The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, April 3, 1996 - 9 .Too much talking'Here': Basement Arts' latest production falls flat By Mitchell Katz For theDaily G"rgeand IraGershwin'sclassic song "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off," in which a couple fights over the correct pronUnciation of the words either, nei- ther, tOmato and oyster, is a wonderful xampge of how verbal sparring between 1oupes can be worth listening to. Then again, if the Gershwin brothers had decided to stretch the song out into an entire play, it could have gotten ,pretty tiresome. -This is pretty much the case with Michael Frayn's "Here," staged by Basement Arts last weekend. What should have been a 10-minute acting exercise was needlessly protracted into a 90-minute play. It's easy to see why *Here," which was universally panned RECORDS Continued from Page 5 Therapy? Infernal Love A&M **** Well, it certainly took long enough for this album to be released domesti- cally. It is a brilliant piece of work. There have already been three singles released in Europe from this album. And with good reason. The sound on the album is astoundingly good. Singer Andy Cairns' voice is in fine form, stretched over some of the finest guitar- centric music to be produced to this date by anyone. * "Infernal Love" begins with some low vibrations that break into a blister- ing attack of excitingly arranged gui- tars in "Epilepsy." Layered with in- triguing shouts, Cairns's wavy voice and guitar, drums, bass that has always been a Therapy? trademark, the song is far more satisfying than any popular musicpumped over our radios and TVs of late. And the album runs in wonderful yways. The album is fairly dark. Songs tend toward the dismal outlook type. The title should be as much of a tip-off as anything to that fact. The guttural horns on "Stories" combined with the chorus of "Happy people have no stories" is pretty normative for the album. Therapy? has teeth, and they're not afraid to bite into you, hit the bone and grind away until you reach a penultimate ecstasy of gut- *vrenching pain coupled with extreme enjoyment and profound interest. The quieter, more introspective songs on the album create some more subtle emotions in the listener. "A Moment of Clarity" gently but adamantly relates a person's reflections on love, convinc- ingly drawing in the listener. "Diane," a cover song, is as good a song about obsession as you're goingto find. "Bow- ls of Love" is a very traditional sound- 4ng ballad, except for the imagery ofthe vile (like maggots). It's all very much like a dagger at the base of the neck, but as a relief from suffering, as opposed to a tearing away of life. The album has its up moments, too, though. "Loose" is a very happy, live- for-the-moment-and-damn-tomorrow type of song. The song goes very fast and makes you love the ride, with its engaging lyrics and dizzyingly on mu- ic. The album actually ends on a positive note as well, with repetition of the phrase "There is a light at the end of the tunnel." But from start to finish, the album should make you feel like you are listening to some- thing special. And that's because you are. So, go out and buy this disc. Buy 10 copies and give them to your friends. Buy 100 and give them to people who 'ou like the look of. Make the radio stations play it. Make MTV show vid- eos from it. But most importantly, put it in your music-playing device and listen to it. The rest should then be apparent. - Ted Watts in London upon its premiere, never made it to Broadway, and never should have made it to Ann Arbor. "Here" revolves around a couple named Cath and Phil at two different stages in their lives: As a young couple settling into its first apartment, and then as an older couple moving into a new, more spacious apartment. A per- fect premise for a biting, effective look at the miscommunication between couples, right? The first four lines of the play were "What." "What." "What." "What." A good play doesn't necessarily need a real catchy opening like "It was the best ... A of times, it was the worst of times," or "Call me Ishmael," but some strong dialogue is usually a good way to get audiences engrossed. Similar exchanges followed: "I don't like it." "Yes you ZEVIEW do." "I don't." "You do." Here In another: "Will it?" "Won't [rena Theater it?" "I think it March 29, 1996 will." "It will." Picture Abbott and Costello or the Marx Brothers drained of all humor and personality, and you'll get a good idea of what an evening with Cath and Phil is like. The couple fights over where to move furniture - hence the "here" in the play's title. They bicker over such words as "inauthentic" and "overdetermined." They fight over a sweater, and about where some soup is located. The theme of miscommunication was overplayed to the point where watching the couple's pretty hate machinebecame pretty damn boring. Jaime Saginor and Aric D. Knuth, as the younger Cath and Phil, and Sophina Brown and Jonathan Berry as the older couple, all breathed life into a script that wouldhave been murderto read. All must be commended, if not pitied, for memo- rizing Frayn's impossible dialogue. All the actors did their best to make their characters likable. Maybe it couldn't be done. Cath and Phil came across as unpleasant, uninteresting char- acters, the sort that even Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn couldn't pull off. Phil says to Cath at one point, "We don't speak the same language any- more." To the contrary, both of them seem to mimic each other's clipped, boring speech, totally alien to real con- versation, and one couldn't help but think that these two really deserved each other. It was unclear which couple was play- ing the older couple and which was playing the younger couple. That the younger Cath called the younger Phil a "dirty old man" didn't help matters. And as staged by director Allison Tkac, an uncomfortable foreplay scene be- tween the younger couple made the groping of 13-year-olds worldwide look incredibly expert in comparison. The third character of the play, Cath and Phil's downstairs neighbor Pat, was played humorously and sympathetically by Ellen Dobrin, who at least had some real dialogue to work with. At one point the happy couple de- cides to settle an argument by physical force. Mark Alhadeff had the difficult task of staging fight scenes in this inti- mate theater atmosphere, and he man- aged to make them convincing; they were a welcome break from the droning banter. For her directorial debut, Tkac picked an extremely difficult play. It takes a good director to make a terrible play bearable. Whatever action there was, she kept moving, and the complex stag- ing of having both couples interacting at the same time was managed with skill. Still, one has to wonder what exactly Tkac saw in this play. 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