The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 10

10 THE AGE, Monday 2 March 1981 DEMBKI edited by Anthony Clarke Harrowing portrayal of a family at war ROCK Peter Wilmoth lf- 'W AC-DC on overload CINEMA IN FRIDAY evening's heat at the Myer Music Bowl, among flying beer bottles and fists, AC-DC set out to prove it is the world's loudest rock band. People waited in seats, on the ground and outside the bowl, to hear and perhaps see the band that won success overseas. Local residents would not have agreed when AC-DC sang 'Rock ani Roll Ain't Noise Pollution'. Complaints came from as far as Toorak and Middle Park. But the thousands who came to see their heavy-metal heroes had no complaints.

AC-DC in an electric atmosphere of nervous anticipation unleashed the most powerful rock sound Melbourne has heard for years. The most remarkable thing about AC-DC is lead guitarist Angus Young, a refreshingiy tasteless perennial schoolboy who Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore as the parents cautious hope and cold hostility. Angus Young: frenetic writhing gets more exercise with his frenetic writhing in one night than most people get in a month. Young strutted the stage, performing gymnastics, amazing guitar work and dropping his red velvet shorts. AC-DC played old favorites including TNT," High Voltage Rock and Roll, plus much of their latest 'Back in Black' album.

Their support act, the Angels, rose to the occasion. tionally troubled, without worrying about now lo pay the next bill. They are characters in a gruellingly realistic drama set in the never-never-land of television's situation comedies and soap operas. Redford has pointed up this irony by casting Mary Tyler Moore, the belle of the sitcom style, as Beth and by placing her in a perfect soap-opera house, a white, mock-Georgian mini-mansion in a leafy Chicago suburb. But the irony moves too close to parody.

Too many Ronald and Nancy Reagan look-alikes pop up as minor characters; too often the blend of Pachelbel and Marvin Hamlisch coats the soundtrack with a schmaltzy ooze. The acting always comes to the rescue. As Conrad, Timothy Hutton sometimes offers us an actor's idea of how an unhappy teenager behaves (shades of the over-rated James but most of the time, in his frustration and innocence, he is wholly convincing. Donald Sutherland, gentle and heartbroken as Calvin, portrays a mature version of the same bewilderment. Mary Tyler Moore has a far more complicated task, and performs it with steely precision.

Her Beth is obsessed with appearances, a perfect home maker. She mends a shirt without being asked, but cannot answer cries for help from her husband and son. FR his debut as a director, Robert Redford has made a film that sometimes falters in its pace and is a shade too calculated in its glossy irony. But "Ordinary People (Russell) is also a harrowingly accurate study of a family at war. Although it presents a common enough problem disagreement between parents over the handling of a "difficult" child the circumstances are out of the ordinary.

Conrad is 17, just home from a psychiatric hospital. Several months earlier he had tried to kill himself, apparently because of guilt feelings about the death of his older brother, Buck. Conrad's father, Calvin, hopes for his family's return to happiness, but appreciates the danger of rushing things. Beth, the ail-American wife and mother, tastefully blending in with her blandly furnished home, is impatient with the family's emotional untidiness. As she sees it, Conrad has used up his quota of special attention; he should settle down and stop being a nuisance.

Although he resents his mother's coldness and trades on his father's good will. Conrad also tries to get himself back into the routine of family, school and social life, and he has the sense to use a psychiatrist as a whipping boy and sounding board. Neil Jillett Alvin Sargent's screenplay is better than Judith Guest's novel, from which it is taken. The messy layer of words has been trimmed to expose the strong, uncompromising heart of the story. Some of the trimming is too severe.

There is initial confusion about the reasons for Conrad's unhappiness. The nature of Calvin's work (he is a tax lawyer), though not crucial to' the story, is made unnecessarily mysterious. A more Important fault causes Redford's direction to stumble. He takes too long to realise that Beth is the central character of the film. The family is not being destroyed by Buck's death and Conrad's attempted suicide, but by Beth's response to them.

Conrad's sessions with the psychiatrist (a sound but unsubtle performance by Judd Hirsch, who gets most of the script's few poor lines) provide an interesting angle from which to view the family's troubles. But there are too many of these sessions, and they detract from the force of the confrontations between Beth, Conrad and Calvin. These three ordinary people are extraordinary in that they don't have any material problems. They can concentrate on being emo in 'Ordinary People': of his time enjoying life and providing fun for others. Now, at 53, he knows that he is soon to die of cancer.

He decides to spend the rest of his life trying to make friends with his stolid son Jud, whom he deserted 13 years ago. As Scottie, Jack Lemmon is near the top of his form, guffawing, grimacing, double-taking and double-dealing with the controlled frenzy of an egotist who never forgets who is the star attraction. It is less moving than one might expect from the portrayal of a dying man, but it would be out of character for Scottie to stir or display deep emotions very often. His exuberant geniality is the top layer of a rhinoceros hide. Robby Benson is excellent as the 21-year-old son, as introverted as Scottie is extroverted, rather smug, unsuccessfully trying to dilute his mean-mindedness with some tolerance and generosity.

It is hard to make a prig attractive Benson almost manages the trick. Then there is Lee Remick as Scottie's wife. She has only a few real scenes and too often is required to do no more than loiter, misty-eyed, on the sidelines. But when she does get into the action it is a joy to see how she can still work the paradoxical magic of investing with cool elegance a display of warmth and decency. For most of this film.

Bob Clark directs at a frisky pace in keeping with Slade's script. A bolder director might have dug deeper into 'Tribute's' basic seriousness and tried for a more delicate balance between laughter and tears. A more sensitive director would have avoided the peculiarly American of that final wallow and scrubbed Ken Wannberg's marching music from the soundtrack. mferte(te(dl to mm The New Wave Seiko Sports 100 Range. Surfacing now.

$150. Wild, but lacking stars REPORTS rpHE Church Street Photographic Centre in Richmond, one of Melbourne's only two permanent photographic galleries, is selling off part of its business in a bid to stay afloat. Joyce Evans, the owner-manager of the Centre, said the entire gallery-bookshop operation had been in danger of closing. "1 had not the capital nor the energy to keep both sides of the business going." "We have decided to sell our bookshop operation, which is largely a mail-order business, and operate solely as a dealer and exhibition gallery. Church Street opened its doors in August 1977.

"Our problem was not acceptance. We have always had a Keen following. But the people who have responded most strongly are usually photographers or photographic students. What money they have usually goes on equipment." "Selling the bookshop side of the business should leave me with enough capital to keep Church Street going for at least another year. By then, the gallery-side should be viable," she said.

Church Street is currently showing 27 works spanning the entire career of master photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. All the photographs are for sale. Printed from original nega The ADT's artistic director, Jonathan Taylor, the best choreographer in Australia, has designed the dance element, and it is a surprisingly thin contribution. Four main characters swoon and swoop through an incoherent drama about love and violence that has many references to Japanese and other Oriental art forms and philosophies. The company's other 12 dancers are generally required to do little more than manipulate props or provide a moving frame for the posturing of the central four.

The overall performance lacks edge. The ADT have lost some of their best dancers through retirement and injury, and Margaret Wiison is the only veteran among the four leads. Taylor will have "'SI Ill Model LE007. The Instant Call slim case Alarm Chronograph. with 4 front buttons giving instant mode required, including 24 hour readout, tives at Cartier-Bresson's direc-ion and sipned by him, each work sells for S10UO.

rpHE Melbourne Theatre Com-nany is seeking business sponsors, it says business support is needed if the MTC is just to hold ground. let move ahead. John Sumner, the director of the sMd business sponsors had to be found because government subsides were not keeping puce wiiti inilari.m. For I9bl the MTC is receiving S779.000 from the Australia Council, up $51,000 from 1980. The Victorian Government subsidy is unchanged at S430.000.

The MTC is contracting 150 business organisations in Melbourne, seeking companies who will sponsor individual plays in the new MTC season. Sponsorship will cost $12,000 and will buy credits in MTC advertising, space in proqrammes, and block theaire bookings. Snonsorship companies can nominate which plays they want to be identified with. The MTC is seeking sponsors for all seven plavs in its forthcoming season, which opens on 1 April with 'Pete McGynty and The Dremf'me'. -tarring Keith Michell in his own adaption of Ibsen's 'Peer to work hard to impose the confidently mature strength that previously distinguished his company even in a work as meretricious as 'Wildstars'.

But it would be unfair to ignore the determination with which the dancers push themselves through this booby-trapped work (for instance, it has many dangerous dives into darkness) or not to comment on Robert Canning's fine debut in a big role. He has several soios and performs them with a concentrated energy that is particularly impressive in a jerky, Japanese-style clockwork jive. Incidentally, the ADT must be one of the few companies who admit really late late-comers. If performers and punctual customers are to be kept happy, this misguided tolerance will be abandoned. NEIL JILLETT A E591 day-date, alarm, timer and II '-date, alarm, timer and chronograph.

And of course it's water tested to 100 metres. THE Australian Dance Theatre's razzledazzle spectacle, 'Wildstars', first seen here 15 months ago. is back at the National, St Kilda. It is mainly the work of Nigel Triffit and is a close relative perhaps a child that has outstripped its parent in size and liveliness of his 'Momma's Little Horror Show' (the puppet people show at the Last Laugh Theatre Restaurant). But 'Wiid-stars' is a much inferior work; it lacks 'Momma's' beguiling mixture of innocence, mystery and magic.

The main elements of 'Wild-stars' are flashing lights, loud electronic rock music, much dashing about and a series of the clever illusions and other theatrical effects that are Triffit's trademark. utes or so of Tribute'. It should subside as soon as you've got the review off your chest." I hope he is right, because Tribute' offers much to enjoy and admire except for the final descent into sludgy sentimentality. And it should not be condemned completely for that. One wallow doesn't make a bummer.

Bernard Slade, who wrote 'Same Time, Next Year', has based the script for 'Tribute' on his successful Broadway play. His approach looks frivolous, with wisecracks that are sometimes up to Neil Simon's standard, but there is more than a passing flirtation with such serious matters as cancer, death, marriage and parental responsibility. Its central character is a lazy, failed writer, Scottie Templeton, who is nominally a Broadway Press agent, but who spends most Model HV039 $199. The Seiko Duo Sports 100. The watch that gives you the best of both worlds, now water tested to 100 metres.

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