Mark Rylance stars as a world leader teetering on the edge of sanity in Farinelli and the King (photo © Joan Marcus)
Belasco Theatre
111 West 44th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through March 25, $32 – $159
www.farinelliandthekingbroadway.com
Over the last few years, British actor Mark Rylance has built up such an impressive resume that he now has a separate Wikipedia page just for all of his nominations and awards, which include an Oscar for Bridge of Spies, an Emmy nod for Wolf Hall, eight Olivier nominations and two wins, and four Tony nominations and three trophies (for Boeing-Boeing, Jerusalem, and Twelfth Night). He is now back on Broadway in Farinelli and the King, a showcase piece written for him by his wife, first-time playwright Claire van Kampen. Also a composer, Van Kampen made her directorial debut last year with Nice Fish, which was written by and starred her husband. Rylance was nominated for an Olivier for his performance in Farinelli as King Philippe V, the grandson of French king Louis XIV who became the Spanish monarch in 1700. The play, originally presented at Shakespeare’s Globe, is staged like the Globe productions of Twelfth Night and Richard III, with some of the audience seated onstage, actors getting into costume onstage and wandering into the audience, candelabras hanging from the ceiling with real candles supplying the majority of the lighting (designed by Paul Russell), and a live band playing baroque instruments in the balcony of designer Jonathan Fensom’s lush set.
Farinelli and the King features a lush, extravagant set by Jonathan Fensom (photo © Joan Marcus)
The show, inspired by the real story of the Spanish king and a famous castrato, takes place in 1737, when Philippe’s unhinged behavior leads his doctor, José Cervi (Huss Garbiya), and chief minister, Don Sebastian De la Cuadra (Edward Peel), to believe he has gone mad and should abdicate the throne. However, Phillippe’s second wife, Isabella Farnese (Melody Grove), is not ready for him to give up the crown. In the opening scene, Philippe is in his pajamas and goofy evening cap, in bed and fishing in a goldfish bowl. “I know I am dreaming and they do not,” he says to the fish, named Diego. “Who would fish out of a goldfish bowl except in a dream! If I were mad, as they think I am, I would be fishing at noon when the sun’s the very devil,” he adds, the first of many references to the sun, moon, and stars. Later, the king, who knows more than he is letting on, gathers together several clocks indicating different times and tells La Cuadra, “You see how time lies? . . . What have you and these clocks got in common? . . . They’re showing me different faces, and I can’t tell which one is true.” When Isabella goes to London and hears the Italian castrato Farinelli (acted by Sam Crane and sung by countertenors Iestyn Davies or James Hall), she brings him back to the Spanish court in the hopes that his magical voice will lessen the king’s ills — which is exactly what happens, angering De la Cuarda. “To hear the king laugh!” Isabella declares. “I had forgotten the sound. How can a human voice change a man’s life?”
Indeed, laughter abounds in the first act, primarily when director John Dove, who has previously collaborated with Rylance and van Kampen on several Shakespeare productions at the Globe, lets Rylance cut loose, muttering under his breath, walking on top of his bed, upping the slapstick, and seemingly ad-libbing at times as some of his fellow actors attempt to hold back giggles. The show’s primary conceit is sensational; whenever Farinelli is going to sing, Crane and the Grammy-winning Davies, whom I saw in the role, both appear onstage; Crane speaks the dialogue, and Davies does the singing, which is simply marvelous. Among the eight arias (seven by Handel, one by Porpora) that lift the spirit at the Belasco Theatre even as the play itself drags are “Se in fiorito” from Giulio Cesare and “Bel contento” from Flavio. But the second act is immediately confounding as the setting moves to the middle of the forest, where the king wants to live, and the cast suddenly recognizes the audience, believing us to be local townspeople there to watch a performance. “Who are they, Isabella?” Philippe asks. “I don’t know,” she replies. “This is turning public. Call it off,” La Cuadra demands, and he’s not wrong. The play doesn’t seem to know how to proceed, leaving the audience confused and itching for the much-swifter pace of the first act. “What are they doing, packed together like that? What do they expect?” Philippe asks Isabella, who answers, “A story. They’ve come for the story.” Philippe concludes, “Well, haven’t we all!” We did come for a story, but not such a convoluted one, which despite being based on fact ends up feeling unconvincing.
Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show is a tender-hearted, poignant portrait of sexual awakening and coming-of-age in a sleepy Texas town. Adapted from the Larry McMurtry novel by the author and the director, the film is set in the early 1950s, focusing on Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms), a teenager who works at the local pool hall with Billy (Timothy’s brother Sam), a simple-minded boy who needs special caring. Sonny’s best friend, Duane Jackson (Oscar-nominated Jeff Bridges), is dating the prettiest girl in school, Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepherd, in her film debut), who is getting ready to test out the sexual waters, sneaking away on a date with Lester Marlow (Randy Quaid), who takes her to a naked-swimming party in a wealthier suburb of Wichita Falls. Meanwhile, Sonny breaks up with his girlfriend, Charlene Druggs (Sharon Taggart), and becomes drawn to the sad, unhappy Ruth Popper (an Oscar-winning Cloris Leachman), the wife of his football coach (Bill Thurman). The outstanding all-star cast also features Oscar-nominated Ellen Burstyn as Lois, Jacy’s mother; Eileen Brennan as a waitress in the local diner who makes cheeseburgers for Sonny; Clu Gulager as a working man who has a thing for Lois; Frank Marshall, who went on to become a big-time producer, as high school student Tommy Logan; and Oscar winner Ben Johnson as Sam the Lion, the moral center of the town and owner of the pool hall, diner, and movie theater, which shows such films as Father of the Bride and Red River.
When I was a kid in school, one of the first movies I ever reviewed was Heaven’s Gate, Michael Cimino’s brazenly overbudget famous Hollywood disaster. Incensed that professional film critics were obsessed with the meta surrounding the making of the epic Western instead of simply taking it for what it was, I was determined to treat it like any other movie, forgetting about all the behind-the-scenes gossip and tales of financial gluttony. And what I found back then was that it was a noble failure, a bold exercise in genre that had its share of strong moments but ultimately fell apart, leaving me dissatisfied and disappointed but glad I had seen it; I did not want my three-plus hours back. In fact, I probably would have checked out the rumored five-hour version if it had been shown, hoping it would fill in the many gaps that plagued the official theatrical release. More than thirty years later, Cimino’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning sophomore effort, The Deer Hunter, has returned in a 219-minute digital restoration supervised by Cimino, and it does indeed shed new light on the unfairly ridiculed work, which is still, after all this time, a noble failure. Inspired by the 1882 Johnson County War in Wyoming, the film stars Kris Kristofferson as Jim Averill, a Harvard-educated lawman hired by a group of immigrants, called “citizens,” whose livelihood — and lives — are being threatened by a wealthy cattlemen’s association run by the elitist Frank Canton (Sam Waterston). The association has come up with a kill list of 125 citizens, offering fifty dollars for each murder, a plan that has been authorized all the way up to the president of the United States. Leading the way for the cattlemen is hired killer Nate Champion (Christopher Walken), who has a particularly fierce aversion to the foreign-speaking immigrants. With a major battle on the horizon, Averill and Champion also fight for the love of the same woman, the luminous Ella Watson (Isabelle Huppert), a successful madam who soon finds herself in the middle of the controversy.
Following the breakout success of the 2006 release of Charles Burnett’s remarkable 
Hava Kohav Beller’s documentary In the Land of Pomegranates begins with an epigraph quote from Swiss writer and political activist Friedrich Dürrenmatt: “This inhuman world has to become more human. But how?” The writer of The Pledge and The Visit also claimed, “Without tolerance, our world turns into hell,” and argued that Swiss citizens were both prisoners and guards. One wonders what Dürrenmatt would have thought of Beller’s film, which explores the ongoing battle between Jews and Palestinians over who has the right to exist in Israel. The two-hour film starts out slowly, with interviews dating back to 2010 as random men and women share their views on the fierce debate; they are not artists, politicians, public figures, acknowledged experts, or professional thinkers. Ofra Eviatar talks about the dangers of being a Jew living by the wall at the Gaza border. An Arab man explains that he felt scared when he was a child, so “my fear meant I would get revenge when I grew up.” The people chosen feel a bit too arbitrary, too selective and manipulative. But then, suddenly, the film finds its focus as it zeroes in on a gathering of young Palestinians and Jews participating in a retreat in Germany called “Vacation from War,” where they live together and have intense group discussions about the controversy surrounding the State of Israel. “Here we are having a break from reality and here we will try to see if we can understand each other,” facilitator Shadi Hanoun says. But just when it seems like the next generation might be able to find some common ground, the conversation gets brutal as the Jews ask whether the Palestinians will ever accept Israel’s right to exist and the Palestinians demand that their land must be returned to them. Meanwhile, a young Palestinian mother has to cross the border to bring her son, who has a severe heart problem, to an Israeli hospital where Jewish doctors try to save the boy.
Winnipeg-based filmmakers Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson ingeniously reimagine Alfred Hitchcock’s psychosexual masterpiece, Vertigo, using clips from dozens of movies and television shows in the mesmerizing pastiche The Green Fog. When Maddin, who has made such previous films as Careful, The Saddest Music in the World, and 
