Thursday, February 6, 1975 I HE MICHIGAN DAILY Page Five Hall h By DAVID BLOMQUIST Arts and Entertainment Editor Many modern American history texts credit the phenomenal growth of the or- ganized labor movement after the In- dustrial Revolution largely to the per- sonal skill and immense determination of Samuel Gompers, founder and presi- dent of the American Federation of La- bor. But as Donald Hall's new play Bread and Roses points out, there were several other labor organizers actively at work during the early years of this century- men and women who suffered, agoniz- ed, and all too often gave their lives on behalf of the American working class. Bread and Roses, which opened last night at the Power Center as an artist- in-residence presentation of the Profes- sional Theatre Program, concentrates on a small but vocal group known as "the Wobblies" - properly known as the In- dustrial Workers of the World (IWW) - that for a time was an active and some- what influential Marxist-Socialist labor organization. Using actual songs, letters, and speeches of IWW leaders, Hall develops a concise documentary look at the short, turbu- tonors Wobblies lent history of the Wobblies - from their Hall. Accompanied in a lilting ragtime shaky beginnings in a 1905 Chicago con- piano on an old Grinnell upright by Wil- vention to -a slow and extremely painful liam Bolcum, the musical numbers at demise in the midst of the post-World once brighten up to play and focus its War I "Red scare". theme. Unfortunately, they also tend to A grandfather - like figure called the considerably break up the dramatic ten- "First Actor", played with suitable sion. Hall might be wise to reduce some- charm by artist-in-residence Walter what the musical content in the first hour. Rhodes, narrates the historical tour in Richard Meyer, head of the University's a subtle prose and gentle manner that is theatre program, handled the direction in reminiscent of the classic Stage Manager a relatively straight but quite effective character in Thornton Wilder's Our style. Meyer easily crafted difficult tran- Town. sitions between characters and time Each of the 19 student actors alternates frames. Some of the group scenes, how- between several roles within the collec- ever, seemly overly posed and much too tion of fascinating individuals that made rigid. up the Wobblies. Most of the names are Bread and Roses still needs some pol- new to the audience- "Big Bill" Hay- ishing - especially in the first half - but ward and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, for is fundamentally a strong piece of ma- example. But some of the people we meet terial. It successfully addresses an ex- along the way are quite familiar - like tremlyt c templra r emes throegh lawyer Clarence Darrow, who defended skillful use of some rich historical mater- the Wobblies in a crucial court battle, and sil perennial leftist presidential candidate Eugene Debs, who was one of the IWW's In fact, Bill Hayward and Elizabeth founders. Flynn - and, for that matter, perhaps The backbone of Bread and Roses - even Samuel Gompers - would no and the show's spice - are the biting doubt be quite pleased with Donald Hall's IWW songs written during the organiza- thoughtful look at the early birth pangs tion's peak years by Wobbly leader Joe of organized labor in America. 11 I l I ,I SPEED CHESS RECORD STEVE FELDMAN (6 times Michigan Chess Champion) and BOB BEINISH I campj 61ck4 Lucas's success re- flects film's change By JAMES VALK WITH THE '60s nearing a close and the '70s on the horizon, Hollywood began what is now referred to as "the infamous transition period." The big budget, large scale motion pictures became mere shadows of the past; the "new wave" of low budget, youth-oriented films became the cocktail chatter of the movietown moguls. But -as these new films proved somewhat less than prosperous at the box office, the Hollywood masterminds began to lose en- thusiasm. Films of the Easy Rider genre were dumped by the major studios, while directors like Monte Hellman and Jim McBride once again became the "who?" that they are today, WHAT PRIMARILY transpired during the "Tinseltown Tur- moil" was a separation of genuine talent from commercial exploiters. Accepting the theory that repression cannot conceal the legitimate forces, our scenario is set. And thus arrives George Lucas. Lucas' rise to fame is an ironic one - the very "youthful" movement that gave him his start almost collapsed his career. Starting out as a student in San Modesto Junior College, Lucas experimented with 8 mm films. Deciding that film was the medium he wished to explore, he enrolled in the USC film studies program. While there, he made a total of eight films from one to 25 minutes, the last being a chilling projection of an electron-; ically programmed civilization. The film won the National Student Film award, and was ultimately brought to the attention of the top brass at Warner brothers. This was in 1968. Oficialy, Lucas became an entity of Warner Brothers, and was assigned to watch another director at work on a film. The film was Finian's Rainbow, and the director was Francis Ford Coppola, who was then at odds with the studio over a proposed project entitled The Rain People. BECOMING FRIENI DS with a mutual interest and concern, they formed their own San Francisco based production unit, American Zoetrope. Their financing was to be handled by Warn- er Brothers, who had commissioned them to develop seven more films, the first being a feature length version of Lucas' student production. Fever Pitch (of Brooklyn) will try to break the ENGLISH-HELD ... 81 HOUR 32 MINUTE WORLD RECORD Starling at 9 a.m. Thursday By DAVID WEINBERG Today, tomorrow and Satur- day, Peachy Cream Productions moves into Round 2 of their latest creation, Fever Pitch. And though the musical review fizzles and drizzles and a few people work up a powerful sweat, Fever just barely nudges 98.6. I was annoyed with the show on many counts. Much of the singing was weak and half- hearted and there was very little dancing to speak of at all. Much of the humor was just plain old puns and stupid ones at that. Not as if the show did not demonstrate some potential, or an ability, as dancer Judie Goodman once put it, "to come to grips with the material," but worse than anything was the inability or unwillingness of the cast to decipher the good from the bad, or in some cases, to think through carefully what would make a cohesive effort. It was choppy, unedited, in places strange, and in need of a director. The feeling one getsI is that everything was taken,; everything was used and that no one was making an effort to glimpse the show as a whole. The production is composed! of a series of skits, or scenarios, unrelated except for their move- ment forward in linear time- from the '30s to the '40s, et al.j The overriding goal of the se- quences, as the cast once ex- plained to me, is to set the audience on tenderhooks, es-$ pecially within individual per formance. Scriptwriter Peter Anderson once said the skits "contain an element of control with an element of noncontrol." But ifI the script cannot pull the audi- ence into it through the text, how can it expect an audience to follow it into a physical in- volvement? In many cases, the result is for the skit to degen- erate into meaningless frenzy. "Good Evening Class," the lead-off skit in the show, is a perfect example of this failing. Starting with the format of a pedantic college professor who essays to define for us the meaning of the word "fever" it rapidly deteriorates into the age old parody of a parody- the screaming howling oozing college professor. In a few places actor Marty Sherman managed to be funny, but mostly he evoked a vague feeling of discomfort. "The Greatest Nation on Earth," by contrast, was an exceptionally funny and enter- taining number, and one of the few in the show that attempted social satire. It is this kind of skit that can set an audience on} "tenderhooks," but they were few and far between in Fever Pitch. The dancing was far from reminiscent of the Astair/Rogers days, and was a lot closer to boogie, or occasionally 21st cen- tury impressionism. Only once did Judie Goodman scamper across the stage wearing taps, but it must have been the short- est number on record. I hon- estly expected more, much more variation in the dancing, much more dancing in general. And finally, singing too slow- ed the show down. "Friendship" was a lively and well-choreo- raphed number, and even 'Let's 1)o It" with its updated lyrics were a lift, but there were many disanpointments, es- pecially Val Gifford's rendition of "The Man that Got Away," usually a very powerful piece of mu sic. All in all, although seemingly impressive to some members of the audience, Fever Pitch failed to be cohesive, funny or even feverish. It is a badly-edited montage of Music! Sight! and Sound! lapsing frequently into cliche and pun, and to a certain extent in a confused state as to what its theatrical goal must be. IN DAVID'S BOOKS 529 E. LIBERTY 663-8441 -.. J Record czar Davis calls Dylan most expensive buly By WABX growing. It now includes Linda In his recently published book, Ronstadt, Alvin Lee, Marshall Clive Inside the Record Busi- Tucker, Buffy Sainte-Marie, ness, former Columbia record Billy Joel, Charlie Daniels, President Clive Davis says that Tracy Nelson, Roger McGuinn, Bob Dylan was one of the most Leonard Cohen, Billy S w a n ,I expensive artists he signed while Bonnie Bramlett, Michael Mur- with Columbia. phey, Tony Joe White, and fin- D lan wr fi st ffjrA d five ally Earl's sons Randy and Gary yran Was r5 vineuJv per cent of all album royalties, in addition to a minimum guar- antee of $500,000. Competitively, MGM counter offered twelve, talus an un-front guarantee of Scruggs. Johnny Winter is currently on a massive tour stretching from January 24 through April 13; and covering a total of 40 cities. John Prine is in the studios; as- sisting him are Jackson Browne and the Eagles. John Entwistle of the Wha is due to begin his first solo tcur of the United States at the end of February, featuring his band Ox. The group members a r e Graham Deakin (drums), Mike Deacon (keyboards), Robert A. Johnson (guitar), and 7ntwistle on bass. Rick Derringer is working on a new album, titled Spring Fe- ver, including Johnny Winler on slide guitar, and also Edgar Winter and Chick Corea on .yn- thesizer. Jerry Garcia is cur- rently mixing the second al- bum for Grateful Dead lvricist Robert Hunter at their Marn County, California studios. ARTS Upon viewing the rough cut of a film entitled THX-1138, Warn- 1.5 milion. According to Davis, er Brothers withdrew all support. "They wanted .another Planet Dylan eventually signed w i t h of the Apes Lucas recalls, and American Zoetrope neared Columbia to a five-year con- financial collapse tract receiving ten per cent of his records' royalties. I I Bordering on personal bankruptcy, Lucas began to develop a script for a film that had been a personal goal. Dealing with the nostalgic late '50s-early '60s, before nostalgia became a craze, the script was turned down by virtually every studio that considered it. WITH ROUGHT draft in hand, Lucas sought the help of cine-{ matic cohort Coppola, who was basking in the success of The Godfather. Convincing 'The Sultan of San Francisco' to serve as executvie producer, Lucas, with .Coppola's influence, was signed by Universal to undertake a film entitled American Graf- fiti. And the rest is history. The interesting story of George Lucas is his tremendous cine- matic versatility. Where THX-1138 was a cold and repellent view of the years ahead, American Graffiti comes off as a warm and nostalgic lapse into the years behind. "THX-1138 is how I feel as a filmmaker," Lucas explains, "American Graffiti is how I feel as a person." What Lucas represents to the motion picture industry is a totally new attitude in film production. Flaunting his newly found success to its financial maximum, Lucas hopes to some- day form a film community in San Francisco, perhaps reviving the American Zoetrope that he and Coppola started. Blood on the Tracks, Dylan's latest album, seems aptly tit- led. Late in December he re- recorded five of the cuts. Dylan recorded the new tapes in Min- neapolis with the aid of his bro- ther Dave Zimmerman. Local Minnesota musicians were used, including bassist1 Bill Peterson, guitarist K e n Odegard, drummer Bill Berg, Greg Inhofer on keyboards, and Chris Weber on 12 string. Eric Burdon recently t o k time off his national tour to lec- ture on rock at the New York School for Social Research in Manhattan.- The Georgia State Department of Corrections has given an award to the AllmanmBrothers for "outstanding community or- ganization of the year." ' The list of musicians working on Earl Scrugg's album keeps 0 LiL6ipper W ~cancle s " mid.~Q*M'S happy valentine's day I iE sto free 209 s. state (downstairs) p in & celebrate cookies on the 14th mon.-sat. 10-6 I Have o flair for artistic writinq? If you are interest- ed in reviewing poetry, and music or writing feature stories a bout the drama, dance, film arts: Contact Arts Editor, 0/o The . .- . * . Professional Theatre Program - TOM MALLOW' lob earroll OFiddler HANCOCK Sat., Feb. 22 Hill Aud, 8p.m. I HERBIE Reserved Seats $6, $5.50, $5, $4.50 Avai1. 5:30 Sorry,i UM Union 10:30- d a iI v(763-4553). no personal checks. Tomn Mallow+ +I directed by written and JOSEPH A. WALKER ILVER& Based cn Shwom A~lenmS Stores By Scial PernUSSion of Affnold Perl 4 64 4 '! M CPROOUCE.1WSCOfEOSY Smokinbg&dbeverages str ictly R TE ria as* otn A A rBkg prohibited in Auditorium. s. ° ^^-'A--EC Your cooperation is essential. -\ MICHAEL CURTIZ FESTIVAL 1938 ANGELS IWTH DIRTY FACES JAMES CAGNEY and PAT O'BRIEN grow up as friends in New York's tene- ment district. One becomes a gangster and the other becomes a priest. They meet again in their old neighborhood and, between them, try to Mr. Robins Oirdio "repoducd ly RIARD ALTMAN Mr. Robb.ns totogtapJy R.1.eod,.,td Sy DM ABAFFA Bi JOSEPH STEIN ',. IM u!JERRY DOCK.