Saturday, November 9, 1974
THE MICHIGAN DAILY
Page Five
Saturday,~~~~ Noebr9 94TEMCIA AL aeFv
PTP:
By DAVID WEINBERG
William Saroyan banged outI
the script of Time of Your Life
in six glorious days and nights
on a cheap typewriter in a dingy
New York City hotel. Although
Saroyan's Pulitzer prize winning
play isn't God's work, there is
something visionary about hisI
portrayal of America in the late
30's.
In the preface to the Time of
Your Life Saroyan says; "A1
writer can write anywhere, un-
der any circumstance or any
complication of circumstances,
and nothing's to stop him. He
can write well and he can work
as swiftly as the work involved
needs to be done swiftly."
PTP's City Center Acting
Company opened Saroyan's play
Thursday at Mendelssohn with
an understanding of the play's
visionary, rather than realistic,
qualities.
script
characters of every shape and
size: Willie, the pinball fanatic;
Harry, the mamma's boy dan-
cer: Krupp, the rueful cop; Kit
Carson, the insane modern day
Indian fighter.
But it becomes difficult to
state definitively what happens
in the play and how the char-
acters change. Thousands of
things are happening, often si-
mviltaneously, and the atmo-
sphere of Saroyan's high energy
play--that post-Depression, pre-
War fear and optimism-all of
this is there.
And Saroyan's own euphoric
energy-he is wildly pompous in
the preface to the play-that's
there too. It's an uncontrolled '
vision of a thousand faces and
lives ruled by Saroyan's own
life-excitement. We can only
sense the force of it, and
vaguely understand it.
But, if we try to pull the
imits i
itely had the appropriate aura
of compassion about him as
he became the focal point for
much of the bar's activity. Su-
rovy is convincing as the con-
tempiative, somewhat lazy man
who drinks champagne all day,
and he seemed casual and op-
timistic enough to make it
work.
Nick (Benjamin Hendrickson)
seemed to enjoy the collection
of characters that frequent his
bar. Like most of the characters
he has to deal with a script that
occasionally asks him to say
some odd things, but he dealt
with this well, and was a good
backdrop for his bar.
Kitty (Patti Lupone) and Tom
(Norman Snow) seemed to suf-
fer more because of this. Lu-
.mpact
Pone, neither an angry nor
strong Kitty, was weepy and
weak once she had the first
taste of champagne in her
mouth. Her dreams are never
quite palatable nor believable.
Tom was too much of an Eddie
Haskall, and I found myself
dobting his ability to drive a
truck.
David Schramm was uproar-
iously good as Kit Carson.
The pacing of the play was
fast enough, there was some
nice choreography and good use
of the stage.
Time of Your Life is a diffi-
cult play to produce and in
some places a tougher play to
believe. City Center did a lot
of the right things with it: much
of the problem is script.
ir. _ r - r at
Butth~iod TI Ino
F
le Joe (Nicolas Surovy) seated at
uld like to see.
KITTY DUVAL (Patti LuPone) looks on with a bored air whi
Snow) talk about all the different places in the world they wo
One point shy of a one no
trump bid, North opened with
one club, East passed, South
responded one s p a d e, Wes
passed, and North raised to tw
spades. South bid three spades
and North, with his maximum
and prime values, bid fou:
spades.
NS NVUL.
EW VUL.
NORTH
44AQ2
V A 7 5 2
f A J 9
4973
WEST
4 7 5
V K 9 8
* Q 8 6 5 4 3
4 K Q
4
EAST
63
Q J 10 4 3
7
4 A J 10 6 5
SOUTH
4 K J 10 9 8 4
*K1107
4842
The bidding:
Failure to seek
or clues costs A
contract
by FRANK BELL=
- his ace and cashed the ten of Un ers i
h clubs. Winning the third club
h trick, East shifted to the queen
t of hearts.N
o Declarer won dummy's heart u p slo n
ace and pulled trump in three
n rounds, West sluffing diamonds
r on the second and third rounds. By MARNIE HEYN
Now declarer decided to learn After an excruciatingly slow
his fate and led a diamond to start, the University Dancers:
the board's ace returnin gthe wound up to the kind of per-
jack of diamonds. East fumbled formance that is expected of
for a second and South's hopes them at the Power Center last
rose, then East discarded a s night.
heart. Rising with the diamond The first piece on the pro-
king he led out all his trumps, gram was Vera Embree's Kin!
but West held on to his diamond and Ken, an interpretation of
queen to set the contract. an African line dance in two
quee toset he ontrct. parts. This number, designed in!
South misplayed the hand rs1963,appeared to be less ma-
when he failed to get a count ture and developed than her
on the opponent's distribution, latest work, but that appear-'
Upon winning the heart shift at ance may be due to the dancing
trick four, he should ruff a rather than the choreog aphy.
heart high, cross to the quern Embree laudably includes stu-
of spades, ruff another heart, dents who are not dance ma-
return to dummy's ace of jors in her productions; but un-
spades, and ruff the last heart.3 fortunately for this piece a size-
When, on the fourth round ofI able n u m b e r of performers
hearts, Westhdiscardsraddia- spent about a quarter of the
mond the hand is an open book. dance looking around for their
Since West could only follow to places, which distracted from
two clubs, two spades, and the outstanding work of other
three rounds of hearts, he is dancers. Kin and Ken still'
marked with six diamonds and exuded energy, and the music
his partner a stiff. Now it is by a live percussion group was
a simple matter to cash the wonderful.
diamond king, and, if the queen Lucas Hoving's Uppercase, a
does not drop, take the marked curious cross between second
finesse against West's queen. generation modern dance and
Like a detective who must vaudeville hoofing, is a tidy,
n diligently search for clues to little display window for im-
solve his case, so must declarer peccable technique. In this pro-
diligently search for the clues duction, sadly, the technique
necessary to make his contract. was a little elusive. Although
ray.mediatrics
- a
presents
ALKING TALL
FRIDAY SATURDAY
November 8 November 9
7:30, 9:30
Natural Science Aud. $1
There's a basic flaw in thel
play; nothing substantive ever i
emerges from Saroyan's script.
There's no cohesive statement7
and no real attempt to moveI
the characters in any firm di- j
rection.
Time of Your Life is set inc
Nick's Pacific Street Saloon inj
San Francisco during the after-
noon and night of a day in t
1939. Center stage is Joe, ac
the table and Tom (Norman young loafer with a lot of un-
explained money and a good 1
heart.
Around him are Nick, the wise1
and mainly gentle owner of the
saloon, Tom, Joe's sidekick and
errand boy, and Kitty Duval,z
local prostitute who dreams of
being an actress.
And there are many others
strewn throughout the play,f
"
iy Dancers warm
i i y, finish nstyle
Elizabeth Bergmann and Sylvie l De Profundis by Martine
Lambert are excellent dancers, Epoque, who designed Amoe-
and in spite of a nice comedy boisme, one of the most popular
menage in the middle section, pieces that 'U' Dancers did :ast
the fact that the female dancers I year, begins with another fine
had very diffirent concepts of example of her floor choreog-
the way the figures should look raphy. Although foot placement
meant that the piece looked is not to be disregarded in her
choppy and deadening. pieces, most of the impact of
But with the third piece, her work is felt in precise,
Freon by Elizabeth Bergmann, energetic carriage and posture,
the company pulled its potatoes which the company exhibited in
out of the fire and turned out joyous, refined fashion.
the professional kind;of per-
formance they are capable of.
play together it's just an annoy-
ng experience.
City Center's production of
Time of Your Life seemed to
reflect this kind of understand-
ng of the play. The set was;
aesthetically pleasing with lots
of nice touches: the pinball
machine named "American
Dream" and campy pictures on
the walls. The effort to re-
create Saroyan's "honky-tonk"
atmosphere, so critical to the
play, is definitely noticeable.
The piano music is 30's, not
boogie-woogie as Saroyan had it.
In addition, contrary to the
written version, the play never
leaves the bar.
Joe (Nicolas Surovy) defin-
Oi
Have a flair for
artistic writinq?
poetry, and music
or writing feature
stories a bo ut the
drama, dance, finm
airts: Contact Arts
Editor, c/a The
Michigan Daily.
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Freon, in its premiere perform-
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Opening lead: King of clubs.
West opened the club king and
declarer paused to study the
hand. Counting nine tricks in
the form of six spades, one
heart, and two diamonds, he
realized that his contract rested
on finding the queen of dia-
monds.
His consideration finished, he
played a low club from dummy.
East encouraged with the jack,
and when his partner continued
with the queen he overtook with
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Director-- BILLY WILDER
Is The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes the best American
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attraction but soon drifted into critical oblivion and com-
mercial disaster, now qualifies as a major rediscovery of
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However, don't let its relative obscurity fool you-The Pri-
vote Life of Sherlock Holmes is far from being an esoteric
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ized the old Hollvv-ood masters.
In addition to its lively script, visual flair, and fantastic
Miklos Rosza score, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is
also one of the most ingenious mysteries ever written for
the screen. A cape full of canaries, a mysterious woman
saved from drowning "a swan that really isn't a swan,
four midqets at a lonely gravesite, a group of four Trappist
monks, a "red runner" the code-word "Jonah". Kaiser
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that unravel in an intricate chain of events leading to a
truly surprising conclusion-perhaps too surprising, even,
for the redoubtable Mr. Holmes.
But, besides being a mystery, The Private Life of Sherlock
Holmes also has mystery,if you know what I mean. And at
the center of this mystery is the character of the legendary
arch-decettive, Sherlock Holmes. The film opens with a
safe-deposit box being opened and a series of dusty objects
being extracted from it-a hypodermic, a violin concerto,
a deerstalker, a pipe, and a Rosebud-like glass ball con-
taiing a bust of Queen Victoria. A handwritten manuscript
narrated by Dr. Watson tells us that 50 years after Holmes'
death, we will learn of this case, one of Holmes' few
faiures . . .
Was Holmes really a supersleuth, or was he the creation of
his sometimes overzealous chronicler, Dr. Watson? Was
Holmes one of the last romantics, or an unfeeling thinking
machine? Was he a homosexual, or the victim of a tragic
love affair? At the end of all these questions is a syringe
filled with opium, which allows Holmes to conquer the ag-
onizing boredom that so often afflicts him and to smooth
over the contradictions in his elusive character.
Finally, the film is about myth-makinq. Sherlock Holmes,
the Loch Ness monster. Romanticism; the Victorian age---
these are some of the myths the film treats, myths that be-
come real more than the reality that debunks them, just as
World War I will debunk the Nineteenth Century that is
dving at the film's end. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
is a very funny film and a very melancholy one, very cyni-
cal and very romantic. It is an old-fashioned film and a
very modern one. It is a film for all audiences, particularly
that rather large audience that missed it the first time
around, and perhaps now, five years after the fact, film so-
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