By wpengine October 24, 2002
The partial standing ovation at the end of the show was, perhaps, the most interesting observation of the night. After all, the rapturous applause by some and the hesitant claps by others underlines what playwright, Christopher Durang expected from his audience. Not that the performance was a poor one; by all means, the Cornell Theatre Department’s presentation of Betty’s Summer Vacation is a showcase of actors who understand their play inside out. But the question of whether or not the fulfillment of the playwright’s expectations makes the play a success remains. The play sets a number of stereotypical characters in a summerhouse on the beach. Betty, a young lady and the play’s most realistic character serves as moralist to her peculiar array of housemates: Trudy, an abused child with overdramatic tendencies; Mrs. Siezmagraff, Trudy’s mother and an alcoholic; Keith, an apprehensive serial killer; and Buck, a testosterone-filled pervert. As their summer vacation begins they notice another tenant in their house. A series of voices that laugh and comment on their actions interacts with the characters. At first this seems odd to the housemates but they soon accept it as commonplace. It quickly becomes clear that the voices are in fact a metaphoric portrayal of the public majority. Or as the program would suggest, an American viewing public that desires all things controversial. Durang’s script uses melodrama to discuss rape, incest, and murder so that such volatile issues can in fact be addressed. For example, Mrs. Siezmagraff shrugs off the fact that Keith has a collection of body parts in his room and dismisses her late husband’s rape of their daughter as a mere drunken escapade. However, the voices become increasingly frustrated as instances of such things become less frequent. Instead of just laughing at the perverse goings on of the house, they start to provoke the housemates into doing progressively worse things. At first they desire Betty (Lauren Wells) to be shocked again by a frozen penis in the freezer but later go as far as asking Buck to rape Keith! Shocking? Yes, but only to some of the audience. Conversely, much of the audience accepted the characters’ melodrama and laughed at the situation’s ridiculous extremity. This divide in the audience is exactly what Durang had expected. An old interview* with the playwright is filled with statements of how he is aware that some people can accept serious topics being discussed comically and how others cannot. In this sense, the performance is a five star one. Director Stephen Cole mobilizes all such ideas in his interpretation of the script — this is evident from the mixed reaction of the crowd. The actors too perform their roles perfectly, each accepting his or her function as archetype as opposed to a real person, and each sustaining the strenuous vigor of melodramatic acting throughout. Individual performances that particularly stand out are that of Ben Appelbaum’s amalgamation of Johnny Bravo and American Pie’s Stiffler in the role of Buck. Appelbaum stretches the limits of cheesiness and thinks with his crotch as if he were genius of the field. Jan Rogge (Mrs. Siezmagraff) provides the show’s most admirable individual moment as she acts out the scene of a complete courtroom in an astonishingly fast-paced, multi-character monologue that leaves even the audience gasping for breath. It could be said that the cast has successfully done its side of things with Betty’s Summer Vacation. However, despite Durang’s awareness of his style (he also uses comedy with serious issues in other plays) he perhaps is overly didactic to the point if it having a negative effect. What makes a great didactic playwright is one who is completely conscious of the lessons his/her script possesses yet implements them in a way that is not glaringly obvious; a way that leaves much to the deciphering of the audience member. We learn best when an issue is brought to our attention and we are able to think about it constructively. Betty’s Summer Vacation ultimately lays it all out on the table. The voices in the house literally tell us the social realism being presented. It could be argued that the humor doesn’t positively allow us to view our social ills, but rather negatively allows us to overlook them. It is the same scenario as a racist joke: however terrible the subject at hand people laugh whilst simultaneously stating “man, that’s awful.” The sheer fact they are “jokes” and that they are continuously retold underlines how the method of bringing humor to a serious subject is a questionable method for improving our ways.Archived article by Tom Britton
By wpengine October 24, 2002
A sneak preview is one of life’s little pleasures. Not only do you get to see a film before all of your friends; but you also become the expert on the film, deciding its fate, at least in your circle of seven friends. So when The Ring went into sneak preview over fall break I was the first one on line to see the urban legend thriller. The main catchphrase from the film, “Before you die, you see the ring”, will find itself being made fun of on Saturday Night Live and in living rooms across America. You never know, it may even replace “I see dead people”. The Ring provides the audience with a movie that is best watched through the fingers that will be covering your eyes in anticipation. The film opens with a scene very reminiscent of the famed Drew Barrimore scene in Scream. Two teenage girls, Katie and Becca, are lounging in skimpy school uniforms in Katie’s empty house gossiping about their oh-so-steamy sex lives. When Becca tells Katie about some freaky videotape that kills you seven days after you watch it, Katie tells Becca she’s seen the tape. Knowing it’s probably just an urban legend, the girls laugh it off. Until the TV turns itself on. A very “scary movie” opener, I began to worry that my hopes of a real thriller were crushed. But I was very wrong. The movie really takes shape when reporter Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) gets her hands on the story of the mysterious videotape along with the story of the four teenagers who watched it — who all died exactly seven days later. So she tracks down the video and, as the entire audience screams “don’t do it!” watches the tape. Ring Ring. The phone rings and a young girl’s whisper tell Rachel “seven days.” Her mission is clear. She has to figure out where this videotape came from and how she can prevent her supposed demise. The audience is immediately sympathetic for Watts’ character, a hard-ass reporter with a young son who she hardy understands. Her son Aiden, played by a wide-eyed David Dorfman, calls his mother by her first name and is seemingly an expert on death. Rachel’s main concern is keeping her son safe, especially when he gets his hands on the tape and watches it before Rachel can stop him. When we learn that Aiden’s father is the adorable video expert Noah (Martin Henderson), who has also seen the tape, we are now hoping not only for three lives to be saved, but for a family to be as well. After Noah sees the fated tape he joins Rachel in her mission to discover the meaning of the ring. In this search, they find themselves seeing images from the tape in their life until they realize “Before you die, you see the ring”. Luckily for them, Rachel’s reporter status gives them access to old newspapers and favors called in to old friends at the morgue. They follow the story to an island where they discover the unthinkable things that affected this small town after a sterile couple, the Morgans, bring Samara into the world. One of the main atrocities imposed on the town was the death of hundreds of horses on the Morgan’s ranch. And one of the most outrageous scenes in the movie is when a horse, on route to the island by boat with Rachel, escapes from its cage and after terrorizing the passengers, takes a flying leap straight into the ocean. As in all scary movies worthy of being called a thriller, The Ring plays homage to Alfred Hitchcock. As Rachel shows Noah the movie, she wanders to the window. In true Rear Window style, the audience becomes voyeurs along with Rachel, witnessing the people in the apartment building across from hers carrying on their daily activities including watching harmless television. The last man we see is (perhaps Jimmy Stewart?) in a wheelchair with a broken leg watching a video. The director, Gore Verbinski, pulls this off with great ease. He incorporates looming camera angles and random ‘rings’ strategically placed throughout the film. I watched this movie peaking through my hands that were supposed to be shielding my eyes. The film is masterfully paced, keeping a tally of how many days Rachel has left to live at the bottom of the screen throughout the movie. The movie doesn’t end when you think it does, a twist only a movie such as this could pull off so seamlessly. Thankfully, I saw this film in the theater and not on videotape or, who knows, I might only have seven days left. Archived article by Alyssa Cohen