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ARTS

The Michigan Daily

Thursday, March 16, 1989

Page 8

Texas troupe revives
'other' Miller play

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Members of the Comedy Company perform the skit "All Present and Accounted For" from this w'eekend's The Return of the Big Show.

Can


BY KRISTIN PALM


THIS weekend, the peopl
have a chance to attend higi
meet an incompetent preside
chologist, and witness "det
Yes, it is the Return of the.
of the Comedy Company.
The bi-annual productior
and performed by students, b
as the Sunday Funnies
popularity ever since. Friday
have been full houses for thi
in recent years and directorJ
RC senior, predicts that this
sell out on Thursday as well.
Peters compares Comedy
urday Night Live-type of per
sorry state of SNL the past]
shame to draw this comparis
ductions are similar in that1
than stand-up comedy to r

Co. defy sequel
funny bone.
"Comedy Company is really the only comedy- alor
e of Ann Arbor will theater troupe which performs sketch comedy like wh
h school orientation, Saturday Night Live," Peters said, "But you have ten(
nt and a reverse psy- to mention that we're funnier." me
ath to all fanatics." The nine-member cast, featuring veterans Ja- sing
Big Show, courtesy son Dilly and Rob Marks as well as several Isla
newcomers, will perform 19 original sketches F
n, written, produced that, Peters said, will focus on events to which mar
egan eight years ago the audience can relate. Many of the skits will pro
and has grown in involve elements of campus life. the)
and Saturday nights "It's real-life comedy," he said, "It's directed 0
e Comedy Company toward incidences people will recognize from cv- mo
Jeff Peters, LSA and eryday life." said
will be the show to However, don't expect Peters, producer Jon
Hein, head writer Kevin Hughes, and the cast to wit
Company to a Sat- present these situations in a usual light. Past woi
formance. Given the performances have tended to portray these in- que
few years it seems a stances with a flair for the absurd and Peters and TH
son, but the two pro- crew did not offer any clues that this term's Ly6
they use skits rather Comedy Company would approach life any dif- Sat
each the audience's ferently. Mi

Of course real life does not include the sing-
ng interludes of piano player Dave Darmofal
en the going gets slow. Those who have at-
ded Comedy Company in the past may re-
mber him as the man who kept the audience
ging to tunes like the themes from Gilligan's
nd and The Munsters between scenes.
Real life does include sequels, however, and
ny are not as funny as Comedy Company
mises to be. Nor, as Peters pointed out, are
y as economical.
'This is cheaper than a movie and you get
vie-length entertainment and it's all live," he
d.
In a town in which movies are $5 (and that's
hout the popcorn) and at a time when the
rds Police Academy 6 are appearing on mar-
es throughout the U.S., what could be better?
E RETURN OF TlE BIG SHOW appears at
dia Mendelssohn Theater tonight through
urday at 8 p.m. Tickets are $3.50 at the
chigan Union ticket office and $4 at the door.

curse?

BY BETH COLQUITT
WHEN the name Arthur Miller is
mentioned, most people think one of
two things. The readers, theatergoers
and English majors think of The
Crucible, Death of a Salesman, and
All My Sons. The rest of the public
usually thinks of the third husband
of movie star Marilyn Monroe. If
they think hard they may remember
The Misfits, written for her and
starring Monroe and Clark Gable.
However, Arthur Miller, now 79,
has many more credits to his name.
One of Miller's lesser known plays,
A View from the Bridge, will be
performed by Houston's Alley The-
atre tonight at the Michigan Theater.
A View from the Bridge is a play
that Miller originally wrote partially
in verse. It was coupled with a
shorter, less successful one act called
A Memory of Two Mondays. Miller
revised View, removing the verse
and expanding it. It was well-re-
ceived in London and off-Broadway.
The story revolves around the
unconscious incestuous passion that
longshoreman Eddie Carbone harbors
for his teenage niece Catherine. It is
set in the '50s in Red Hook, a Ital-
ian immigrant slum in Brooklyn
that faces the bay on the seaward side
of the Brooklyn Bridge. Eddie and
his neighbors hide illegal immi-
grants who need help. When Cather-
ine falls in love with her cousin, an
immigrant hiding with the Car-
bones, Eddie turns informant in a
jealous rage. This breach of his
society's most sacred rule leads to
his death.
Since the play was written during
the McCarthy era communist witch-
hunts, the play historically had a
little more political relevance when
it was first performed than it does
today; the concept of an ordinary
citizen turning informant would have
hit home with many.
View is frequently called a classi-
cal Greek tragedy. William Albright
of the Houston Post calls A View
from the Bridge "a blend of On the
Waterfront and Sophocles'Oedipus
Rex. "Miller incorporates the Greek

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belief in Fate, and uses a chorus
leader-like narrator, played by a
friendly neighboring lawyer. The
lawyer follows us through the play
onstage, predicting and explaining
the main character's fatal flaw and-
his invitable downfall, linking the
story with ancient Greek tragedies.
"Like the heroes of Greek tragedy,"
says Brooks Atkinson of the New
York Times, "(Eddie) topples the

Eddie (Philip LeStrange) sits be-
fore Alfieri (Bob Marich) in
Miller's A View from the Bridge.
whole house down on himself in the
final catastrophe of a haunted play."
The. story for View comes from a
true story told to Miller by a long-
shoreman union organizer in a
neighborhood close to the Brooklyn
Bridge. Interestingly enough, the real
life conclusion had the niece stab-
bing the uncle to death. Miller did
not know this until years after the
play w ,! written.
A VIE FROM THE BRIDGE is
playin tonight only at the
MichiE 1 Theater at 8 p.m. Tickets
are $2 50 and $18. Student tickets
are av, '.able with I.D. for $7.50.
Tickets re available at the Michigan
Theat. ox Offie from 11 a.m. to
6 p.m. ?I by phone at 668-8397.

I
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s

q


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Basement Arts
Presents:
BREAKING INERTIA
by Steve Doppelt
THE YOUNGSTOWN ROSE
by David Leichtman
Two original One-Act Plays
Thurs. & Fri., March 16 & 17 5:00pm
Arena Theatre, Basement of Frieze Bldg.
ADMISSION IS FREE
TME PImCGRAM IN M.M & VIDEO STUDIES PRESENTS
KeX Jacobs
One of the most innovative and influential experimental filmmakers in
this country and Professor of Film Studies at S.U.N.Y. Binghamton will be
present for a two-evening secreening of his films as part of the
Yon Barna Memorial Symposium on Avant-Garde Cinema

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1839 1989)

Ken Jacobs to pre sent a 3-D
film without the glasses
BY MARK SHAIMAN
KEN Jacobs is coming to town and he's bringing The Whole Shebang
with him.
Jacobs is one of the most innovative modern experimental filmmakers,
but don't let the word "experimental" scare you away, because he is also a
performer.
His performances in Ann Arbor are part of the Yon Barna Memorial'
Symposium on Avant-Garde Cinema sponsored by The Program in Film
and Video Studies, which has already brought P. Adams Sitney and Stan ;
Brakhage to campus.
His appearance here is a two-night attraction. Tonight, he will present a
retrospective of his works, starting with Blonde Cobra, which was made
between 1959 and 1963. It is a "look in on an exploding life, on a man of
imagination suffering pre-fashionable lower East Side deprivation and
consumed with American 1950s, '40s, '30s disgust... enticing us into an a°
absurd moral posture the better to dismiss us with a regal 'screw-off,"'
Jacobs said. Other showings this night will include Air Shaft (1967), Globe
(1969) a 3-D film, Perfect Film (1985), and Nissan Ariana Window (1969).
See Jacobs, Page 9
GOLD RING SALE

A Representative from Boston University will be on campus:
Thursday, March 16, 4 p.m.
Friday, March 17, 1 p.m.
Large Lecture Room of the International Center

__

THE

COMEDY

COMPANY

presents...

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Thursday. March 16th
Blonde Cobra

Friday. March 17th

(1960-r3)
I1 Al^f\

The Whole Shebang (1987)