The Michigan Daily - Monday, March 20, 1989 - Page 11
B ridge has breathtaking view
BY BETH COLQUITT
D o you believe in fate? Until
Thursday night I had a firm disbelief
in any propelling force behind my
life. That belief hasn't changed, but
it has been shaken. A View from the
Bridge, one of Arthur Miller's lesser-
known plays, brims with evidence
that our lives are predestined. At
least, Eddie Carbone's life was.
From a true story related to him
by a longshoreman in Brooklyn
some years ago, Arthur Miller has
managed to draw a truly ancient
Greek-style tragedy. Eddie Carbone
the character was reminiscent of
Oedipus. The twist on Oedipus Rex
is that it was the uncle who fell in
love with the niece instead of the son
falling in love with the mother. As
in Oedipus, the forbidden passion
that was revealed in the story lead to
an inevitable and tragic ending.
The Alley Theatre, based in
Houston, unfolded Miller's drama for
Ann Arbor theatergoers last Thursday
night at the Michigan Theater. The
acting was so convincing that seeing
the actors smiling and taking a bow
at the curtain call was confusing. To
the audience, Philip LeStrange was
Eddie Carbone and Julie Bayer was
Catherine, the innocent source of
Eddie's passion. The Alley Theatre
brought the audience right in to the
Italian slum world of Red Hook,
giving us their values and their life
in a temporary exchange for ours.
Two aspects of the play gave it a
slightly less real appearance. The
character of Rodolpho, while amus-
ing, somehow lacked depth. It was
hard to see how, in the space of one
evening, he could have captured the
heart of a person like Catherine. We
never saw exactly what Rodolpho
was like, only external eccentricities
and a sense of humor. This would
not have impaired the production ex-
cept for the fact that all of the other.
main characters were portrayed with
great depth and perception.
The other flaw, which was not so
much in the acting but the script,
was the character of Mr. Alfieri. Mr.
Alfieri is a neighborhood lawyer who
would have inhabited the role of nar-
rator or chorus leader in an ancient
Greek tragedy. Although he was an
absolutely necessary character, giving
the audience essential insight into
Eddie's life, Alfieri himself was a
little goofy. His bemused aloofness
belied his expressed concern for Ed-
die's predicament. Like Rodolpho,
Mr. Alfieri was an odd contrast to
such intense characters as the Car-
bones and Catherine.
Despite these two small flaws,
View was a breathtaking tragedy.
The end felt inevitable, but this did
not make it any less shocking and
tragic. There was a stunned feeling at
the Eddie's death. It was also obvious
that the repercussions of the murder
were going to bring the rest of the
Carbone family crashing down. It
was truly a sobering and moving
show.
Atnanda Pays, Ernie Hudson, and Peter Weller (left to right) find that even the bottom of the ocean is no
refuge from bad screenwriting in Leviathan.
Le 0
eva an e nge srn
BY TONY SILBER
What Jaws did for going to the beach, Leviathan
does for going to the movies.
"This year's newest horror flick from the imagin-
ative minds at MGM is hardly imaginative - instead,
it's more like, "Haven't we seen this somewhere
before?" The answer is certainly "yes" after a mere 20
minutes into the stupidity. This is Alien reincarnated,
no doubt whatsoever. Instead of trying to progress the
horror genre, the makers of Leviathan sought cover
under an established, successful technique.
This film is a big, lavish dud from the kids of Dino
De Laurentiis. And although money is clearly no ob-
ject, Leviathan is not spectacular by any means despite
its ornate visual effects. The cast is also somewhat
misplaced in the horror genre. As for the story, we
have indeed seen this before in the Alien films and in
other horror films as a small group of people are put
in an environment with an undesirable, killing creature
which they cannot escape from.
Underwater, off the coast of Florida some time in
the future, Leviathan takes us to a mining colony
t,000 feet below the surface of the Atlantic. Peter
Weller (Robocop) and Richard Crenna (The Flamingo
Kid) star as the manager and doctor of the facility.
During their routine mining of silver, they stumble on
a sunken Russian ship, and following this discovery,
terrible things start to happen as the crew of the col-
ony begin to be picked off one by one by the Levia-
than monster.
The story ultimately suffers from the predictability
that can tarnish any horror film. You know a certain
character is going to be killed, and it's just a matter of
how disgustingly this can be accomplished. Leviathan
offers its share of chills, shock moments, and flying
guts, but it doesn't offer much fear or terror. The film
is a waiting game for the next death to be more
creative and spectacular than the last. Predictability
thus causes the film to wallow in shallow waters.
An effective horror film is dependent on giving the
audience something new and innovative to entertain.
Psycho gave the famous shower scene. Rosemary's
Baby brought terror to the pregnancy period of a
woman. Jaws revived all our fears of the water. Hallo-
ween shocked. The Shining gave us nightmares. And
Alien glamorized terror. But Leviathan does nothing
new on its own to establish itself as innovative in any
way.
Michigan Daily
ARTS
763-0379
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(31
LEVIATHAN is,
in Ann Arbor.
M a
continued from Page 10
:his piece with the Jerusalem Sym-
phony. Unusual is an understate-
ment. Memories was a weird, highly
,-impressionistic series of Jewish
iYemenite folk songs. "It blends dif-
Wfdent cultures and calls on a lot of
abstract orchestral interpretation,"
Mehta described. The piece was very
modern and engrossing.
k- The final selection was Brahms'
Symphony No. 2, and Mehta and
company reached their peak here.
The first movement was played with
a pastoral sweetness and simple
flow. The second featured a dance-
like interlude as the strings emitted a
dream-like effervescence. The third
was a quick tempoed, high spirited
1oherzo. But the finale was the true
showpiece of this symphony. The
Istraelis charged the ending with a
ibrant, impassioned energy until
the dramatic brass ending. On the
whole, quite impressive.
The program offered three diverse
selections, and Mehta recognized the
difficulty in performing them in a
post-concert interview. "We played
music from three different periods:
the late romantic (Schoenberg), the
classic romantic (Brahms), and the
abstract (Kopytman)," he said. "They
all affect me differently."
Mehta and the Philharmonic are
in the middle of a three-month tour
and he couldn't feel more at home. "I
love touring and I love playing with
different groups, but Israel is still
my favorite place to perform."
His players are his colleagues,
and his relationship with them is a
purely professional one. Commented
Mehta, "Their training period is long
over. We just make music now."
Mehta's career has taken him all
over the world for over 30 years, but
his greatest influences are unques-
tionable: "My father, certainly, and
my teacher in Vienna." His father,
Mehli Mehta, is the Music Director
of the American Youth Orchestra.
Having been to every corner of
the world, played every piece in the
repertoire, recorded extensively, and
won major awards for many years,
what could be left for the 53-year-old
Indian to accomplish in the world of
classical music? "I want to record the
three great Mozart operas," Mehta
said. "That is my next goal." Don't
put it past him to accomplish this.
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