The Observer from London, Greater London, England • 24

OBSERVER REVIEW SUNDAY 21 FEBRUARY 1988 24 SUE AOLER Struttin Revenger's tragedy Marquez, 'Repentance' and 'Dragnet' PETER HILLMORE I the. synopsis, provided to critics says things go 'from bad to worse to and who am I to argue with this succinct definition? The plot, if that's the word, is all' about a girl who takes her three charges on a trip to downtown Chicago for some obscure reason and gets involved in a chase with a gang of car thieves, a fight between two rival gangs in the subway, a blues-singing contest in a night club and a chase down the side of a skyscraper. It has a frenetic energy, but when the girl suddenly screamed Halfway through the '1 can't take much more of this crap', I did find myself shouting' back in agreement. Mind you, the film is designed: for a teenage audience, and my teenage nephew loved, it Dragnet (Cannon, PG), on the other hand, is designed for middle-aged A spoof on the old 'Dragnet' television crime Aykroyd as" a descendant of the onginal police detective and mental defective Joe Friday saving Los Angeles from a group of people called PAGAN (People Against Goodness and Normalcy) who are in fact controlled by the Moral America movement. It is what is called a 'aper' and Aykroyd and his wise-cracking partner-Tom Hanks play the capered crusaders with a desultory borer dom that raises a few desultory laughs.

A far: more restrained caper opens- this week in a film from Canada, 90 Days (Minema, 15). This is about a man who. orders a 'mail order' bride from the Philippines, while his tested by a mysterious woman as a possible If that is your idea of a whimsical plot, then go and see it as there's no accounting 'for taste 'and we live in a i. A cultural breakthrough; as dramatic in its way as 'Repentance', has come; from Ireland with The Courier (Cannon, IS). It's a thriller about heroin and petty crimirials set Dublin and nobody, but nobody, who drinks is seen drinking Guinness or uses three words where one' will do.

If it' wasn't for the accents, you would think it was any industrial town. Unfortunately, it isn't the accents that make the plot it's the: writing' that is totally One of the perks of being a film critic is that you are given a synopsis when you see a film. This is' a bonus denied the average cinema-goer, and they will be iost without one in 'The Courier'. 1 was pretty with one. Philip French is on In the magailne, Michael Douglas Interviewed.

I SAT through A Time To Die (ICA, 15)feeUng for Gabriel Garda Marquez. There he is, a Nobel Prizewinner, one of South America's best authors and. his writing was going to reach a wider audience, such ft dreadful and stilted lines as 'Machos don't eat meat', and 'Dignity is something -that must be earned'. Who done this dreadful thing to Marquez? Well no actually Marquez has done it to himself. The screenplay-for the joint Colom-f bian and Cuban revenge tragedy is by Marquez with no help, and therefore no blame, from anyone else.

The plot is simple; and, atj the- bgimung, appealing. A man leaves jail where he has been imprisoned for 18 years for murder, to return to his home village; Once there, he discovers that, he may have paid his debt, to society but his victim's family, want more payment revenge. He must be Wiled by the sons of the man he The two sons are reluctant and scared to. carry out the! code, but the code drives them to do it, anyway, with tragic and predictable results. The tragedy part- may be moving but it is the predictability that lets the film down and negates any sense of the tragic.

The released murderer has learnt nobility, gentleness, and how to knit socks while in jail, and is anxious, to live a quiet life with the woman he once loved (who, conveniently, is now a widow). One of his victim's sons the real man who would never let a slice of. quiche, pass his lips is bent on revenge, while the other, more sensitive one strikes up a friendship with, the man and would like to live in peace, but eventually does the killing himself. Giving the ending away, doesn't spoil the as it isi obvious from The filmj it seems, has won. prizes in South not for the script.

Mr Marquez should stick, to novels. prize-winrung film, released this week is the Russian poUtical epic Repentance (Gannon, PG), which "wpnfSthe Jury Prize at Cannes last year. The director, Tenghiz; Abuladzei has: vaguely described tragic' phantasmagoria, a grotesque tra-gi-comedy or perbips Ja lyrical tragi-farce. you may; choose Well, thanks very much, that's a great help. Made in 1982, the film's release was delayed by the government until last year when its theme about: the legacy-of Stalinist totalitariansm ing succeeding generations became more acceptable.

A local party dignitary and despot 'for every three people, I have four enemies'), Varlam Howard Barker 'A controlled, impersonal social manner contrasted Off-beat track r. raw passion of his plays- appears Howard Barker meets rto mystify- people' He seldom i expresses hisr feelings to those he LAURENCE MARKS d()esn'tknow mtimately. 1 tJ 'Howard is entirely objective in at'shard8ay exactly' piesdonal deaMn says hfe tThe seriousness and, otionalV t'J strength of his writing' is beyondr beheves Barker may emerge as question. He speaks of his own, Pjaywright-of 'mtrarisigence', which he He doesn want seems to mean a witholding from his personahty to obtrude. Even, the audience of certain directional, Sam Beckett is more signs;" Even his admirers some-L with people he knows.

He wont times lose track of what's going even let us have a copy of his on. Possibilities' is his most' signature. He types his name at accessible work for several years. the 'end of his He was born in the leafy Vic- Hehas begun to prosper. A fnnoti enknrh nf Nnrannrf in -'new' company of actors, the their THE OPENING number of, Carrie (RSC, Stratford-upon-Avon) is breathtaking.

The energy of 12 dancers on a. shiny white stage beneath an aluminium light-, ing rig is electric: waists are lean, legs long, buttocks trim and muscles tight. No punches are pulled. The effect is virile, aggressive and cruel, a body-celebration through the martial arts purporting to be an aerobics class in ah American high-school gym. And this is only the girls.

Debbie Allen, whose choreography pro-; vides the most dazzling single element in the RSC's -'first Broadway-bound Stratford' show, is making the point as 'forcefully as possible that when'- womerf dance alone they can dance like men. There are many good things: about 'Carrie' the first Anglo-American show -T cast-equally from actors and singers on both sides: of the Atlantic A (about time) and quite -a few in the writing and staging of the second half, that require urgent attention before the1 April opening in New York. The important thing is that the working, partly, outside, their, normal.fund-mg and schedules, has confounded doubts they should be involved in the enterprise at all. Directed by Terry Hands and designed by Ralph Koltai (sets) and Alexander Reid (costumes), 'Carrie' is staged with an elegant-geometry that boldly- makes spaces where the performers can sing' and dance and strutt their Miss Allen, Michael 'Gore Pitchford and several of the dancers worked on television' andor, movie versions sthis influ: ence is (Can hand-jive really be back?) Not having "readt Stephen King's novel or seen Brian de Palma's film, I approached 'Carrie' in ignorance of all save that it was about a girl, with a fundamentalist mother, tormented by classmates for her shabbiness, piety and sexual innocence; Car-: rie 'avenges' herself on them all with powers1 of telekinesis she never knew she possessed. Menstruation, blood, sin, fire, death and destruction are all stirred into the schlocky stew.

-ivAsra -horror-musical, 'however, 'Carrie' is a bit of a fake, and not one' tenth as horrifying as Son- dheim's 'Sweeney Todd', for. the dmusic, a few orchestral disso-r o) I nances, apart, has no horror in The revelation of Carrie's -is until the final scene-' of thefirst half, and they remaJnafflbiguous even after: that. i The pyrotechnics take third place to- the -erotic, tribal precision of the dancing and to the intensity qf, feeling Hate'Iey) and her mother Marr garet (Barbara Cook) while the tricks ace surprisingly tame. Much of the lighting Terry Hands has done his own is gorgeous, and splashed "around the stage like paint, but the final catastophe is simulated by laser beams, and in a production otherwise so confident and cool, years after 'Starlight Express' and 'Time', lasers look pretty old hat. There are basically three kinds of' number: troupe duets for mother and daughter; ballads for them or other men bers of Carrie's class.

These are served club sandwiches some sharp and processed and dull. Pitchford and Gore are better at the; colloquialism of adolescentl speech than at sentimental ballads; the latter are reprised with wild generosity in the second half and the effect 'of playing; them against one another is lost since after a while they all tend to sound the same. The company is superb. Miss -Hateley is touching and fullr throated as Carrie. Miss Cook takes the stage with a grand, contained simple authority and more opportunities for THEATRE HOWARD BARKER'S 'The Possibilities', an evening of ten short one-act plays thatiopensat "the1 Alraeida on( Thursday'are -episodes- about moral choice.

in a blooolrdrenched, terror-stricken landscape of war and irevolution, iu vujjui A woman involuntarily betrays her husband to terrorists when she is tricked by a cry for help into opening thedoor of their house at night. ('You helped my enemies to murder me he accuses her. Thad not killed the instinct of a she wails). -Three village women murder a lieutenant of an occupying rejectmg his rational argument in favour of despite certainty that they will be slaughtered -in reprisal. Gontrariwise, the enlightened autocrat Tsar Alexander LT orders -hisgroom to be flogged 'for failing'' to resist tyranny when: he has the oppor-tunity to do so! 'f The(ppssibilities referred 'to are assertions 'of h'uman dignity against the arguments for accommodation and self-betrayal, but merely "possibilities -of moral action, not' celebrations of, virtue or heroism.

The first of these incidents ends uncharacteristically? in an uncomproroising of humanity: the wife abandons her. attempt to kill her child, in black despair and proclaims her neighbourly instinct to respond to pleas for help, even atthe risk of treachery. 'More 'often, the audi-, ence is left to interpret' the ambiguities of the situation. Barker is now 41. Since his first London production 'Cheek at the Royal Court in 1970 he has been a powerful butnever domi-.

nant presence in avant-garde therl' atre. He endured a long period 'of studied neglect by 'the BBC. Commissioned works have remained unperformed for years though he says the backlog is now down to two. Unlike other dramatists of his generation Howard -Brenton and David Hare at the National, David Edgar at the RSC -r. he has not formed a secure alliance with a major company.

His electrifying; play 'The Castle', a popular and critical success when it was given at the Pit in 1985, received only 13 performances. Aravidze, is Georgia with due bourgeois solemnity, but his body keeps being mysteriously exhumed and deposited in his family's garden; night after night. When the culprit is caught, it turns out to be a woman, the daughter of a couple imprisoned and murdered by Varlam. She tells, the court that -she will dig the body up night after night because Varlam's crimes ought to deny his soul any rest His crimes are then told in flashback Varlam, it seems, was the kind of ruthless bureaucrat who regarded total obedience to his policies and him as commensurate with the common good of the community. Untouched by remorse or guilt, he will take dinner with people whom, he will.

have imprisoned the next day. There are same harrowing" scenes of the' impersonality of bureaucratic cruelty, the soldiers saying courteously, 'Peace be unto this-house'' as they -arrive to arrest someone, the similar courtesy women with chUdren jump the queue as they wait in front of a small grille to discover their husband's fate. The. court, that listens, to the woman's story against Varlam refuses to convict her, but, his son, Avel (played by. the same actor; a rather obvious piece of symbolism): uses his political influence to have her declared insane.

But the knowledgerpf his father's guilt wears heavily on him and ponderously on his own son, a symbol of modern Russia who cannot and will not accept what his family has done. Put like this, the plot can seem trite, and indeed it is; but it -is i saved by some extraordinary images that stay in the mind: the woman anxiously studying a shipment1 of logs in case their vanished husbands have carved their names in at the labour camps, Varlam's scarifying performance of a Shakespeare sonnet before having his listeners thrown into jail. In America, the nearest equivalent to a despotic character who regards obedience as beneficial to the common good is the baby-sit--ter, that autocratic stranger who 'is allowed to because i.e.the fanifly, -bestows that i power. This doesn't mean that A Night On The Town (Warner, PG) is a political allegory. It is, I think, a comedy, one in which hairy gorilla.

It is the combination of beauty and vacuity that is intended to alarm. The; three women who share the bathroom, although -different in temperament, have in common a dissatisfaction with themselves and a desire for disguise. Celia (Alaine Hickmott) believes in a great deal of cosmetic help and is entertainingly prone to giving beauty counselling to Jo who becomes surly as Celia's patter turns confidential: 'You know I've got green eyes so I've, got to be But the tyrrany of trying to look different, to be someone else is best illustrated in the hilarious scene in which Jo and Mary (Lorraine Brunning) get ready for, a party. They attempt to admire themselves in the mirror but both are wearing brutally: unflattering frocks. Jo is divided horizontally by a pink rnini, garishly: set: off by red eye-shadow while Mary's buckled mauve dress divides her vertically.

The costumes: are an education in themselves. No wonder Mary peels off her dress to announce: 'I'm going to sit in the bathroom for the rest of my: life and go out occasionally for a This is a thoroughly entertaining, very short evening. It is a shame we couldn't get out of the bathroom to the party to see the three girls in action, dealing with the world outside. But at least, as a bathroom production, it has plenty of gumption. KATE KELLAWAY CZ2 'Who owns and 'Wilko's Weekly' PAUL FERRIS On broader issues, such as the need for a better land register or the future of public housing, Gosling sounds flummoxed.

It's true that being flummoxed is one of his stocks-in-tradej but a little of that goes a long way. It takes a Mary Goldring to round on property tycoons and dukes and make them say things they didn't mean to. A lot of Gosling's effects are achieved by the documentary equivalent of a wink, repeating an informant's phrase with heavy emphasis, as in 'A certain income --l like Still, at his best the raw provincial eye, looking at the tacky surfaces of capitalism Gosling is perceptive. His caustic impres- sions of the London uocKiana The RSCVCarrje'i en route to Broadway MICHAEL RATCLIFFE anger would be advisable before. New York.

Dressed in scarlet or black, golden hair piled high- and pale blue eyes ablaze, she encompasses tenifying switches of mood from rose-tinted tenderness to lightning-bright zeal, and when like Amen' strikes squarely: in the. stiH-resounding her voice the effect' of pioneer wholesomeness perverted is very chilling indeed. The idea that Timon of Athens is an aberration of Bardic biliousness, with nothing of, or our times is knocked on the head by Simon Usher's moving, and lucid production with seven actors at Leicester Haymarket Studio: 'Men must learn -now with pity to dispense', saysoneof: several strangers who walks into the play and out again, 'for policy: sits above conscience': Indeed. Moreover, it is a play abouti.the; twin curses of poverty and wealth, rich in the imagery, of finance and in a world of futures valued far above performance. Productions are still quite and often disfigured by ranting when Timon's naive munificence runs out of cash and credit and he takes in to the woods.

There isahnost jbo ranting Jat Leicester. Mr Usher's great success and that of, his ibrotaeo- nist, Guy is to define Timon's fall fand exile 'the delaved discovery of his gence and wit. Hisdecision in'the end simply tojlie weevet see or learn how is portrayed -metaphysically serene walk out of suffering into light. The serenity is compounded by Gavin Bryars's score, adapted from music by Duke Ellington for a Canadian production of play by Guthrie, which fills both ear and mind with 'Tristan'-like washes of dark: tone surging on. some eternal shore.

Anthony Douse plays Apemantus exceptionally well as a cross between an exhausted pub companion and rueful old don; Jocelyn Herbert designs. Recommended. At the Bush, A Handful of Stars, a first play by Billy, Roche set in a grubby back poolroom in Wexford complete with juke box; Jesus, fragile bravura and only one decent cue in the place. The swift 'descent of young Jimmy (Garry O'Brien) violent, miserable, unemployed and not quite -bright enough is watched by a of acquaintances and ill-wishers expressing every variety of Irish feeling from venial Schadenfreude to loving grief. Strong gifts for the sharp, distinguishing outlines of characr ter and for the joy of language are tempered at present by the impulse to chuckieverything into: the pot; very, good Irish cast directed by Robin Lefevre.

Athol Fugard'snew play A Place With The Pigs (NT Cot-teslbe), 'a personal parable' directed by( the author is disap- pointingly thin on texture, con text and tone, set not aouth Africa but in the Soviet Union where- Pavel Navrotsky (Jim Broadbent) has 41 years his pigsty attedesertingvaur-ing the Second World War. He is fed and tended by 'his devoted wife (Linda actors are two of the most 'sympathetic we have, but the: dialogue sounds and plays like a translation and the play' puts forward ideas of liberty, brutishness, bestiality, incarceration and release an interim, stage between the transliteration of events that actually took place and their application elsewhere. Neither narrative nor parable leaves the ground. Lloyds Bank by the raw passion of his -Wrestling School, supported by the Arts Council, has been founded to perform his plays, beginning with 'The Last a musical 'speculation on the life of Christ', which opens at the Royal Court next month. He is at work on a play about Sir Thomas More, 'Brutopia', for BBC TV, and on an opera about Goya, 'Terrible with the com-poserjSteve Martland for Radio 3.

Although still a socialist, the social perspective of his drama has radically. 'I didn't emerge until recently, from a belief in the class war as inevitable' and' he says. have discovered, partly through familiarity with -Eastern. Europe, that my interest: lies finding -out what it is that stunts people's Uves; I had identified that with capiuUisnii. have, come' to realise, no doubt belatedly, -that socialism, too, has the power to stunt life.

I no longer tlook at the world in terms of class conflict. I would now identify ideology as the' enemy. 'What engagesme today.is not so much exposing the pain caused by class in society, as speculating about how jjeople frame their lives under oppression. I'm more interested in why people submit to cruelty than in why they are It seems to me that both the. will to revolt and the; will to lbmiti are contamrf: sameosvche.

'I think the plays in "The Pos sibilities" repudiate ideology. They assert the freedom of individuals to commit acts that are ostensibly 2 SAMUEL BECKETT 5 9 Yvrr 8 muixw "A GODOT WELL WORTH WAITING FOR" Mail 9 8 9 0 9 9 9 9 8 "A GREAT PRODUCTION OF A GREAT PLAT: 2 LYRICAL, HAUNTING, PRECISE, FUNNY" Sunday Times Lyttelton: Tomor Wed at 7.43. aSFeMMar. Evas 7.4S, Mats Tae Sat 2.15 01-928 2252 THE CITY: 'A stunted imitation of Read Prince Charles on architecture in Modern Painters Ideal WE ARE looking ata bathroom; avocado-green throughout, amus-; ingly neglected with' only. a brownish spider plant for decoration.

'These foolish is playing. The first foolish thing on view in Low Level Panic (Royal CourtTheatre Upstairs) is Jo (Caroline Quentin). She surveys us dreamily from the bath, occar sionaUy kicking her legs in.the air like a reciimbent chorus girl. She gives soap opera a new; meaning as she sings loudly from the bubbling bath: 'She was just 17. and yer know what I Wishing that she was just 17.

is only one of Jo's fantasies. In time, we are to hear about all of them. dare Mclntyre who wrote 'Low Level Panic' for the Women's Playhouse Trust, demonstrates exactly how witless and reduced sexual fantasies can sound, once confessed. Jo's resemble advertisements: a series of glossy stills in which she is a new-woman tall stories in which the dream lover is tall, Jo's legs are longer than usual, and the glasses have tall stems. There is no dialogue, beginning or end.

'He'd be looking at my legs. Then we'd Although lightly, and -divert- ingly directed by Nancy Meckler, all this nevertheless amounts to a cautionary tale of sorts. We are warned against the futility of buying advertisers' images of beauty. We are told of an advertisement showing an expressionless woman in the embrace of a South London where his father, aii bookbinder and active trade' unionist, imbued him' with an unrelenting left-wing idealism from early boyhood. He was brought up a tradition of arti-V san radicalism that stretches ibacki to the GvilWar, about which he 'My interest lies in fmding out what it is that stunts people's lives has written two 'Victory (anti-Royalist) and 'Pity in His- tory' (anti-Cromwellian).

3 After Battersea1 Grammarr, School, he read' history in the" European Studies Department at: Sussex" University, whose cross-cultural breadth was the second; important influence on him. After; a fewbosh'shots at getting fiction; published, he turned to writing plays. For a long while, fromj 'Claw' in 1975 to 'Downchild' hr his theme, was socialism in contemporary Bri-; Jtain. He has never seemed to fit eas ily into the coteries of the staee. iie lives witn nis- Barents in a comfortable, slightly.

dowdy house in the Kemp Town district ot JJngnton, aevoia or strong signals of personal taste. He dresses with a calculated absence of display, affecting nei- 5thtttheatrical dandyism nor agit-g prop subfusc. He has two children. His closest friends are the art historian Marcia Eoynton and the actor Ian is directing 'The Possibilities' extreme contrast, between his controlled, rather impersonal social manner and the Suzanne Bunlen Douglas Hodge Heather Canning Katharine Rogers Michael Grandage Nicholas Woodeson epecttilvlBilHeesnBM BfttfESWWH'bS GALLERY 17 April THE SOUTH BANK CENTRE 'A ALMEIDA THEATRE COMPANY NOT THE RSC, AGE of CHMLRY LAST rWEEK Sir Richard Attenborough's award-winning film about the friendship 'between. the campaigning editor Donald Woods and the 1 -black-rights campaigner Steve Blko, Cry Freedom, was released in cinemas outside London.

To celebrate" the fact, the distributors, UIP, have put at our disposal 50 copies of the book about the making of the film. The first 50 readers who correctly name the actors who played Woods and Biko will be sent the book free of charge. Answers, please, on a postcard, giving name and address, by first post Friday; to: Cry Freedom, Marketing The Observer, Chelsea Bridge House, Queenstown Road, London SW8 4NN. SIMON FRITH reviews Morrissey's new solo single, 'Suedehead', today on the opposite page. Fifteen of a special, numbered limited edition of this 12-inch single, intended by HMV for promotional purposes only; can be won by the first 15 Observer readers who correctly name Morrissey's Christian names.

(The exact spelling is Important). Answers on a postcard with your name and address by first post Friday to: Morrissey, Marketing The Observer, Chelsea Bridge House, Queenstown Road, London SW8 4NN. land faculties for further enriching the rich, were in character. He makes greedy Britain sound a matter of scandal and concern. Tony Wilkinson has a touch of the same injured innocence in his manner, as he works his way through a series of six communities as seen by their local newspapers.

Wfflco's Weekly (Radio 4) got off to a sleepy start with The Epaorth Bells, a newspaper in a watery corner of Lmcolnshire where 'Georgina is child of the year' is page one news, but picked up with The Hackney Gazette, whose beat is the real East London, not the gospel according to 'EastEnders'. Wilkinson can cheat by eavesdropping on reporters at work (they hope for light-relief but keep coming up with rapes), then taking his tape-recorder into the streets so that radio adds its own dimension to their stories. A bailiff evicting two women squatters from a council flat, while other squatters chanted and screamed threats, made a sour vignette. None of this is 'news', in a national sense: more's the pity. praaatHSKJAlffl BARKER THE MISS lidu TIES The fat of the HAYWARD 4 February Lucian r'reud A THE FAITHFUL Radio 4 listener who has followed Ray Gosling around the country these past five weeks as he looks at the land and asks Who Owns Britain? will not be much wiser.

Gosling doesn't know. Nobody knows, exactly. No doubt our man was aware of this before he set out. Short, clear answers, would hardly sustain a series of six programmes (the last is on Thursday). What he expected, and what he has been finding, is muddle, secrecy, vested interest and, if not iniquity, any amount of inequity.

Where he meets a chatty developer or a nonchalant squire, the inquiry becomes lucid and revealing in a personal sense. In Programme 3, "The County Gents', Gosling asked a landowner, who might have stepped out of 'Mid-dlemarch', if he was poor. 'If you mean, have I always had an rasped his informant, 'the answer is I've always lived very comfortably. I've had one since I was old enough to have a cheque book at 17, and I intend to have one till the day I'm ART in PLANTAGENET ENGLAND 1200 to 1400 ROYAL ACADEMY of ARTS BURLINGTON HOUSE PICCADILLY LONDON Wl continues until 6th MARCH 1988 OPEN DAILY 10-6 "Exhibition of Ike year'' the daily telegraph consistently thegimrdian gigantic end epoch-making the Sunday times stage-managed witk a panache tkat Ike Academy kas never attempted before the new york times HALF TERM HOUDAY FAMILY OFFER ONE ADULT -ONE CHILD FREE until February 26th PAINTINGS) IJ Roger PHOTOGRAPHER of the 1850s renton ADMISSION 3 REDUCTIONS 1.50 RECORDED INFORMATION 01-261 0127 Sponsored by development, with its special.