Wannabe writers get a whole lot more than they bargained for in SEMINAR
Golden Theatre
252 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Starring Alan Rickman through April 1, followed by Jeff Goldblum starting April 3, $51.50 – $121.50
www.seminaronbroadway.com
Inspired by her three years writing for David Milch on NYPD Blue, Theresa Rebeck’s Seminar is a solidly entertaining, very funny examination of competition and the creative process. Kate (Lily Rabe), Martin (Hamish Linklater), Douglas (Jerry O’Connell), and Izzy (Hettienne Park) are members of a private writing class led by the rather acerbic Leonard (Alan Rickman), a famous novelist and editor who charges the eager would-be writers five grand a piece for his services. Held in Kate’s family’s ritzy Upper West Side apartment, each class session consists of Leonard’s critique of a different student’s work. Desperate for his approval, they find out quickly that their story — as well as their life — is more likely to be shredded apart by the cynical Leonard, who rambles on about his travels to war-torn nations while debasing three of the writers; he has only kind things to say about Izzy, turned on by her erotically charged writing and sexy demeanor.
Alan Rickman will continue dishing out biting literary criticism on Broadway through April 1
Although the plot features few surprises, the dialogue by the prolific Park Slope-based Rebeck — she’s written numerous plays, several novels and screenplays, and is the creator and executive producer of the new television series Smash — is sharp and incisive, alternating between biting and laugh-out-loud funny. The part of Leonard seems tailor made for Rickman, who revels in the character’s love of language; just when it seems that Rickman is drifting off a bit, he charges back with a quiet fury that dominates the stage. The supporting cast, featuring O’Connell (Stand by Me, Jerry Maguire), Shakespearean regular Linklater (The New Adventures of Old Christine), and Park (The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures) making their Broadway debuts alongside Tony nominee Rabe (The Merchant of Venice), is strong throughout, each actor adding just the right nuance to avoid becoming caricatures. Although most of Seminar takes place in a single room, director Sam Gold gives it a swift vitality, a strength he also displays in the current production of Look Back in Anger at the Roundabout. As a bonus, the night we saw Seminar, Jeff Goldblum, who replaces Rickman in the role of Leonard on April 3, was sitting nearby, apparently seeing the show for the first time. He leaned forward through most of the ninety-five minutes, his mouth hanging open, his eyes darting from character to character, following every movement with an extended hand, studying the play almost as if he were a student preparing for the most important class of his life.
In 2004, American writer-director Joshua Marston dramatized the plight of an impoverished young Colombian woman who becomes a drug mule in the gripping Maria Full of Grace. He has now turned his attention on another amazing international story, family blood feuds in northern Albania, in the riveting The Forgiveness of Blood. Tristan Halilaj stars as Nik, a teenager with dreams of opening his own internet café. But when a land dispute results in the death of a villager, Nik’s father (Refet Abazi) goes into hiding to avoid facing the Kanun, a fifteenth-century code of law that would give the family of the dead man the right to take the life of a male member of Nik’s clan. While his father is on the lam, Nik must stay inside his house in a forced isolation that could continue for years; if he steps outside, he is likely to be shot and killed. Meanwhile, Nik’s younger sister, Rudina (Sindi Laçej), a dedicated student who hopes to go to university, must take over her father’s business, leaving school to sell bread from a small, ramshackle cart pulled by their faithful old horse, Klinsmann. As the family crisis deepens, Nik considers taking matters into his own hands, with potentially devastating consequences. Marston thoroughly researched the remarkable story, spending time in Albania meeting with families in the midst of real blood feuds, attending a national conference of blood-feud mediators, and teaming up with Albanian native Andamion Murataj to write the script, which won the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at the Berlin Film Festival. Marston does an excellent job balancing the centuries-old code of law with the rise of modern technology in Albania, not overstating the fascinating contradiction or making any ethnocentric judgments; Nik and his friends post things on Facebook from their handheld devices, and Nik and Rudina’s mother (Ilire Vinca Çelaj) receives occasional text messages from her husband while he is away. Marston imbues the film with a further believability by hiring many untrained actors, including Halilaj and Laçej, who handle their roles admirably. Featuring a beautiful score by Leonardo Heiblum and Jacobo Lieberman, The Forgiveness of Blood is a tense, unforgettable film bristling with powerful emotion, with well-drawn characters and a tense, unpredictable narrative. Don’t miss it.
Shortly after the death of Stalin in 1953, groups of Soviet youth decided to rebel against the boring gray conformity of Russian existence and instead celebrate American hipster culture, dressing in colorful clothing, wearing slick pompadours, and meeting in secret locations along “Broadway” where they would dance wildly to jazz and swing. A sort of Eastern European version of Footloose, Valery Todorovsky’s Hipsters follows the story of Mels (Anton Shagin), a member of the Kmsomol, a uniformed youth organization whose main goal is to destroy the hipsters, known as stilyagi in Russian. But when Mels — whose name is an acronym for Marx/Engels/Lenin/Stalin — confronts the beautiful hipster Polly (Oksana Akinshina), he instantly falls madly in love with her. Shortening his name to the more American Mel, he joins up with the hipsters, even learning to play the saxophone as he woos Polly and battles with Katya (Evgenia Brik), the Kmsomol leader who now considers him to be a traitor. Winner of the Best Picture Nika, the Russian equivalent of the Oscars, Hipsters suffers from a standard, predictable story line, but despite frustrating cliché after frustrating cliché, it starts to grow on you, particularly the musical numbers that take place in regular society, not at the underground parties, which are obvious and overdone. And Akinshina is mesmerizing to watch as Polly, a strong young woman not afraid to spit in the face of life-draining communism. In making the first Russian musical in several generations, Todorovsky (The Lover, Vice) combined 1950s American jazz with 1980s Russian Perestroika rock, giving the film a fresh yet retro feel. Despite a whole lot of silliness and a desperate need to be hip itself, Hipsters is a cold war musical not without a little warmth.
