Conor McPherson's "Port Authority"

I watched my second McPherson play last night in a converted church (Gothic Revival) in Chelsea. The Atlantic Theater company, founded by David Mamet and William H. Macy, runs this off-Broadway theater, as well as an acting school which practices an acting technique called Practical Aesthetics, originally conceived by the two men.

Directed by Henry Wishcamper, the play interweaves three monologues spoken by three men at a bus terminal. Kevin (john Gallagher, Jr.), the young man who just left home to live on his own, hangs out with loser-bands, and lets the girl he loves walk away. Dermot (Brian d'Arcy James) is a middle-aged exec who thinks he's going somewhere, finally, in his career, only to find himself back at square one, with a wife who chose him because she pitied him for his mediocrity. Joe (Jim Norton), living in an old age home, recalls giving up a romantic opportunity because he was too afraid. As Kevin puts it, the world has only two souls we all share: the one who flows along with things, and the one who fights. The three men share the first.

The writing is sharp, and sometimes moving. McPherson has a good ear for the way people talk about themselves. The acting is always vivid; especially memorable is Jim Norton who creates an average Joe quite different from the talkative drunk of an older brother in "The Seafarer." I did not like the soft background music and lighting effects that accompany epiphanic moments. The writing is evocative enough on its own.

The Headhunter's all-purpose 5-point scale: ****

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reading Thumboo's "Ulysses by the Merlion"

I've just revised a poem written years ago, a poem that delineates the different responses of four readers, of different generations, to the seminal nationalistic poem by Edwin Thumboo . Thumboo is reckoned to be the first major Singaporean poet writing in English. First, Thumboo's poem, then followed by mine. ULYSSES BY THE MERLION (for Maurice Baker) I have sailed many waters, Skirted islands of fire, Contended with Circe Who loved the squeal of pigs; Passed Scylla and Charybdis To seven years with Calypso, Heaved in battle against the gods. Beneath it all I kept faith with Ithaca, travelled, Travelled and travelled, Suffering much, enjoying a little; Met strange people singing New myths; made myths myself. But this lion of the sea Salt-maned, scaly, wondrous of tail, Touched with power, insistent On this brief promontory... Puzzles. Nothing, nothing in my days Foreshadowed this Half-beast, half-fish, This powerful creature of land and sea. Peoples settled here, Brought to th
Read more

Steven Cantor's "What Remains: the Life and Work of Sally Mann"

Image
Sally Mann, The Perfect Tomato , 199 0 Since it is moving pictures, a film necessarily captures--produces--a process. It turns photographs into the making of photographs. It joins moments ("spots of time") into a Life. This I expected watching Cantor's documentary on Sally Mann's creation of the exhibit "What Remains." So photographs of a long-dead beloved greyhound "lead" to photographs of the Civil War battlefield of Antietam, to photographs of Mann's Virginian farm bloodied by the police killing of a runaway convict, to photographs of decomposing bodies in a forensic study site, as if each group of pictures forms an independent yet preparatory stage in the creative process. What I did not expect to see is the influence of the film-making on the photography itself. Mann begins to think of her exhibit as a "narrative," and wants the narrative of death to end on a more uplifting note. With such an idea in mind, she takes close-up pic
Read more

Goh Chok Tong's Visit to FCBC

Image
I am surprised by how much this incident is affecting me. I thought I have moved past my former religious life, left it behind in Singapore, but like tin cans tied to a dog it has followed me and is rattling me. I am posting the incident, and my response to it, here on this blog, because I want to remember that the past is not yet past. When Emeritus Senior Minister of Singapore Goh Chok Tong visited Faith Community Baptist Church on 13 January during a Sunday service, Senior Pastor Lawrence Khong took the opportunity to deliver a hateful anti-gay message . Among other things, he said: We affirm that the family unit comprises a man as Father, a woman as Mother, and Children. This is the basic building block of society, a value foundational for a secure future, a premise fundamental to nation-building. and warned ominously that We see a looming threat to this basic building block by homosexual activists seeking to repeal Section 377A of the Penal Code.   Examples from ar
Read more