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Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 25

Publication:
Chicago Tribunei
Location:
Chicago, Illinois
Issue Date:
Page:
25
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

Chicago Tr bune Frdgv Wa-c! 7. Setftn 3 -3 Theater F.lovies Self-obsessisrri Walking Loretta Lynns familiar, rocky trail carried to its f'r 1 Jir 3 si 1 HEX YOI FE LOOKING at me. you're looking at country." goes I-orelta Lynn's "Looking at Country." and indeed, to many, the sinper the quintessential country music queen Some of her sisters in song may pursue a course, attempting to corner the mass pop market as weli as the harrirore crowd; Loretta Lynn can play Las Vegas and still remain country as cornbread. or at least continue to embody any number of qualities that constitute the popular, often cliched. concept of "country." Hers is a rather remarkable story, one seemingly fraught with almost as many peaks and valleys as her native Kentucky, where she was born a coal miner's daughter 40-some years ago Lynn, with help from writer George told the story with appealing, often startling honesty (if sometimes startling syntax! and emotion in "Coal Miner's Daughter," her autobiography, which made the best seller lists a few years ago and now has been made into a film by the same name.

The film, for the most part, sticks closely to the book in the letter and the spirit, from hardscrabbie beginnings in Butrher Holler. to the stage of the Grand Otc Opry and beyond, to the demands of the road and the difficulties Ioretta and husband Mooney i who she calls DooliUle) have had in coping with her stardom. THERE IS LOVE and warmth and some laugh-out-loud humor here as well, but nothing in the way of plamorizalion. Loretta and Mooney come off as all too human and sometimes downright dumb: she is painfully naive, largely uneducated, married at lit, and the sexually unaware recipient of a number of ieky surprises on their wedding night; he is bullheaded, domineering, overly proud, increasingly unhappy on the road as his beloved wife's career soars, and prone to cope with his problems by drinking and messing around. "Coal Miner's Daughter" is.

in fact, as much or more Mooney story as it is Loret-ta's. And while Sissy Spacek's sympathetic portrayal of the "queen of country music" is winning for its sensitivity and credible singing job. Tommy Lee Jones as Mooney is marvelous as the Butcher Holler boy who comes back from the war and starts courting the young Loretta despite her parents' objections to his wildman ways and bad rep (he runs moonshine, drinks a lot, drives fast, and operates the s.ime way with The two hit it off at a local pie social when Mooney buys Loretla's miserable-looking chocolate meringue, which tastes the same way but fails to deter him. Less than a month later, he asks Loretta's parents (Le-von Helm of the Band, surprisingly effective in his film debut as the coal-mining lather; and Phyllis Boyens, the real life folk singer Gene Siskel is on vacation. Tommy Lee Jones and Sissy Spacek: Love, warmth, and naivete.

logical absurdity "BAL" IS A VERY good, xrry unrvea nut ply about I. More precisely (and certainly more grarr.matic.iHyi. Thursday's vorid premiere at the Goodman Theater is a rambling but potentially searing new comic allegory about The, personal pronoun. The s-lf as in self-examination, self knowledge, self-observation, self obsession, and contemporary self help earned to its logical absurdity: the completely honest predator. Richard Nelson, who won Off Broadway's Obie award last year, has written a cynical, multileveled study of a lusty working-class fellow named Bal.

Or, as Jim Belushi pronounces it, Ball. The boor analyzes scene after scene in terms of their effect on him. He uses people, admits it. and thoy adore him. Not tor nothing is he named after Baal, (he earth pod who sucks his victims dry, the false idol.

I'NDKR GREGORY Mosher direction. Nelson and Belushi are heading toward a great mythic figure for late 20th Centurv theater. Funny and scary, Hal (an auto mechanic! lives out an entirely mechanistic K. Skinner box of a world. One does not casually ask Bal.

"What are you thinning?" because he tells. The evening, however, is not consistently up to its best character. While Bal is a bottomless reflecting pool of amoral fascination, many of the other 2odd figures have a false ring, and some don't ring at all. Nelson's best writing is a kind of patter poetry (not unlike the best of David Mamet), but it is undercut by too many weak or unnecessary scenes and some lazier, looser writing much of the worst assigned to poor Cosmo White as Bats biggest fan and enemy. Johnny.

Nelson, of course, has patterned his play after the young Bertoidt Brecht's 1918 drama. "Baal." That one, too, has many scenes and many characters. It follows the descent into depravity of a lusty, selfish poet -kind of sturm und drang, instinctive antihero like Frank Wcdekind's Lulu and post-Romantic suicides into Teutonic riverbeds. IF THAT ERA'S decadent extremes were symbolized by unrelenting pursuit of sexual pleasures, ours may well be the obsessive pursuit of the self. Nelson original title was "Baal in the 21st Century." But Baal in the me-decade is very close to its time.

When we first find Bal, he is wearing a sweatshirt and gorging fine sausage at a party peopled by cardboard socialites out of early Albee. Del Close, who is perfect in comic stupor, delivers tautologies about rational man and plays radical chic host to his newest discovery. The banquet table exists, dreamlike, on a craggy wasteland of hard tar. (Heidi I.andesman's name was inked off the program as set designer because of "artistic differences." The stark scenes, with silhouettes between blackouts, have the Mosher look.) Nelson takes us through Bal's journey in which he uses women, causes suicides, analyzes his every emotion. There are times when we seem to be just a succession of thematically unified Second City skits.

TRIBUNE MINI-REVIEW: Loded with atmospher "COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER" Produced by BarnttA Schwarti; dlnictM by Mlchwl ptd. rfenplay by Tom Richman baMd on 4ht autobiography by Loratla Lynn wrth Gftorga Vacaay; dtatrlbulad by Unlveraal Studiot; now ahowlng In Walai Towar and oullylnf lhaalart Ralad Pa. THE CAST: Loratla Lynn Slaay Spank Oooimia IMoonayl Tommy La Jonea Palay Clina Bvrry 0 Angalo Tad Wabb Levon Halm Clara Phyllla Boyana An emotional moment the wocid premiere of "61" win Cosmo While (left), Jim Belushi, and Caillin Clarke Others senm. at least on the surface, to be an extention of David Mamet" "Sexual Perversity in Chicago." But Mamet's dialog is all subtext the expression of one thing while something else is said. The fascinating part Bal's style is the opposite He scrupulously tries to sny exactly what he meant.

The unsaid is said. The unconscious, denied. PFOIM.E MAY see too much "Sexual Perversity" and Second City in Belushi's acting especially since he is best known in Chicago for both. Surely, Bal could be played with more ruthlessness. more voluptuousness, or even the kind of implacable blankness Peter Sellers brings to another instinctive abyss-hero in "Being There." But Belushi has that cuddly, working-class quality down pat, and mixes it with a new complexity that keeps the stage alive when things around him get hard to understand.

Besides, he has timing. And you can understand why others are drawn to it. White warms up to his role as buddy-adversary, following Bal around with a combination of puppy adoration and animal resentment. He and Caitlin Clarke have a nude scene that's not entirely necessary, but they carry it off. One wonders, however, why Nelson's women seem so artificially young and naive.

Also. Bal1' was hurt a lot Thursday by an obtrusive intermission. The episodes are not theatrical enough to withstand a break and the two acts would make a better, tighter, one act. These scenes must be allowed to accumulate. Bal wants to be the center of the universe.

It's hard to sustain an obsession all the way out to the lobby. i Linda Winer. As loretta's career starts to take off via a tour with country singer Patsy Cline (played with brassy toughness by Beverly D'Angclo. Mooney becomes more distressed and finally settles down in Tennessee to raise their family. Eventually, having achieved country stardom, Ixiretta struggles with her own stress.

Plagued with headaches, lonely for her family, and tired of the continuous pressures of touring, she finally comes apart at the seams, chattering point-lessly onstage during a show and then fainting as fans press forward with the ubiquitous cameras to capture her collapse. Undeniably, Lynn lived and still lives with this sort of stress, but the performer-coming-apart theme is such an overly familiar one that the truth here seems uncomfortably cliched and more than a bit boring. Back home in Tennessee, Lynn tries the simpler life for awhile, then, apparently refreshed and recovered, returns to the stage as cheering crowds once more "make weltome the queen of country music." It is an abrupt and somewhat unsatisfying conclusion, more than a little open-ended; hut then, this is a case of art imitating life. The coal miner's daughter is rolling down some highway somewhere right now in her tour bus, en route to the next gig. Few who see this film will envy her.

daughter of miner folk singer Nimrod Work man. as the mother) for her hand in mar riage. THE FIRST PART of the film is hy far the most moving, and is almost continually captivating in terms of scenarios and backwoods settings. The pie social, in particular, is a delight, full of those wonderful, gaunt Appalachian faces, kids slicked up wearing neckties with their bib overalls, simple people having fun in simple ways. Once they leave Kentucky for Washington, where Mooney goes to work in a logging camp and pushes Loretta (who now has four kids I into a singing career, things are less charming visually and generally less interesting as well.

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