arts & entertainment
The Michigan Daily-Saturday, April 14, 1979-Page 7
More firepower
In Musket lineup
Study break?
Try
Yeats,
By ANTHONY VOGEL
The Yeats Theatre Festival,
resurrected because of the enthusiasm
generated by last year's triumph, will
make its second appearance in Ann Ar-
bor next week, beginning Tuesday,
April 17. This year's Festival will con-
tinue to celebrate the drama of the
great poet-playwright William Butler
Yeats (1865-1939), featuring three more
of his brilliant experimental plays, a
four day series of symposia, and two
evenings of Irish pub.
Irene Connors, an assistant professor
in UM's theatre department,. and ar-
tistic director of the Festival, will
direct a program of two short plays,
The Cat and the Moon and A Full Moon
in March, to be performed April 18 and
19 at 8 p.m. and April 20 at 11 p.m. in
Trueblood Aud.
The Cat and the Moon enacts a cen-
turies-old Irish legend about two
beggars, one blind and one lame, who
seek a sacred well for cure. The blind
man carries the lame man on his back,
and, bound together, the precursors of
Beckett's pairs of cripples in Waiting
for Godot, and Endgame form a
grotesque parody of a whole man.
There is rich comedy in their bickering,
.,and beating and cursing of each other
as they amble towards Saint Colman's
well. As much a charlatan as a saint,
the cat-like holy man asks roguishly:
"Will you be cured or will you be
blessed?" The proud, cynical, blind
man opts for curing his body, while the
By JOSHUA PECK
Drastic changes are underway at MUSKET, the student theater organization.
The group, which for the past several years has produced one musical show
each semester, and never any "straight" plays, will stage a greater number of
shows, and a greater variety as well.
Of the many projects Gary Rubin, new MUSKET chief is planning, the most
exciting is the upcoming original musical, tentatively called Ghost Story, that
the group will stage in the fall. The show's score is the work of Bill Holab and
Scott Eyerly, two of the music school's best and brightest. Andrew Kurtzman,
many-time Hopwood Award winner, penned the book and the lyrics, partly in
collaboration with Eyerly.
Until the present, non-musical theater for University students has been the
province of the Speech Department, and small, low budget groups like the Ac-
tors' Ensemble and the Back Alley Players. Musket now joins the fray with
plans for contemporary drama to be staged at the Mendelssohn Theater and
Canterbury Loft, also in the fall. Rubin won't reveal just what plays he has in
mind, but he dismissed Williams and O'Neill works as possibilities, saying they
are "too old."
THE MUSKET crew is also mulling over the idea of presenting some
children's shows in the fall, perhaps in the Union's Pendleton Room.
Winter term will bring the company's traditional big-budget musical, but new
dramatic values are afloat here too. Whereas three of the last four winter shows
have been of the mostly-for-entertainment variety (Hello Dolly, Music Man, On
The Town), Rubin is looking for scripts with a degee, at least, of artistic merit,
and perhaps a greater measure of contemporary flavor.
If all goes well, these best-laid plans won't go astray.
r
No, he's not asking for spare change. These actors performed "A Full Moon in March" last
January as part of a promotion for the Yeats Festival this month at the University.
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foolish, thieving, lame man chooses the
blessing of his soul. The saint's magic is
performed and the counterparts
separate, equally well-deceived in new
TNino Rotal19O-79
At the time of his death in Italy earlier this week, composer Nino
Rota stood virtually alone atop his chosen profession, a giant among too
many dirivitive, eager-to-please pygmyes. His work exemplified the very
best of an art all too often dismissed as a poor stepchild of motion pic-
tures: Film music.
Those who,: write movie scores are usually scorned as second-rate
composers, yetmost of the time they aren't so much jeered at as simply
ignored. The, recent burgeoning, voluminous craft of film criticism has
produced virtually nothing in the analysis of movie music; huge tomes
are written without any mention of it at all, as if film scores were the least
important element in the cinematic process, afsilent partner exercising
no influence whatsoever.
Nothing could be much further from the truth. Few elements in a film
exert a greater effect upon an audiences' perception of it, either for better
or worse. At its loftiest, film music can mold and focus the viewer's reac-
tion to what he's watching, can reveal thoughts and emotions in the film
that visuals alone cannot. At its worst, movie music can simply obliterate
the entire picture, numbing potentially sensitive nuances with smarmy,
rotund scores totally at odds with anything happening on the screen.
(How often one wants to yell "shut up!" at the schmaltz scores by Max
Steiner and others galumphing through the 30's and 40's).
OF THOSE COMPOSERS who remained fully dedicated to the film
profession, two stood alone in defying condescention: Bernard Herr-
mann, who redefined the concept of suspense for Alfred Hitchcock; and
Rota, whose work for Federico Fellini comprises the most imaginative
legacy of musical-cinematic synthesis the art of motion pictures has ever
produced.
Though he was best known to American audiences for his scores for
Romeo and Juliet and the Godfather films (which earned him a pair of
Oscars), it was Rota's music for Fellini that immortalized his genius. By
turns poignantly lyric or impishly diabolical, his scores throbbed with a
phantasmic energy that welded them so perfectly to the director's work
that visual and aural seemed one in the same.
For a quarter of a century, filmmaker and composer worked as if in-
side a single brain, moving from Rota's wrenching violin solo of La
Strada through the wild, pulsating circus finale of 8/ to the softly
terrifying robot ballerina's dance in their final collaboration, Casanova.
Rota's music was amazingly diverse and encompassing, yet never for a
moment did it lapse into pompous self-importance, a malady which oc-
casionaly afflicted even Bernard Herrmann. Rota's work remained
gossamer, nimbly effortless, the things dreams are made of. That those
dreams often turned nightmarishly spooky was simply testimony to his
nefarious virtuosity.
When he was fatally stricken by a bboodclot, Rota was at work on the
score for Fellini's yet-unfinished Women's City. One is hard-pressed to
imagine what the film will be like without him-indeed, what the state of
film music in general will become. In a time when simplistic bombast
seems to be resurrectng itself not only in film but also the music which
accompanies it, Rota's mosaic subtlety will be desparately missed.
-Christopher Potter
found pleasure.
THE TIGHT KNIT of dialogue, dan-
ce, and poetry transforms the legend
into a forceful, suggestive myth. Mar-
shall Levijoki (Blind Man) and Kathy
Badgerow (Lame Man) together give a
strong, well-balanced, physically comic
performance and John Kolars is ap-
pealingly feline as the Saint.
In A Full M'oon in March, a contest is
the subject. He whose singing pleases
the Queen best shall win her for a wife.
A proud rag-befouled swineherd comes
to answer the challenge, but the Queen,
claiming insult, has him beheaded,
whereupon she places the severed head
upon her throne. Magically, the head
sings, and the Queen performs a dance
of sexual adoration, climaxing it with a
kiss upon the head's lips. Gay DeLanghe,
the Queen, sustains this play, built
around the action of the horrible,
fascinating ritual of dance. Framing
the dance are the compelling songs of
the court attendants, sung to a haunting
original score composed by William
Albright.
AL PHILLIPS will direct Words Upon
the Windowpane, an entrancing play in
which the tortured spirit of Jonathan
Swift is accidentally raised in a Dublin
seance. Windowpane will be performed
April 17 and 20 at 8 p.m. and April 21 at 2
p.m. in the Pendleton Room.
This year's symposia, to be held in
the Pendleton Room April 17-20, at 2
p.m. each day, will examine the
following topics: Irish Politics and
Society in the Irish Dramatic
Movement; 20th Century Experiments
in -Western European Drama;
Psychology and Yeats' Mysticism; and
Magic and Ritual in Yeat's Theatre.
Assistant professor of English Peter
Ferran will moderate.
lesbian & Gay Ma/e
Celebration Dance
Saturday, April 14
9 p.m.-1 o.m.
Michigan Union Ballroom
$1.50 Donation
For information call: 763-4186
~1
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71
ALL MEDIA COMPANY
PRESENTS
Original Multi-Media Musical Theatre
You Never Know What They'll Do Next
with the
NON RETURNABLES
April 13 & 14-8:00 pm
R.C. Aud.-East Quad
TICKETS $1.50, Mich. Union Box Office
Sponsored by L.S.A.-S.G., Mich. Student Assembly R.C., UA.C.
I0
noti
~00
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on your first
jo interview:
4-r
1.)
2.)
3.)
4.)
5.)
6.)
7.)
Don't bring your mother.
Don't wear your Hula-girl tie.
If your stomach growls, don't say "Down, boy!"
Don't explain why everyone calls you "Animal:"
Don't wear your flower that squirts.
Don't wear sneakers, even if they're new.
Don't ask for a salary that could be
mistaken for your phone
number.
8.) Don't take a job with a
company that doesn't
serve Stroh's at
its Christmas
party.
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MMEM Im