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Your eyes and ears for the 2006 festival
February072005

The hollow men

Filed under: Looked Into   Tagged: , , , ,

It's good to see Hurlyburly—David Rabe's 1984 play recently revived at the Acorn by Scott Elliott, with Wallace Shawn as Artie—provoking thoughtful commentary. I liked much of the New York Observer interview with Ethan Hawke and Bobby Cannavale (the current stars) about postfeminist male rage and peer pressure, especially Hawke's blunt comment about exactly what it is about us that makes men angry—I'd never thought about it quite that way before, and it's very useful. And John Heilpern's review the same week (both pieces are front-page news—God save the Observer!) is first-rate vivid, thoughtful theater criticism. What's more, it starts "At three and a quarter hours, Hurlyburly is longylongy." Ha! Dorothy Parker ("Tonstant Weader frowed up") would certainly grin. Heilpern on Shawn:



And there's the older cheeseball producer, Artie, who's Wallace Shawn in a ludicrous wig. I felt tempted to call out, "Come on out of there, Wally! Come out from under that wig—we know it's you!" But at first I didn't recognize him in his sunglasses, and when I did, he made me laugh at terrible things.



Artie enters with a lost teen waif named Donna (Halley Wegryn Gross) whom he found in an elevator. "You want her?" he asks his friends, explaining that he figured he would drop her by and they could keep her, like a care package.



What a cad! Well, it's reassuring to know that Shawn is a mensch in real life, at least as evidenced by my running into him at the Quad Cinema on my fourth viewing of Lost in Translation. We were in separate lines; I looked at him, he smiled modestly, and I asked "What are you here to see?" (more sharply than I intended). "I'm here for American Splendor," he said pleasantly, with the requisite ironic garnish. "What about you?" "Oh, I'm seeing Lost in Translation again," I said. "How many times have you seen it so far?" he said, already looking concerned. Realizing the theness of it all, I mutely held up three fingers, like a sloshed Jack Lemmon. He gave me a not unkind "takes all kinds" nod and half-smile, and we proceeded into our theaters.



Are Boys Still Beasts? [Hawke and Cannavale interview, NY Observer]

John Heilpern review [NY Observer]

John Simon review [New York magazine]

One take on LIT [Cynthia Rockwell]

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