' 1

e 9tdr tm t ilq

C Ioolfree music and fun
Virgin and Capitol Records is hosting an evening of sex, drugs and rock
'n' roll (wel, at least the rock 'n' roll part) at Not Another Cafe tonight,
between 10:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. Stop by and pick up lots of cool,
free stuff from the Pharcyde, Everclear, Spearhead, Cocteau Twins,
Smashing Pumpkins, Ben Harpor, Blur and others.

Wednesday
February 21, 1996


'U' alum, TV hero Cooper to direct


By Jessica Chaffin
For the Daily
"The Brady Bunch," "Gilligan's Is-
land," "I Dream of Jeannie," "The Dick
van Dyke Show." Soon to be added to
this illustrious list of directorial credits:
"The Male Animal" at the Lydia
Mendelssohn Theater.
All are the efforts of Hal Cooper,
iversity alum and Television Hall of
tmer who has returned to direct the
Department of Theater and Drama's
production of James Thurber's classic
comedy.

THE MALE
ANIMAL

4 :. t. dA

When: Thursday through Saturday
at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m.
Where: Lydia Mendelssohn Theater
Tickets: $16, $12, ($6 for
students). Call 764-0450 for more
information.
Thurber's play, circa 1940, is one
of rivalry and mishaps that uses the
Michigan-Ohio State rivalry as its
backdrop, building toward the "big

game." This "who-stole-the-mascot?"
comedy was a natural choice for Coo-
per, who graduated from the Univer-
sity in 1946, and describes it as "one
of the best American comedies of the
century."
"I decided to take a play from the era
when I was at school," Cooper ex-
plained. "It's fun to look back 50 years
and see the things that never change and
the things that do change."
Cooper's story is one of mythical
Hollywood proportions that started
out with a career in radio as a child
actor, and evolved into that of a stage
actor when he reached the University.
Cooper's career.treading the boards
at the Mendelssohn Theater was in-
terrupted in 1943 when he was called
to naval duty in the South Pacific
during World War II. He returned to
the University in 1946 to finish his
degree.
After graduation he went on to work
in the newly emerging industry of
television. He has written, directed
and produced more than 75 different
shows since then, including such no-
table classics as "The Mary Tyler
Moore Show," "The Odd Couple,"
"All in the Family," and the afore-
mentioned "Brady Bunch."
Cooper's love for theater, however,
has remained constant. "Everythingelse
stems from theater - you can photo-
graph it or record it, but it's all basically
theater." The play will be done as a
period piece, and the lobby of the
Mendelssohn will be decorated with
newspapers and memorabilia to create
an atmosphere of the time.
Although Cooper admits that the
University's appearance is decidedly
different than when he was an under-
graduate, he does not find the students
to be all that different, and believes that
the themes and antics of the play are
sure to strike a chord with contempo-
rary audiences.
"One of the interesting things about
the play is to see how people remain
constant. The story may change, the
dress may change, but the people be-
neath the cover stay the same, and prob-
ably always will."

No, it's not the cast of the "Usual Suspects," but of "Glengarry Glen Ross."
Mamet's 'Glengarry': Talk is cheap

By Melissa Rose Bernardo
Daily Theater Editor
Brandon Epland: It's taken over(pause)
our mental (pause) paths as well as our,
our speaking patterns. And it's, uh, we
start to.- I don't know - it's ..
Adam Greenfield: We start to, (pause)
we kindofslip intothe characters and our,
and our, lines sometimes, like, in places
that are completely out of the context.
Epland (overlapping): Exactly.
Greenfield (overlapping): Like in
class.
Brandon Epland and Adam
Greenfield are the director and assis-
tant director, respectively, of this
weekend's production of David
Mamet's "Glengarry Glen Ross." And
that short scene, an excerpt from our
interview, typifies a Mamet exchange.
Mamet's claim to fame - and argu-

GLENGARRY,
GLEN ROSS

a
7;

We cast of "The Male Animal."
Terry Allen
Human Remains
Sugar Hill

When: Thursday through Saturday
at 5 p.m. and Friday at 11 p.m.
Where: Arena Theater (basement
of Frieze Building).,
General admission seating is free.
ably his greatest gift - is his ear for
dialogue. Though many contemporary
playwrights create natural and realistic
situations and dialogue, how many of
us, as Epland points out, speak in com-
plete sentences? How many ofus throw
out zingers like a Neil Simon charac-
ter, or embark on the intellectual dia-
tribes of a Tom Stoppard play?
Mamet's characters speak in frag-
ments. They pause, they stutter, they
swear, they repeat themselves. And no
matter how loud they yell or how much
they reiterate, you can never be sure what
they're saying is the truth. The more they
talk, the lessthey say. And in "Glengarry
Glen Ross," Mamet adds another dimen-
s ion -the fact that these men are all real
estate salesmen, who talk their way into
deals, leads, and steak knives.
As actors, Greenfield and Epland ap-
preciate Mamet's words. "It feels ex-
tremely natural," Greenfield said. "Ev-
erythingjust kindofrolls ofyourtongue,"
Epland concurred. "Mamet captures the
way people talk--at least the way I talk.
Things that come out of my mouth don't
come out in full sentences. It's thought
after thought and all these thoughts are
interchanging each other."
"And then underneath that, there's
so much happening subtextually,"
Greenfield added. What's important in

Mamet is not necessarily what is said;
often, it is what is left unsaid - one
reason his characters are simultaneously
so intriguing and so infuriating.
In"GlengarryGlen Ross," we meetfive
real estate salesmen: Levene (Matt
Schicker), Moss (Epland), Aaronow
(Jonathan Berry), Roma (Greg Zola) and
Williamson (Greenfield). Williamson
takes orders from some higher unseen
powers, gets sheets full of "leads," and
distributes them to the men. And they're
all in a contest: To get the best leads, to be
on the board, to be high up onithe board, to
win a Cadillac, to keep their jobs.
Addto this ensemble a detective, Baylen
(Ed Lewis), a spineless possible sale (Mark
Alhadeff), and this production's newest
player, Blake (Matthew Clifford). The
characterof Blake was addedby Mametto
the film version of the play, and was
adapted by the Basement ensemble to
provide background for the characters and
their situation.
This group of ladder-climbing, back-
stabbing salesmen may not sound like
the type you'd want to spend an evening
with, but that's another fascinating ex-
ample of Mamet's expertise. You have
to look - and listen - deeper.
"It's very possible that people will get
turned off by the shop talk that these men
deal with. But if they give it a chance and
see beyond that, there are many different
people in these men," Epland said. "Ev-
eryone wants to make it big, and everyone
will do whatever they can to make it big.
That's what these people go through."
It's the American dream, pure and
simple. Of course in Mamet, it's not so
pure. But that's the brilliance of it. Listen
to these men. Listen to yourselves. And
then tell me how different we really are.

Terry Allen isn't your ordinary coun-
singer. The Lubbock-based singer/
songwriter is something of a Renaissance
man - and not just because his sculp-
tures sit in New York's Museum of Mod-
em Art and Denver International Airport.
Allen switches musical genres as
quickly and successfully as he crosses
artistic media. The songs on his latest
Sugar Hill release "Human Remains"
range from bluesy rockers like "Gone
to Texas," to mid-tempo country bal-
lds like "Room to Room" (a duet with
Lucinda Williams), to ragtime swing
("That Kind of Girl"), to just plain
strange (David Byrne's "Buck Naked").
What couldbecomeascattered mess of
shtick in less capable hands works well
forAllen. He's a fine songwriter, an intel-
ligent, witty lyricist and he's not afraid to
use those gifts to criticize singer/
songwriters more successful and less tal-
I ted than he. In "Gone to Texas," Allen
esn't need anybody to sing to him
"about the common man/Some cowboy
fake who thinks all it takes/is a hat on his
head and a Grammy in his hand."

Allen gathers an impressive array of
musical guests and collaborators on
"Human Remains"; Williams, pedal
steel ace Lloyd Maines, fellow Texan
singer/songwriters Joe Ely and Jo Carol
Pierce, Will and Charlie Sexton, Jesse
Taylor and David Byrne all add their
idiosyncratic touches to the album.
The rowdiest of them all is, of course,
Allen. He occasionally overdoes it, espe-
cially on the Tex-Mex ballad "What of
Alicia" (the "yi yi yi yi"'s just don't cut
it). But with his gritty, matter-of-fact vo-
cals, Allen can make even campy lyrics
like those of "Crisis Site 13'("I'm 13
years old/Ihate your guts ... and I'm cute/
and it's your fault) sound convincing.
It sounds like "Human Remains" was
a hell of a lot of fun to record for Allen
and his gang of musician pals. Fortu-
nately, the record is just as enjoyable
for their listeners.
- Jennifer Buckley
Chrome Cranks
Dead Cool
Crypt Records
**I
Those of you suffering from a lack of
shockabilly garage-rock should go and
check out "Dead Cool" from the Chrome
Cranks. They've got Jon Spencer's atti-
tude and explosive blues vocals and the
Reverend Horton Heat's guitar licks wed-
ded together in hellbilly bliss - what
more could you ask for? A little original-
ity maybe, but on tracks like "Dead Cool,"
"Way-Out Lover," "Bloodshot Eye" and
"Nightmare in Pink," the focus isn't so
much on creating anything new as on

Man or Astroman? will boggle your mind with their verbal and sonic gymnastics.

perfecting the art form of white-trash
country-thrash. A shambling cover of the
Yardbirds' "Lost Woman"provides some
amusement, but on the whole this collec-
tion of Hasil Adkins/'60s garage-punk
inspired mischief is more dead than cool.
- Heather Phares
Man Or Astroman?
Deluxe Men in Space
Touch and Go
Small things can be fun. Peanuts.
Midgets. And this Man or Astroman?
EP. Six songs at around 10 minutes is
surely small, and it is definitely fun.
"U-URANUS" is a great garage rockin'
song about everyone's favorite planet,

complete with the nerd whine vocals you'd
expect from this outfit. "Configuration 9"
is a darker song, an instrumental journey
into a hardcore Munsters movie or a dark
episode of"Speed Racer."'The pink noise
of the final track, "Rhombics," makes for
an aceptably technical flourish.
As much as anything else, though,
the B-movie and Civil Defense pro-
gram voice samples make this small
piece a vessel of fun. Warnings about
being destroyed by the proximity of a
bomb or various technical improve-
ments of the last however many years,
are hallmarks of a fine post-modern
throwback. And with as space-age a set
of liner notes as is present, there really
is no question of Man or Astroman.
-- Ted Watts

ABROAD 11

Semester, Summer
and Year Programs
Ecuador *Spain
England * France
Canada * Mexico
Chile * Italy

***** s ... Classic
*... Excellent
*** ... Good
** Fair
* ...PoorI
Zero .. A Bomb 1

HEY WHY NOT TRADE YOUR


FOR

$

THIS SUMMER!!!

Internship and Summer
Job Fair
Today!
12:00 noon - 4:00pm
Michigan Union - 2nd floor

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apartment in the Sublet Issue

Published:
Wednesday, March 27
Deadline: r-n r 4


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