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Show Page B4 Thursday, March 4. 1W2 The Newspaper " ii ii AT PARE CITY 1 I Featuring the I : ; Rock with ' "ZERKS" i "Terracotta" I Now thru Saturday j March 9th. - 13th. j 9-1 : : ttt - Wednesday Western Night Monday, March 8th Free Fashion Show Located at tlw Resort Plaza Happy Hour 8 - 9 649-3500 Chapter Two ' is not just simple Simon by Rick Brough I am one of those skeptics who thinks that Neil Simon, with a few exceptions, falls either into bathos or a sea of neurotic one-liners. It is a pleasure, therefore, to report that one of his better plays, "Chapter Two", gets one of the better recent productions in local theater, this time from the Intermountain Actors Ensemble. The four members of the cast are of variable quality, but nobody moves too far ahead or straggles behind. Anne Burnett's slick, fast-paced fast-paced direction has a few problems, but in general it's an impressive and welcome stage debut. 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His hero, George Schneider, is an autobiographical charactera charac-tera widowed writer who is still shell-shocked from his wife's death, but inclined to get on with life and be grateful for the romantic innings he had. A new joy, and a problem, arises after a chance meeting meet-ing with divorcee Jennie Malone develops into attraction, attrac-tion, a whirlwind courtship, and a quick wedding. After all of this, George is seized by reluctance to let go of his dead wife's memory, and a sudden unsureness of his feelings. Salt Lake actor James Miller is a new face as George, and something of a minor revelation in the part. At first, you think he's a mistake. The conventional wisdom is that the chief flaw in the film version was casting macho, laconic James Caan as George, and Miller seems to come out of the same mold. In his physical appearance and his husky delivery, Miller suggests sug-gests the 1960s he-man, Stuart Whitman hardly your idea of a light comedy actor. But look at what he does with the part! Miller plays it with a shy, out-of-breath quality like he's being told to dive off the high board before he's ready. In the tense dramatic scenes from Act 2, when George is torn between old grief and new love. Miller shows the ten sion by almost hyperventilating. hyperventi-lating. This also helps the funny side of the character Miller's style gives his comic lines a shy, throw-away quality, and points out George's vulnerable vulner-able side. The only problem is that George doesn't slow down in those moments when he is struck by his grief for the dead wife, Barbara. (He is especially stiff in an early moment, reading a letter of condolence. ) Jossy Sheya somehow takes the sum total of her performance and makes it count for more than the rough spots in her portrayal. She has less experience than any of her fellow actors and was initially awkward in Act I. The blame must be laid partly on Simon, whose writing for the heroine is weak. (Jennie is simple-mindedly simple-mindedly cute and plucky. She's the kind of character who scolds herself in third person "You're dumb, Jennie Jen-nie Malone!") Sheya relaxes later on, and is quite charming in the scene where a mistaken phone call from George turns into a whole series of long-distance overtures. She also sets the tone for the dramatic Act 2. But in those moments I wishes she could have pushed further to capture Jennie's insecurities, insecuri-ties, her strength, and her anger. Maybe when Sheya loosens up ...? One of her best moments is dissipated, I think, by a mistake in direction. In a long, mad Act 2 speech, Jennie tries to break George out of his self-pitying funk. It's the only time a character breaks out of neurotic confusion confu-sion and stands firm. But Jennie, has been directed to pace back and forth, which dissipates the spirit of what she's saying. Her speech doesn't have a chance to build up an effect. In general, Anne Burnett has done an excellent job. The play zips along under her direction. And the energetic ener-getic pace reinforces the theme of people scrambling to keep a hold on love and sanity. This also keeps Simon's one-liners or dramatic drama-tic speeches from dropping like great oppressive nuggets. nug-gets. She has a few problems-most problems-most commonly, those poignant poig-nant moments when the characters stop scrambling and slow down. The play has trouble, because of its pace, picking up on those bits. Miller and Sheya have a little trouble conveying the giddy, happy moments in their relationship, especially in the first scene of Act 2. The worst moment comes in an argument scene, when one of Jennie's comments bites too deep, and George angrily throws her on the couch. The bit comes across as totally false. The play also benefits from a pair of good character charac-ter performances. After some excellent small por trayals, Dick Mitchell shows he can handle a man-sized part as George's brother, Leo. He cracks wise! He philosophizes! He leaps over tall monologues in a single bound! And he makes it look easy. He hardly seems to be projecting from the Prspec-tor Prspec-tor Theater stage. As Leo, Mitchell is boundless energy. His usual entrance is to bound through a door and stride halfway across the set before he stops himself. (This develops into a gag or two that isn't in Simmon's script.) Another welcome addition to the Park City stage is Carmen Jones as Jennie's friend Faye, who wants to have an affair before she gets to the age where she's "interesting, with character". charac-ter". Jones plays her extravagant extrava-gant character without ever becoming ridiculous. She is frantic but not silly; domineering domi-neering but not obnoxious. And her vocal skills make the most of every exit line. Lynn Vincent has made two detailed sets for George and Jennie which dovetail nicely into each other on stage. Perhaps my only complaint is that they look a bit too much alike. "Chapter Two" plays March 4-6 and 11-13. Tickets are $4 for adults and $3.50 for students and senior citizens. Showtime is 8 p.m. at the Prospector Theater. by Rick Brough A Classic Recommended Good double-feature double-feature material Time-killer For masochists only Cannery Row This is one of the most charming, ingratiating pictures pic-tures of the year. But it helps to be already a romantic in the mold set by John Steinbeck, whose work is superbly adapted for the screen. The Shakespearean fools and floozies of the old cannery district in Monterey act as guardian angels for the tempestuous romance between Doc, the marine biologist, and Susie, the fledgling hooker. The characters are arche-typally arche-typally familiar they're almost al-most thumbnail sketches but are brought to life by near-perfect acting. Nick Nolte is the bashfully bull-headed bull-headed Doc once a great baseball pitcher known as "The Blur" who now spends his days in a makeshift make-shift lab poking at sea urchins and octupi hoping to discover something Significant Signifi-cant about them. With sensi tivity and humor, Nolte's quiet performance leaves the viewer no choice but to like Doc. Debra Winger is Susie, a headstrong gal who eventually even-tually makes her home in a boiler. She's a dreamy-looking brunette with a tomboy-ish tomboy-ish voice and a simply amazing talent. Leading the supporting cast is M. Emmet Walsh as Mack, the top kick of Cannery Row by way of his superior intelligence. (Note his revolutionary scientific method for herding and catching frogs namely, jump into the swamp and chase 'em down like a hog out of Hell.) Black actor Frank MacRae is hilariously unforgettable as the hulking innocent Moose, who is thrown into a tither by a horoscope's prediction that he is destined to become President of the United States. And John Huston's slow-molasses voice is perfect per-fect for the sage, humorous narration of the story. Writer-director David Ward is sometimes too ponderously romantic, with his artificial set and his thin treatment of the mysterious mysteri-ous fool, the Seer. But his movie is still, without a doubt, enthralling in its use of Steinbeck's anecedotes, his rowdy humor, and his atmosphere "of fog and breakers and a lonely trumpet trum-pet players blowing the blues from a shack roof in the dawn. The Border The United States may never never find a solution for the flood of illegal Mexican immigrants, and Hollywood may never be able to make a picture on the subject without descending, like here, to cheap melodrama. melo-drama. The film's main virtue Jack Nicholson's convincing craftsmanlike performance has drawn extravagant, grateful raves from the critics, as if his hamminess in pictures like "The Shining" is the norm, not the exception, from him. Nicholson plays a conscientious consci-entious .border cop in Texas who is docilely yanked around by the consumer cravings of his wife (Valerie Perrine) and his corrupt fellow patrolman. His yearning yearn-ing "to feel good about something" draws him into the plight of a young Mexican mother (Elpida Cerillo) whose baby has been snatched by a black market racket. Aside from Nicholson's balsy acting as a man who finally ' refuses to cross his moral "border", the movie is a standard fable about integrity with some extraordinarily extra-ordinarily grisly deaths for the villains to juice up the climax of the picture. The heavies are easily wiped out, and there is no suggestion that the real problem rests with an intractable system. Director Tony Richardson constantly cuts back and forth, from the privations of the Mexicans to the tacky excesses of Perrine and the other suburban hens, lounging loung-ing on waterbeds and pigging pig-ging out at poolside. These women are like upperclass white trash, and it's a wonder Nicholson doesn't turn his guns on them instead of the rogue cops (Harvy Keitel, Warren, Oates) who were probably henpecked into turning crooked. Now playing At the Avon, Heber: Ragtime At the Ideal, Heber: Modern Problems At the Holiday Village Cinema Chariots of Fire Creature from the Black Lagoon i, 2 Taps I 1L |