PAGE TWO

THE MICHIGAN DAILY

FRIDAY. FEBRUARY 9. MIR

TIlE MJCHhf~AN BAIJV FRiDAY. FFRRTTARV a io~ - .~ - - .5. v~

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arts festival

Once
By ANDREW LUG
Devised by Robert Ashle
Morning Thing," which
presented at the UnionE
by the Once Group, sho
the group is all that it is
up to be. It is two-an
years since this local gr
did a piece in town. S('
remember their performs
top of the Maynard Stre
ing structure. "ThatI
Thing" is more modest in

Group's
G emotions are, ultimately, public.
y, "That Let me give a few (from many)
is being impressions. I was impressed by
Ballroom the rostrum speaker, who not only
ws that defined a structure for the per-
wsacked formance - that is verbally de-
cracked fined it - but also discussed the
d-up ast process of its creation. He told us
oup last that the American composer comes
ces willto terms with himself late in life,
et park- at that time when he reflects on
Morning death. Thus he combines hap-
i certain piness with nostalgia.

orning

Thing'

Electrifies

CORRECTION:
In an article appearing in
y'esterday's edition dealing with
Willow Run Laboratories aiding
the U.S. Navy remarks actually
made by Robert Ohlsson, asso-
ciate director of the WRL were
incorrectly attributed to Char-
les Olson, research associate in
the Infrared Physics Lab. The
Daily regrets the error.
Also the third university in-
volved in the computer sharing
program described in yester-
day's Daily is Michigan State
University, rather than the
University of Detroit.

TONIGHT at
VINCE SADOVSKY-singing blues, folk, and
folk-rock music-playing 6 and 12 string
guitar. AND
PAULA STONE-singing blues and ballads and
playing guitar.
SATURDAY-
PAMELA and MICHAEL-Original, contemporary
and traditional folk music, for voice, guitar
and harp.
$i cover includes entertainment & refreshments

I- 1 , 11 1

1421 Hill St.
8:30 P.M.

4'

respects but more devestating in Or again, at the end, a voice
others. This scratched at your repeats over and over "She was
soul. a visitor" . . . The suicide over ...
I feel much better now that it Or the motor car commercial, as
is all over. As I see it (and this, recorded with all the retakes .. .
no doubt, is only one of many The everyday world encroaching
possible interpretations), t h i s . . . Or the frog-people at the be-
event- is about a woman's suicide; ginning . . . Conveyers from one
about getting up in the morning zone to another. Or the singer
and facing it again; about going counting to four and the pianist
through another day. responding, as though from an-
Afterwards someone told me other world ... perhaps commun-
that it was about memory, beau- icating, but this was nighttime ...
tiful people, reflecting on unat- no morning thing.
tainable ends, magazines, selling Mention should be made of
cars, the animal world, frogs, and . some of the mechanisms used.
so on. These heightened the quality of
One performer told me that she the performance. When a speak-
felt, it was like darkest" in aeer said "She said . . ." a time de-
that mp.they was th ever done.sWhat pieces lay unit was employed to give the
sure however is "That Morning words a phase overlap, so that you
Thing" is very scary. felt that the words were slipping
From my first viewing, I can back in time . . . he was trying to
say a number of things -which I remember what she had said be-
think most of the viewers would fore . .


COMMIE MAJOR oU.S.SERGEANT?

-Daily-Michael Feldberg

Once Group does 'That Morning Thing'

inema


" "h 1i1 1" v n s sn i

agree with. Firstly, we saw or-
dinary, well-known imagery gent- throat-mikes to give their voices;
ly transformed and interlocked in frog-like sound were "scal
a n extraordinarily controlled down" to animal size . . . frog
manner. representing death.
Second, this was no amateur Although the rostrum speake
light show, although some of the announced that the performan
ingredients were the same. Third, was to be symbolic and gaveu
the piece demanded much in- the "key," no easy answers we
volvement. At the end, everyone apparent. "That Morning Thing
was quiet, subdued by a weird, las a complexity and a men
mysterious synesthesic outpouring mentality which makes it a har
or by the fear that all "private" nut to crack.
Stan on Comedy:,
Exploring Evolution,
By JENNY STILLER ates a miser who is more miserl
A lot of professors at this Uni- than any miser you know. The
versity might have made it Just he has the character do some
as well on the stage as the lec- thing to accentuate his miserl
ture platform. ness -- he has him fall in lov
which, as everyone knows, is on
One of them, Prof. John Styan of the most expensive things
of the English department, gave man can do."
a talk on "Comedy: Now and This "pricking the bubble" kin
Then" to a capacity audience in of comedy existed for well ove
the dLI Multipurpose Room yes- 2000 years, Styan explained, find
terday as part of the Creative ing its last expression in the play
Arts Festival. He promised that of Wilde and Shaw.
he wouldn't be too academic be- But with the advent of realism
cause it was the hour for high in the theatre, comedy change
tea, so kept his address admir- "It took as acute an observer o
ably close to his audience. human nature as Chekhov t
He was, however, highly enter- show us what a miserably comi
taining, mixing, a few choice ob- lot we really are," Styan said.
servations about the differences After the war, comedy took o
between modern and pre-twenti- a more bitter tone. "The on]
eth century comedy with the way to communicate the kind o
reading of passages from a num- blasphemies people like Becket
ber of plays to illustrate his wanted to get across was througY
points. clowning," Styan explained. Suc
Before the turn of the century concepts as man's intolerable im
brought realism to the stage, prisonment in time "have to b
Styan said, creating laughter was laughed at before their pain
easy. "The playwright simply de- actually felt."
cided which characters to mock Going to an hilarious comed
and blew them up as big as pos- today, he warned, "is a prett
sible." risky undertaking, one that car
He cited Moliere's "The Miser" be very subversive to one's com
as an exapnple. "The author cre- placency.,,

a; >n"rectwon ctfes wur
ed
gis
Compromises Sensii
ice
us By DEI5URAH LINDERMAN with the wife of his father'sI
re Mike iNlenois' secona I iitim partner (Anne Bancroft) with,
g" deals with the generation gap and whom he tries earnestly to
U- will probably be more credible and "liven things up with a conversa-
d dear to "anyone over thirty" than tion."
to those closer to the age and di- He falls in real love with her
lemma of "The Graduate," now Berkelyite daughter (Katharine
playing at the 'Fox Village Ross) who understands both
Theatre. loneliness and phoniness. Her
Parts of the film seem designed parents retaliate, each for his own
to spell out confused innocence obvious reason, by blackriailing
for parents who wonder what the relationship.
their kids are coming to. But parts Is Ruined Plot
catch with a quick authentic in- This good skeletal plot getsr
tensity the boredom, energy, and ruined by the wide screen which
ly naivete of a college cop-out re- is~insensitivertote a nces
an jecting his upper-middle class where the character really "lives,"
n legcy ofg barbque- mmingsand by the directing. Ben is sup-
i- legacy of barbeque, swimming posed to be polite but uncom-
L- pools, and electrical kitchens. fortable, and Hoffman does best
e, Thus one is split between a when he speaks with an atonalr
Le shock-of-recognition sympathy for contempt that expresses this hold-
a the familiar disaffection of the
graduate and distress at its box Buhoing muchf.hin reserve. I
d office compromise by Panavision, po the style of hisdirec tat he
er nifty directing, and a script that tends to "pull out" of himself as
d- very often works by one line set- character, punches his lines and
s ting up for another, rather than delivers a type-satire on the per-
by fidelity to, the emotions of its son he's supposed to be. It's rem-j

raauuite

tive Roles
with a natty medic-frat boy, and
a shot of the monkey cage abrupt-
ly undercuts his urgency and sad-
ness by saying "aren't people ba-
boons, ho-ho."
Likewise her scream of rage and
denial at heaing the truth about
her mother is clipped too soon
in the interests of sustaining
comic buoyancy. There is too
much underplaying of the tender-
riess between Ben and Elaine, so,
that it seems not restrained, but
without palpable substance.
The same "deftness," shows up
in slick devices of overlapping: in
image (Ben flopping on a raft, on
the mistress) and sound track
(dark bedroom dialogue begin-
ning while the camera still lingers
on the blue chlorine of the pool).
There is some irrelevant and arty
camerawork as, for example, inE
shots taken inside the boys' scuba
Misses Mood
Though the film is supposed to
say "the times they are a 'chang-

STARRING RDODOtMNVR E'PTRBAEC[~ OA
- L T~f ,j inCOLOR

1:15-3:15-5:20
7:20-9:35

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MIL NAM
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-Next-
"TONY ROME"
-Dial NO 2-6264
DIAL 8-6916

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subject.
Restlessness
The graduate (Benjamin, play-
ed by Dustin Hoffman whose un-
handsome "ordinary" looks are
part of his convincingness), comes
home to Los Angeles with degree
hot in hand and no plans. He is
restless beneath his respectable;
hair cut (he begins to amass a
beard toward the end), and sus-
picious of the emptiness of the
"Wasp."
Advised to cheer up on "plastics"
(business) and "pick-ups" (wo-
men), he explains he's "worried3
about his future" but that, of
course, isn't it, and he can't be
much more articulate to himself
about what's missing. He lets him-I
self get seduced into an affair

niscent of the sort of act Mike ing" (Smon and Garfunkel do
Nichols used to do with Elaine some nice "sound of the times"
May, music, even though the lyrics
Thus, out of what should be a sometimes sound like plot com-
natural humorous awkwardness- mentary), it-misses the true mood
the kind that makes "Bonnie and of the change. Berkeley in fact'
Clyde" so "accurate"-emerges a 'looks very little like itself, more
rollicking Hollywood c o m e d y like the old campus college of red
about the sexual greenhorn. Also plaid and football, done up in aj
-and here the script's the thing- modish new suit.I
sometimes he is just so green There are many little visual
and bungling that one feels like and thematic cues which suggest
hooting him. bohemia, but the film wants very
Compromised Sensitivity much to say (and it could do
Nichols keeps things going at a with saying) that these are not
good at a good pace. but this again "agitators," just agitated "nice
compromises the sensitivity of his kids." One wonders, however, if a
characters. He seems afraid of lot of the technical sheen isn't
pain, and uses swift montage to dedicated to reducing the feeling
keep it thin: Ben watches Elaine of agitation, and again the box
(the daughter) go off at a zoo office comes to mind.j

mited Engagement Now

OMNWMNRMI.--

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UNIVERSITY a
MUSICAL SOCIEYy


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"THE BANK DICK"
Shown at 2:15-4:45-7:20-10:00
PLUS--
"NEVER GIVE A SUCKER

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Losey&Pinter 'S accident"
"U N LEASHES THE PENT-UP VIO-
LENCE OF SEXUAL LONGING AND
ONRUSHING AGE. A DISSECTION
OF HUMAN PASSION, ACCENTING
THE MOOD OF HAUNTING IRONY."
-Time Magazine
"LIKE A PUNCH IN THE CHEST. PUT
TOGETHER BREATH BY BREATH,
LOOK BY LOOK, LUST BY LUST, LIE
BY LIE. A COMPELLING FILM."
-Newsweek Magazine
"A GORGEOUSAND HAUNTING FILM!"
-Esquire Magazine
"TWO MASTER CRAFTSMEN AT
WORK! A FILM TO WATCH WITH
FASCINATION !" -Judith Crist, NBC Today
"ONE OF THE TRULY NOTABLE PIC-
TURES OF THE PAST YEAR!"
-Archer Winsten, N.Y. Post
TWO BEST Dirk- Bogarde - Stanley Baker
FILM AWARDS The Joseph Losey
1967 CANNES Production of%
FILM FESTIVALac dent
Screenplay by
Harold Pinter
Directed by
' seph Losey
.. In Color

4

6...

AN EVEN BREAK"
Shown at 1:05-3:40-6:15-8:45




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