Reid Farrington’s unique version of Charles Dickens’s A CHRISTMAS CAROL returns for an encore season at Abrons Arts Center
Abrons Arts Center, Henry Street Settlement
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
Thursday – Sunday through December 23, $25 ($5 off through 12/1 with discount code DICKENS)
212-352-3101
www.abronsartscenter.org
www.reidfarrington.com
In a December 2011 twi-ny talk, Reid Farrington discussed his latest multimedia work, a rather unique version of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, comprising excerpts from nearly three dozen television and movie versions, projected onto screens of varying sizes held by five moving performers. “I have always been obsessed with the idea of actually walking into a movie. There’s that image from so many movies (or maybe just one?) of a little kid putting his hand through a screen — I forget what it’s from, but that’s it. I think that’s the spark that led to this obsession of having live actors interact with screen images. That flexible reality is so exciting to me,” said Farrington, who has also taken on Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope in Gin & “It” and Carl Th. Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc in The Passion Project. “I also love the sparseness of a projection surface,” he continued. “It makes the work look easier than it is. There are no wires in a projection surface, no gears, no visible computer, nothing. It’s a simple dance of light.” Farrington’s A Christmas Carol is back for a month-long encore at Abrons Arts Center, featuring John Forkner, Laura K. Nicoll, Erin Mallon, Adin Lenahan, and downtown legend Everett Quinton moving about the space as such Scrooges as George C. Scott, Albert Finney, Mr. Magoo, Alastair Sim, Patrick Stewart, Reginald Owen, Bill Murray (Farrington’s favorite), and others tell the classic holiday story.
Based on a 1964 Roald Dahl novel, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is a fanciful frolic through a children’s wonderland, filled with fear, trepidation, love, and lots of candy, both sweet and sour. Charlie Bucket (Peter Ostrum, in his only film appearance) lives with his dirt-poor family in a ramshackle room, where Grandpa Joe (Jack Albertson) can’t even get out of bed. But when goodhearted Charlie finds one of the golden tickets that will allow him to join a once-in-a-lifetime tour of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, Grandpa Joe is suddenly up and about, singing and dancing, and so will you be. Among the other kids with the golden tickets are the spoiled Veruca Salt (Julie Dawn Cole), the selfish Violet Beauregarde (Denise Nickerson), the tube-loving Mike Teevee (Paris Themmen), and the rather sloppy Augustus Gloop (Michael Bollner). As they are led through this dreamland by the unpredictable Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder), they encounter chocolate rivers, bubble machines that make people float, and small Oompa Loompas who are quick to clean up any messes. The soundtrack of this thoroughly entertaining, charming family film includes “The Candy Man Can,” “(I’ve Got a) Golden Ticket,” “Pure Imagination,” and, of course, “Oompa Loompa, Doompa-Dee-Do.” Directed by Mel Stuart, who passed away in August after a career that also included Wattstax, Four Days in November, and If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium, the film was remade by Tim Burton in 2005 starring Johnny Depp as Wonka with mixed results, but you can catch the original at the Nitehawk Cinema this weekend, with special family screenings at 11:45 am Saturday and Sunday.
In 2006, Toby Jones portrayed Truman Capote in Infamous, but he had already been upstaged by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who had won the Best Actor Oscar earlier that year for playing the social gadfly in the 2005 biopic Capote. Well, history is likely to repeat itself; Jones can currently be seen on HBO playing Alfred Hitchcock in Julian Jarrold’s The Girl, which follows the Master of Suspense as he obsesses over Tippi Hedren (Sienna Miller) while making The Birds and Marnie, under the careful watch of his wife, Alma Reville (Imelda Staunton). It’s a slight film, but Jones does a fine job as the creepy Hitch. However, his performance is liable to get lost with the theatrical release of Sacha Gervasi’s Hitchcock, in which the great British director is played by the inimitable Sir Anthony Hopkins, with Helen Mirren taking on the role of Alma as they struggle to make what would become their biggest success, Psycho. Unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible for the audience to separate Hitchcock from Hopkins, a central failing that, compounded by a lifeless subplot involving a potential romance between Alma and writer Whitfield Cook (Danny Huston), leaves the film rather dry and boring. It is fascinating to watch Hitch battle the studio (and the censors) over the financing and distribution of what was an extremely controversial film at the time, but the imaginary scenes with serial killer Ed Gein (Michael Wincott) are forced and unnecessary, and while James D’Arcy does a good job playing the quirky Anthony Perkins, Scarlett Johansson and Jessica Biel are wasted as Janet Leigh and Vera Miles, respectively. And yes, that’s Ralph Macchio as writer Joseph Stefano. Based on Stephen Rebello’s well-received 1990 book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, Gervasi’s feature debut — he previously wrote and directed the 2009 documentary Anvil! The Story of Anvil — is like a fair-to-middling Hitchcock flick or an average episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, containing interesting tidbits but never really achieving the captivating sense of mystery and romance (and fun!) that made his films and himself so special. It’s a shame that with two pictures tracing Hitchcock’s unique working process during a seminal period in his career, both fall relatively flat.