Daily Record from Morristown, New Jersey • Page 47

1 1 Dailj Record Northwest N.J., Sunday, September 21, 1980 -01 A Aft 1 yf. 1 3 ip ju Mary Tyler Moore, These Donald Sutherland (center) and Timothy Hutton are the 'Ordinary 'Ordinary People' By MICHELE HOWE George Bernard Shaw's "Overruled" and Anton Chekov's "The Proposal" comprise the Chester Theater Group's "Evening of Farce." Performances are 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Black River Playhouse, Grove Street, Chester. Tickets may be purchased at the door. "A Stage Struck Revue" is being presented by Riverside Hospice, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Sept.

28, at the State Theatre, Main Street, Boonton. The show is part of the 25th-anniversary celebration of Riverside Hospital, Boonton Township. Curtain time Is 8:30 p.m. For reservations call 334-4434 or 335-4304. Neil Simon's "Chapter Two" can be seen Friday and Saturday at the Craig Theatre, 6 Kent Place Summit.

Traditional South American music will fill the halls of Pax Amicus Church Theatre, Flanders, Saturday. The concert starts 8 p.m. "Fiddler on the Roof" opens Saturday, Oct. 4 at Pax Amicus Church Theatre, Flanders. Performances are 8 p.m.

Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. The George Street Playhouse, New Brunswick, opens its new season Friday with Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman." For schedule and reservations call the box office, 246-771 7. Shakespeare's "The Taming Of The Shrew" opens Tuesday, Sept. 30 at McCarter Theater, Princeton. It will be followed by Orson Welles' "Moby Dick Rehearsed," whic opens Wednesday, Oct.

7. For more Information call (609) 921-8370. N.J. Theater Forum, Plainfield, opens its fall season Thursday, Oct. 9, with the recent Broadway hit "On Golden Pondi" Also on the fall schedule are "Sty Of The Blind Pig" and "A Life In The Theatre." For more information call 757-2882.

A Gala Night of Stars, set for Sunday, Oct. 5, will launch a public drive for the rebuilding of the Paper Mill Playhouse. The festivities start 5 p.m. at Temple B'nai Jeshurun, Short Hills. Among the celebrities expected to attend are Sandy Duncan, Ginger Rogers, Mickey Rooney, Ann Miller and John Gavin.

For reservations call 379-3636. Cabaret singer Martha Schlamme is the special attraction tomorrow at the N.J. Shakespeare Festival, Drew University, Madison. The show starts 8 p.m. John Osborne's "Inadmissible Evidence" is the current offering at Actors Cafe Theatre, Bloomfield College, Bloomfield.

Performances are 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, and 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays through Oct. 4. For reservations call 429-7662.

"Steambath" a comedy by Bruce Jay Friedman, is on stage at N.J. Public Theatre, Cranford. Performances are 8:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 7:30 p.m. Sundays until Oct.

4. For tickets call 272-5704. CASTCALLS: The Parsippany Parks and Recreation Department is holding auditions for the Par-Troy Community Theatre's fall production of "Bells Are Ringing," 0 p.m. Tuesday. Sept.

30 and Wednesday, Oct. 1 at Parsippany Hills High School, Rita Drive, Parsippany. Singers and dancers are needed. For further information call 263-7257, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.

weekdays. The Robin Hood Players is opening five road companies and needs actors to tour the United States. Send picture and resume to George Alfred, P.O.Box 4847, Scottsdale, Ariz. 852358. Do Extraordinary Job Who are these people? They're "Ordinary People." They're so ordinary that when Con his Dad calls him Con comes to the dinner table and tells them the doc will cost $1 00 for two sessions a week, they don't even wonder where the money is going to come from.

The fact is they're quite extraordinary people. They live in a large home. Yet, they never spend a By AL FRANK Conrad (Timothy Hutton) attempted suicide four months ago and now, after hospital treatment, he's just about ready to slit his wrist again. It's not that he hates life, it's that he's being consumed by guilt. He feels responsible for his older brother's drowning death.

Even though his dad (Donald Sutherland) is warm and open and the kids at school are sympathetic, Conrad withdraws into a shell. The problem, it turns out, is Mom (Mary Tyler Moore). At first he thinks her coldness has to do with the regrouting. That's what she had to have done to her bathroom tiles after his attempted encounter with eternity. Then he realizes she always loved brother Buck best and, now that he's gone, she'll be damned if she'll have anything to do with Conrad.

So Conrad goes to a shrink (Judd Hirsch). And, as in so many other psychodramas, the doc here is belligerent bt ever so wise under his gruff veneer. We're not sure it's because he's "Jewish or just German," as Mom puts it, but somehow he gets through to the young man. Before we know it, Conrad's not only hunky-dory but his parents are ready to check into the funny farm because they now realize they're more crackers than he ever was. Sutherland's near lap-dog concern.

But it's still a welcome change from his last few roles. Hutton is good as the psycho but sometimes overplays his scenes with Hirsch. Also, his "lines" are often vacant stares, which are hard for an au li-ence to "read." Otherwise, the dialogue in Alvin Sargent's screenplay catches our colloquial foib-es with glaring precision. In his debut as a director, Robert Redford em- ploys a precise and methodic style. He builds thu film as a lawyer would build a case, laying lous groundwork from the beginning.

Unfortunately, the ending doesn't provide you with a wallop, jus' a sigh. That's strange, because as psycho-drama "Or 1i-nary People" has all the gut-wrenching, tantrums and soul bearing that go along with such territory Yet, the tenuous conclusion heightens the viewer realization that little of the film has anything fb.doa with him. 4 That's because these people seem to have buift relationships on shaky pilings to begin with. It's no wonder this family unit has the potential for disintegration. Too much is based on creature comforts' and not long-lasting things like love and selfless devotion to others.

Perhaps that's a lesson people less "ordinary" than these can take to heart. But it's an obscure one at that. jj Christmas in it because that's when they travel around the world, something Hirsch overlooked in his sessions. They also think nothing of picking up and flying to Houston, or wherever, whenever the mood or the wrathful suburban elements move them. Ordinary people? Sure.

Look at the acting, though, and it's one helluva film. Performances by Moore, Sutherland and Hutton are models of intensity. Moore displays icy control on the verge of shattering. Her stoicism is poignantly countered by Ton Hostess Follows Mom Ms. Tennille recalls that her mother, Catheryn Wright, as hostess and producer of "The Guest Room," also went out and rounded up her own guests.

She says, "She had a way of relaxing people so that they would pop up with things they might '-Alt' 4' I got a winner. experience with our television show. He came off kind of like a dodo." Nevertheless, she says she has all but talked the Captain into doing an interview with her on the show. "When I put on my interviewing hat, I don't know how he's going to feel about it." She says she's not dismayed by the risk of entering the talk show field. "I'm the only woman, and I hope that's an advantage.

I think I've got a winner. I really do." Ms. Tennille joined a repertory company, working as a file clerk during the day when her family moved to California. She and a friend co-wrote a rock-ecology musical called "Mother Earth." One of the people used in "Mother Earth" was a young keyboard artist named Daryl Dragon, who was between tours with the.Beach Boys. The group liked her writing and singing and she joined their 1971 tour.

"Daryl and I worked in small clubs for several years," she says. "We I learned what the audiences wanted from us. We learned what they were' indifferent to. 'The Way I Want To Touch You' was our first hit single, which we pressed ourselves. They were finally signed by I Records, where they recorded "Love Will Keep Us Together," the Neil Sedaka-Howard Greenfield composition that sold 2 million copies and won a Grammy as record of the yeaf in 1975.

Ms. Tennille agrees that it's unusual for a first record to become such a hit. She says, "It's the kind of record I call a career maker. We did a lot of 5 appearances on television because Of it, and that was the reason we got our show on ABC. Fortunately, we were able to follow it up with five gold sin- glesinarow." I On Page D-2 i' do a TV show.

Her mother a talk show in Alabama. i Today's TV T' 4 By JERRY BUCK LOS ANGELES (AP) Toni Ten-nille says that as hostess of a new talk show she is merely following in her mother's footsteps. "This is something I've always 'I think I've I really wanted to do," says the blonde singer, who is going solo without the Captain. "I always knew my future was in television. It actually came from my mother, who had probably one of the first talk shows in Montgomery, when I was growing up." Her singing perhaps came from her father, who had been a featured vocalist with Bob Crosby and the Bobcats before retiring to the furniture business in Alabama.

"The Toni Tennille Show" made its debut last week in the overcrowded and risky minefield of syndicated talk and variety shows. MAN'S BEST FRIEND LIVINGSTON TAYLOR Epic JE 361 53 AFTER THE ROSES KENNY RANKIN Atlantic SO 19271 Livingston Taylor's first two albums, produced by Jon Landau in the early '70s, are small classics that combine singer-songwriter intimacy with Southern funk. His two most recent albums, THREE-WAY MIRROR (1 978) and the new MAN'S BEST FRIEND, are very different. Taylor's songs haven't changed so much as their presentation, which is more pop, more commercial. His acoustic guitar is nowhere to be found; instead the arrangements are built around keyboards, layered with strings and punctuated with disco drumming.

The results are mixed. The borrowed material ranges from the pointless in the Street," Orleans' "Dance With to the witless (Randy Newman's "Marie," an ironic lyric that Taylor delivers i sSnoipficnife UIl, not say under other circumstances. I have my own spot for special people and we try to get away from the show business side of their lives." Although she is going solo, the Captain is always nearby in his yachting cap. Ms. Tennille and Daryl Dragon, the son of conductor Carmen Dragon, met when he was a member of the Beach Boys and known as "Captain Keyboard." Soon afterward they were married and became "Captain and Tennille." "Daryl hates the limelight.

He hates it," she says. "He had such a horrible straight). His own songs still have his tuneful stamp; in fact, "Sunshine Girl" and "Pajamas" resemble songs from the first album. But MAN'S BEST FRIEND, though occasionally charming, is decidedly lightweight. The same goes for Kenny Rankin's new album.

On SILVER MORNING, three albums back, Rankin forged a distinctive style out of folky acoustic guitar playing and jazzy scat singing. Since then, under the tutelage of producer-arranger Don Costa (best known for his work with Frank Sina- The Cars' Toni isn't the first Tennille to was hostess and producer of By JIM BOHEN PANORAMA THE CARS Elektra5E-514 PANORAMA sounded flat and tuneless the first time through, but after about a week it started to get interesting. Ric Ocasek, the Cars' singer-guitarist-songwriter, seems to be deliberately veering away from the pop-rock of "Just What I Needed" and "My Best Friend's Girl" and toward the experimental sound of the band's strangest songs "Shoo Be Doo" from CANDY-O, "Moving in Stereo" from THE CARS. Greg Hawkes' synthesizer is the new album's dominant instrument, while many of the songs offer only the gentlest brush strokes of guitar. We're all the way to side two before we hear some of the band's trademark tick-tock rhythm playing.

Even "Touch and Go," the new single, resists approach initially. The verses are delivered to an odd, herky-jerky meter, and only on the chorus do things begin 'Jow, as if to prove latest LP, gets off to that Ocasek can write a hook chorus whenever he wants. "Gimme Some Slack" follows the opposite tack: it begins with revved-up rhythm guitar, then chokes on the chorus, daring you to sing along, to find the groove. David Robinson's drumming always sounds processed, altered. On "Panorama" and "You Wear Those Eyes" the rhythm is provided by a drum machine; syn-drums whiz through "Down Boys," and on "Getting Through" the percussive sound effects make it sound as if a game of Space Invader were in progress.

As side two winds down, the music betrays the band's DoorsRoxy MusicVelvet Underground roots. "You Wear Those Eyes" not only sports a Lou Reed-style vocal, but quotes the title of a Velvet tune, I'll Be Your Mirror." Turn the album over, and suddenly "Panorama," which registered a blank at first, yields pleasures that weren't apparent before. Amazingly, so does every other song. Verdict: a gamble that paid off. a slow start.

SCREAMING TARGETS JO JO ZEP AND THE FALCONS Columbia NJC 36442 This unheralded Australian sextet has quietly produced a fine debut album. Their assets include a singer, Joe Camilleri, in the Van Morrison Graham Parker mold; a warm instrumental sound that combines guitars and saxophones; and an ability to handle both Stones-like rockers Wanna Come and reggae and Run," "Shape I'm tra), Rankin has gone middle-of-the- road. Pillowed by lush orchestrations, he croons the likes of "With a Little Help from My Friends" and "Lyin" Eyes" at standstilttempos. "One More Goodbye, One More Hello," with an uncredited female voice singing in unison to Rankin's, and "Regrets," produced by Arif Mardin rather than Costa, retain enough individuality to make an impression. But basically Rankin, like Taylor, has ceased making music and is now just making a living.

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