ARTS The Michigan Daily Thursday, November 5, 1981. Page 5 'Wings' fails mi By Anne Gadon DaP ily t y DEBORAH LEWIS Siouxsie Sioux Siouxsie Sioux held court at the Second Chance Tuesday night, moment by moment creating a role somewhere between a tribal shaman and a Vogue model. Her savage beauty is rivaled only by the Slits, and it's clear that she is everything Patti Smith had always wanted to be but never had the vision to accomplish. An added bonus was that her vocals sounded much fuller and were not as cold as they feel on vinyl. The Banshees (John McGeoch on guitar, Steven Severin on bass, and Budgie on drums) performed their usual unusual repertoire of sensual dirges and paranoiac dance music perfectly, just as you would expect. Budgie, playing one-man African drum band for the night, was especially crucial in creating the cathartic paroxysms of the orgasmic dance fury that has become the Banshees' trademark. John McGeoch filled out the sound with his guitar trickery that echoes of paranoia as much as psychedelia. -Mark Dighton W ALTER EYSSELINCK'S ad- miration of Wings, a drama by Arthur Kopit, is understandable. In the hands of a top-notch actress and technical director, Wings is a dazzling event. The version appearing through Sunday at the Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre, however, is not the play en- visioned by Kopit; in all theatrical aspects, it is an out-and-out failure. Wings is the final presentation in the Michigan Ensemble Theatre's (MET) premiere season. Under the leadership of Theatre and Drama Department chairperson Walter Eysselinck, MET is the University's resident "professional" company, earning its pro label by the presence of Equity, or union actors, in its productions. Although Eysselinck yaps con- siderably about the theatrical manna he brings to Ann Arbor, no heavenly displays have appeared on the Men- delssohn stage. He yeses the guise of professionalism as an excuse for bad theatre and dramatic misinter- pretation. FOR EXAMPLE, this year's produc- tion of Carlo Goldoni's Mirandolina by MET substituted burlesque for the sub- tlety aimed at by the author. Mounting museum pieces would merely bore everyone, but the delicacy is essential to Goldoni, who was trying to progress from the stock humor of commedia dell'arte to a higher level of comedy. The Blood Knot, by Athol Fugard, lacked its emotional core due to the in- terpretation of David Little, who made. up 50 percent of the two-man cast. Wings, directed by Eysselinck, can not be properly mounted without spending a lot of money which the department doesn't have for technical effects. Wings is essentially a one-woman show. The play traces the story of Emily Stilson, an aviatrix and a Wing- suffers much TV. Coburn is going to use his computer to make commercials that will hypnotize an audience into buying a given product. Crichton is able to get some laughs out of the computerized commercials he puts together for the film. But the message of the abuse of TV is too simple for anything but the mindless kind of movie he ridicules-yet has directed. The film does have some good sequences, such as the fight between Finney and an assailant who holds a hypnotizing gun. But most of the movie is as ineptly constructed as when we see a title card saying "SUNDAY" followed by an immediate cut into the middle of a car chase. When watching 1950 s sci-fi movies, it is very easy to laugh at the lousy sets, the fake computers, and the contrived electronic gadgets. Looker should be able to look as slick in 50 years. Unfor- tunately, the plot already looks 50 years old. walker who, after suffering a stroke, is unable to communicate with or under- stand those around her. With the help of a speech therapist and her own courage, she moves towards regaining her wings, the ability of speech flying from person to person, the act of com- munication. The imagery of the wings also refers to the perilous voyages that the psyche experiences during and after a stroke. The play's set reflects the darkened condition of Emily's mind and her per- ception of the world around her. Black panels traverse the stage, mirrors spin in the background, lights flash, disem- bodied voices fill the air,, all adding up to Emily's disordered view of reality. Wings is essentially a spectacle of technical wizardry and good acting when it's done correctly. Without these elements, however, its flaws as a serious drama are apparent. Wings has no solid conflict; it presents no moral problem. The play is about Emily's bat- tle with herself to regain speech. There's no suspense in the plot or great questions to be mulled over. But with an Emily such as Constance Cummings, who played the role in New York, Wings can be a very moving event. It's a great show more than it is a great drama. In MET's Wings, the black panels drag across the floor, achieving an almost comic effect, the mylared mirrors look too much like mylar, the sound system is muddy-essentially, the technical end is a mess. The visual effects play as large a role as the star in this production. But after a few spiffy flashbulb pops in the first 10 minutes, the audience is stuck watching a black void for the remaining 70, with the oc- casional thrill of observing a scrim limp from stage right to stage left. Actress Lenka Peterson, as Emily, isn't able to save the play's destruction. In fact, she makes a sad contribution to it. Emily's frustrations about her inability to communicate come off as serably. arrogance in Peterson's interpretation. She lacks vocal variety, giving Emily a consistent and tiresome tone of frenzy. Peterson appears more disgusted than frightened by her affliction. Whether these attitudes are the fault of the director or the actress is hard to- say, but they obstruct the sense of pity one should feel for Emily. The strong core of the former aviatrix is missing. Ann Crumb as Amy, Emily's therapist, is appropriately com- passionate, while Joyce Feurring and Nancy Heusel add tiny flashes of life to See WINGS, Page 7 "Tohours of noanstop thrills," -Rex Reed OF THE A PARAMOUNT DAILY WILLIAM HURT 1:1 KATHLEEN TURNER 320 5:301300Y~ 7:40 Midnite 9:50 Fri. & Sat. IiEfT 1:45 4:15 7:00 9:30 CARBO Double PG Feature DN COPY 1:30 5:10 9:00 TAKE THIS JOB L AND SHOVE IT 3:20 7:0 375 N. MAPLE 'n MAPLE VILLAGE SHOPPING CENTER 769-1300 "MON FRI 52 t 6PM SAT- SUN $2 t 3lPM 375 N MAPLE 769-1300 $2 TO 600 PM ROBERT DE NIRO F ROBERT '. DUVALL UNITED R~ ARTISTS LQ.1 MIDNITE FRIf. A SAT. 1:15 3:20 5.30 7.40 9:50 I TIME STARTS BANDITSFRDY ...they didn't make history, 1:30 they stole it! 4:15 _y st7:20 A HANDMADE FILMS Release 9:40 Th,. ZAVCO EM8ASSYmPICTURES C: i THE HANllMAD)E FILM PARTNERSHIP ALLRAI HI .REERVEl JOHN CLEESE - SEAN CONNERY SHELLEY DUVALL - KATHERINE HELMOND IAN HOLM MICHAEL PALIN RALPH RICHARDSON - PETER VAUGHAN DAVID WARNER SONGS I ;AQ 4.,. vi hh . A1 BY GEORGE HARRISON _, .. V,.-J I Looker By Richard Campbell LOOKER IS AS slick as any movie can be, and is as poorly written as many movies are: Writer-director Michael Crichton, while one of the ablest writers of science-fiction and ex- position, is not a good writer or director for film. To make a bad movie look good, have expensive production values. If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, add sgme flashing lights and disco music. At, least these are the guiding ideas bphind Looker. In all honesty, it almost works. We live in an electronic age, wearing com- puters on our wrists. In Looker we are given a glimpse of this technology at the very' edge of the state of the art. Only when the plot lapses into the ob- viously science-fiction area of hyp- notizing ray guns does the difference between real science and special effec- ts-become clear. The combination of all the computer generated graphics, and technical talk is just about enough to keep the movie afloat. But the silly. intrusion, of a little thing called plot keeps reminding you that you are watching a really stupid movie. Albert Finney portrays a respectable plastic surgeon who has been ap- proached by four actresses to do very specific cosmetic surgery. These ac- tresses have received computer- processed lists, accurate down 'to the millimeter, of the changes they require to appear as perfect women. Finney proves his acting genius when he walks on the screen and is im- mediately accepted by the audience as 's' scrip a Doctor. The acting of the other cast members, however, leaves much to be desired. Susan Dey-we all remember her from "The Partridge Family"-shows by her empty performance as a struggling commercial actress, why we have seen little of her work. Dey is an inept actress, and she manages to look awkward whenever she is in front of the camera. Crichton is partly at fault, giving her not even the barest charac- ter sketch to work from. James Coburn plays the president of the corporation that is using these ac- tresses' measurements to create com- puter-generated movies that don't need humans. For some unexplained reason, Coburn decides to kill the actresses af- ter obtaining the necessary infor- mation. This is just the beginning of many plot inconsistencies in the film. The point of the movie is unoriginal and oft-repeated. Anericans watch too I- PUTEIA IUSTFO A AWAY i you can l e without your cigarettes for one day you might find you can ive without them LATINOAMERICA CANTA RA DAY. 'C-> =al t- I. L~~ _ PENAATARK