Tom Williams The dignified older gentleman, Miguel de Cervantes, played with genuine lovableness by Jim Harms gradually yet honestly wins the souls of his cellmates as he vividly weaves the story of Don Quixote. From Harm’s powerful opening number “I, Don Quixote” we know we’re on a dream-like journey.
The vagueness of the work set in an unnamed island sometime in the 19th Century peopled with characters trying to be Victorian imperialistic representatives of some country with natives that look like white boys and girls from down the block left me asking more questions than the play answered.
Add the one-note mentality that presents the blue collar trailer park ‘trash’ as a group of stupid, simple-minded losers into a sort of “one-joke” affair that quickly wore out its welcome.
I was impressed by the creative and craft of the Mossman/Miller film. In The Wake is a memory film that utilizes the main elements that distinguish film from other art forms. The cinematography was thrilling with a fine blend of panorama shots with thrilling chase footage with telling close ups.
We meet the Miller family – four children, the mother and father with an aunt and an uncle all surviving living together in an upper middle class Connecticut house. It is the 4th of July, 1906 in a time of pure innocence in America.
When Nicky, Florence’s 24 year old son arrive home from a year in Paris, the ill-tempered youth has something explosive to announce to his mother. Florence is so occupied doting on young lover that she dismisses Nicky as merely a rage-filled youth.
Adrift nicely moves back and forth in time allowing us to see, from Isaac’s memory of growing up with his father and the haunting remembrance of dad’s battle with post traumatic stress disorder.
It sure is a major event–as the best elements of large-scale animation video meets vivid lighting and with actors and dragons flying about over the audience produces the setting for the group of Viking (sporting a thick Scottish brogue?) …
This psychologically compelling work features a collection of damaged and emotionally wrecked individuals struggling to escape their unhappiness. They are filled with fear- of loneliness, of abandonment and the loss of the amenities of the good life. The don’t want to utilize the figurative American plan-that is one price for both room and meals.
We are enticed by Theis’ sly performance as Richard even when he outlines his evil plan in a monologue that gets us to almost like this charming but purely evil villain. His asides to the audiences with their wink and sour faces keep us intoxicated with Richard’s manipulations leading to killings that lead to his ascending to the English crown