0 J ARTS Monday, February 26, 1990 The Michigan Daily Page 8 War creates Enemies I Enemies, a Love Story dir. Paul Mazursky -f ' The mayor's wife (Janet Clarkson) and her husband (Michael A. Barron) discuss some problems in The Inspector General, performed by the University Players over the weekend. ego*:~C IrN Q~ e by Brent Edwards There is a scene in Enemies, A Love Story where Herman (Ron Silver) stands before a sign in a train station that points to three different destinations. One is the Bronx where he lives with his wife, Yadwiga (Margaret Sophie Stein) - a Polish peasant whom he doesn't love but whom he mar- ried out of gratitude for hiding him from the Nazis. One points to Brooklyn where his lover Masha (Lena Olin) lives, the woman he loves tremendously and can't live without. The last points to Man- hattan where Tamara (Anjelica Huston), the wife he thought had died in a concentration camp, has suddenly appeared and taken resi- dence. The scene aptly sums up the situation in which Herman finds himself as it does his inability to make any decisions whatsoever be- tween the three. Beautifully directed by Paul Mazursky (Down and Out in Bev- erly Hills) and adapted from a novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer, Enemies presents a New York City of 1949 washed out in browns and grays, as if the city's color had been drained by World War II and has not yet had time to recover. The film is a serio-comedy in which, as with most Mazursky films (An Unmarried Woman, Moscow on the Hudson), the comedic element is a constant un- dercurrent to the more serious themes presented. The story deals with Herman's attempts to handle the three women in his life, but instead of focusing on how he handles them (zany scenes with him on three dinner dates at once could have been pro- duced a la Three's Company), the viewer is drawn toward why he does and the motives behind each character involved. Silver is haunted by the Nazis who hunted him; he sees them in his dreams and hears their dogs chasing him as he walks down then street. His un- sympathetic portrayal of a man with three wives shows us a man now incapable of making impor- tant decisions after his ordeal dur- ing the war. When one of the women's mothers dies, he says, "Maybe your mother's better off. She doesn't have to make any deci- sions; that's the one advantage to being dead." In a sense, he is still stands Herman exactly. She was left for dead in a concentration camp and is visited at night by vi- sions of her dead children. She seems content to take whatever she can get out of life. Olin portrays the unstable but sensuous Masha (not quite as erotic as her role in The Unbearable Lightness of Be- ing) who has lost faith in God. At times she doesn't seem to care about life and explains, "After all I've been through, how could it matter if I was to die, commit sui- 9 Inspector a general disappointment When a piece of theater is called "black comedy" it's implied that there's a harmonious balance of the two items, "black" and comedy, in the show. Just how much of each is left to the director's discretion, and the acceptance of a show depends on whether the director achieves the bal- ance the playwright intended. In the case of University Players produc- tion of Nikolai Gogol 's The Inspec- tor General, this balance was not properly struck. Gogol's black comedy about cor- ruption in a small Russian village has the potential to be quite evilly satirical. When a newcomer arrives in the village, the higher-ups, who have been warned that a government inspector is coming to investigate corruption, immediately assume that the young gentleman is the inspector travelling incognito. They fall to fawning and bribing the young man who, being broke, is happy to take advantage of the hospitality of the village. Unfortunately, in trying to bring out the comic aspects in the sleazi- ness of the village officials, director Richard Klautsch lost much of the satire and bleakness that underlies the comedy. Gogol wasn't aiming to write pure slapstick in Inspector, and in making the play lean toward the comic Klautsch left behind the satire without which the comedy can't quite stand up. The silly slap- stick side of the play is not continu- ous or consistent enough to hold the play on its own. Even the remaining satire was weakened because of the emphasis on comedy. There were scenes in the second act that were chillingly nightmarish, but because they were not led up to by continuous underly- ing satire they seemed oddly out of place. The town officials were such figures of fun in earlier sections of the play that the audience didn't seem to know how to react when the Mayor suddenly sadistically kicked two merchants. In only one scene, other than the last, was the satire truly evident: the "Inspector General" is nearly attacked by a horde of beg- gars who burst into the Mayor's house to appeal to him for help. The stark contrast between this astonish- ingly well-done few seconds and the rest of the play showed the distance which Klautsch placed between the black and the comedy. Congratulations should go to Lighting Designer Susan Chute for her footlighting. By throwing up the See REVIEW, page 9. Herman (Ron Silver) and Masha (Lena Olin) argue, presumably over the fact that Masha is not Herman's only wife. The comical undertones of this predicament are subdued to portray Herman's serious situation. hiding in the barn that he used to escape the Nazis. He shares with the three women the common bond of having survived the war which, although four years past, still greatly affects their lives. Yadwiga, the peasant wife, is brilliantly portrayed by Margaret Sophie Stein; she deserves an Oscar nomination as much as Hus- ton and Olin. She is a simple woman who has dedicated herself to caring for Herman, bathing and feeding him; she desparately wants to become Jewish so she can bear his child. Huston is terribly cool as Herman's first wife who under-, cide?" Each of the women is well defined and wonderfully given depth by the actors. The motivations, de- cisions, and emotions of these three draw the viewer's attention and sympathies, providing much material for post-movie ponder- ings. As with Crimes and Misde- meanors, Enemies has genuinely funny scenes but has you leaving the theater without feeling that you've laughed much at all - per-, haps a universal comment on life. ENEMIES, A LOVE STORY isi playing at Briarwood. Writers travel to exotic oases 5, a i.4 CURRENT RESIDENCE HALL by Jay Pinka AND so it's Monday, that unwel- come day in a week full of midterms, and you're squeezing your brain cells for any spark of ingenuity you can muster. Whether you work with words, numbers, for culture or For science, the final push before the repast of spring break can feel like breaking through intergalactic barri- ers. If you're feeling the monodrone of Michigan weather, the confines of culture, and the limitations of lan- guage, there is a cure. Stephanie Halgren and Richard Terrill will offer an intimately whimsical, exotic oa- sis of sights and sounds through their fiction and poetry this evening at Guild House. The widely-published Halgren is a primary example of crossing disci- pl inary barriers by way of the ma., chinery of imagination. Through a long correspondence with her firs love, poetry, she has resurrected lan; guage into a series of polished equa- tions where the logic is lyricism. "Sound means as much as mean; ing means," says Halgren. Though; fond of "mouthfuls of words," she carefully composes the music behind hers. "If it doesn't sound right, it's not right," she says. A graduate of University of Ark- zona's M.F.A poetry writing pro-, gram, Halgren has appeared in Iron- wood, The Georgia Review, The North American Review, Black See GUILD, page 9 9 NOW OPEN Bangkok III Located in the Michigan Union 530 S. State Street - 662-6169 Lunch & Dinner Plates: $3.25 Thai: Pad Thai, Gang Gal, Gang Pa, Tofu with Cashews, Pad Pak Chinese: Pepper Steak, Sweet & Sour Chicken, Almond Chicken, Fried Rice, Eggroll Dine In or Carry Out Mon-Sat. 11:00-8:00 Sunday 4:00-8:00 Iv { [STATE COUPON) MONDAY SPECIAL1 BULK CANDY 20% OFF EXPIRES 2126190 1 FEE 13 1 L' The University of Michigan Center for Russian and East European Studies A Public Briefing and Roundtable with Center Faculty Thursday, March 1, 1990 Rackham Ampitheatre, 2:00-5:00 p.m Reception Following UPHEAVAL IN THE EAST: REVOLUTION IN THE USSR AND EAST-CENTRAL EUROPE * For more information please contact: THE HOUSING INFORMATION OFFICE I