpse into the po-

Richard Halpin is an attorney.

litical climate of Northern Ire- er young men commit insidious
land in the early Thatcher years. acts of terror against the British
Mirren, not exactly a house- army's occupation in Northern
hold name, is the most recog- Ireland.
nizable member of this mostly
When Gerard is arrested,
Irish cast, playing Kathleen summarily convicted and sub-
Quigley, a widowed school- sequently imprisoned, Quigley
teacher who derives
is forced to rethink her
much joy from the
passive perspective. The
MOVIES
playfulness of her
question posed is this: Is
three children, partic
Gerard a criminal or a po-
ularly her eldest son, Gerard.
litical prisoner? Quigley
As a supportive mother, doesn't know for sure, but af-
Quigley wants to believe she ter bearing witness to the im-
sees mirth and mischief in her possibly inhumane treatment
boy's eyes; what she doesn't al- other son and his mates at the
low herselfto see is a murderer. hands of the British prison
Unfortunately, that ia exactly keepers, -Quigley can hold on
what Gerard is as he and bth- to one truth:. that she is a

-