The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 35

The Boston Globe Thursday, September 30, 1971 33 Schiller at Loeb play Center THEATRES THE ACCLAIM EVERYDAY FOR 'ONE DAY'! A beautifully made film." -Judith Crul, KBC TV virtually perfect EXQUISITE." "Playboy "BEAUTIFUL, careful depiction wonderfully played. -Penelope (Jilliatl.Tht Xtw Yorker beautiful and EXHILARATING experience!" i Christian Science Monitor ''A SINGULAR BARING!" i -Richard Schickel, Lilt Matatmr "BRILLIANT. THE AUTHOR WOULD RELISH SO FAITHFUL AN INTERPRETATION OF HIS WORK A BEAUTIFULLY MADE FILM." By the winner of the 1970 BROADWAY LADIES join Joan Blondell (2d from right) at party Tuesday celebrating her debut in play "Marigolds." Others (left to right): Patsy Kelly, Penny Singleton, Ruby Keeler, Mary McCarty. (AP) Spooky Harbor, unanswered questions 'Let's Scare Jessica' film review I Iifi Kmmiu CROWS V- Nobel Prize for Literature mm "FRIENDS" tfDUCiO-IATi I PARKING AIOVI THf THIATRI AfTH a.m. TrliS i yEAR QRANQ PRIZE WINNER AT THE CANNES JL fllM fESTIVAl fGPj lUllE ChRiSTIE AtAN bATS O'b ETWEEN Something is aiisrJesiica Something very and very dead.

"Let's Score Jessica cXbDeath" cr $IZS CH1LDRtN AT iPj 7- AIL SHOWS' 1 aT 0 aW 'V firT i -n i mJ I inifBr iinffl IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DEMSOV1CH Bv the winner of the 1970 ISobel Prize for Literature By Kevin Kelly Globe Staff "I sit here and can't believe it happened. Dreams, nightmares, madness or sanity. I don't know which is which," says the shaken heroine at the beginning of "Let's Scare Jessica to Death," at the Savoy I. the movie ends she's still sitting there in a rowboat at the edge of a isolated harbor she reiterates the statement. If she doesn't know which is which, how -are we supposed to? The question is indicative of the plot's general cop-out.

The situation is this: Jessica, her husband and a male friend leave New York to live a pastoral ex-' istence on a remote island. Although slightly older than most hippies, they travel in a reconverted movie seems to be headed toward a final explanation. There is none. So, given the title, which is a specific invitation to scare Jessica to death, whom do we assume is making it? The director? The writer? The lady vampire? If the latter, and the movie is supposed to be about satanic possession, it still comes off all wrong. Zohra Lampert plays Jessica as though caught before Candid Camera on Halloween, a performance of such personal shtick it's hard to take seriously on any level other than self-exploitation.

Mariclare Costello is creepy as the vampire and Barton Hyman and Kevin O'Connor are good as two of her hapless victims. But, for all that, "Let's Scare Jessica to Death" is a heavy-handed horror. hearse with L-O-V-E lettered on the door. A few months earlier Jessica had been hospitalized, the victim of her own supposedly unfounded fears and horrors. Now she's mending, well enough at least to stop during the trip to take a rubbing from a grave stone.

They arrive on the island and discover a pale, circle-eyed, string-haired lady living in their rented house and, somewhat against Jessica's good sense, they all become friends. Evil begins to hum. Emily, the string-haired lady, is the exact image of a young woman in a faded photograph Jessica finds in the attic, a young woman who drowned in 1880 at the age of 20. Jessica is certain of the resemblance but, conditioned to being doubted by others, she doubts By Michael Steinberg Globe Staff Schiller's play "Kabale und Liebe" (Intrigue and Love) was last seen here in Verdi's operatic version, "Luisa Miller," in 1968. For more nearly straight Schiller you have to go all the way back to a production in Russian in 1906.

The mere fact of the performance last night at the Loeb Drama Center by a group called Szene 71, based in the German city of Schweinfurt, was something for which to be grateful, even though direction and acting left almost everything be desired. It is an incredible and moving play, though. Schiller at 22, writing with passion and insight, in powerful and elevated language, and with an astounding stage fantasy (no wonder Verdi was so drawn to throws together a petty German prince who sells mercenaries to America to keep his mistress in diamonds; the mistress, who is an English, Catholic, royalist refugee; a prime minister whose road to power is paved with blood; his son, an idealistic muddlehead; an intelligent, unattractive Court Secretary; and the beautiful, young, religiously constricted Luise, the daughter of a town musician and a dumb mother with a touch of the procurer about her. Except for Lady Milford, the mistress, who escapes this mess in which the alternatives seem to be filth or blank-ness once again to start life from the clean zero point of no possessions and no station, the encounter is defeat or disaster for all. In his program note, Os ISABEL SAR.LT fever evefcx 1515 3:55 S-50 T-S 9-36 fax 1 1 1 a 1MA i ff Joseph Levme presents a Mike Nicholsw Carnal Knowledge An Avco Embassy Release Panavision Technicolor" Shown 2,4,6,8.10 P.M.

SHAFT 2:00. 3:50. 5:40, 7:30, :30 P.M. 1 'The Anonymous Venetian' expert escapist romance car Fritz Schuh talks a good game of directing. What he says about presenting a de-idealized, de-sentimentalized Schiller is persuasive, but what he has put on stage moves mostly within a range defined by nothingness at one end, and absurdity at the other.

Last night's performance looked like one that, except in the minimal traffic-cop sense, had not been directed at all. I cannot tell if the parade of caricatures on the Loeb stage was something Schuh had fired his troupe up to or whether it was something he was unable to prevent. Amid the rich offering of embarrassments, there was a fine performance, three-dimensional and alive, by Alwy Becker in the tiny role of Lady Milford's maid, Sophie; a commendably quiet one by Klaus Muenster as Wurm, the secretary; and a misconceived (or hammy, but engaging one as Luise's mother by Use Laux, a skillful character actress who speaks in a rich baritone and looks like the aged Rembrandt. The economical and adequate settings and costumes were the work of Ursula Schuh. "Kabale und Liebe" is repeated tonight.

Friday and Saturday, the company presents Jan Grossman's dramatization of Kafka's "DerProzess" (The Trial). PHYLLIS BERNADETTE NEWMAN PETERS LEONARD BERNSTEIN fM It BETTY C0UDEH ADCLPH GREEN JEROKE R0BBINS a cmfMirt ar ROM FIELD Special Previews Oct. Mt 2:00 P.M. Ev. 7:30 P.M.

Oct. 4 r.m upemns Ktgm, Oct. 5, r.m. SHUBERTAII ev 7:30 P.M. Mats 2:00 PM.

Oct. 2 thru Oct. z-zv 23. tV "A CUftTTCDIftlf Um unMiitninu HI BOSTON QLOBS 'PACKS A PUNCH MORE arisiv turn iu itau dduBI" I I HERALD TRAVELER a. LnBL IflHR (In RlUn rOTutf at- atts.

4tM. VANESSA RE1X.RAYE OLIVER REED IN KEN RUSSELL'S FILM THE DEVILS theatre OCTOBER 10 SIMON AS iTTlf AS S3.S5 PER PERSON Sliflftly higher on Sat. 402 527-35 27 Closed Mondays Sat. 9:30 to 5 IMIM ran herself. Is she crazy? There are whispering words whirling in her head all the time, beckonings, taunts, imprecations, and she's unsure.

Then she sees or thinks she sees a woman in a white dress floating drowned in the water; a filmy blonde figure urging her to follow; and, finally, a dead man. Then she discovers a lady vampire. Under the direction of John Hancock, the movie plays havoc with its own sense of horror. While there is a dramatic sequence, there are so many gratuitous inclusions a coffin-like box for a cello; Jessica's interest in grave rubbings; the hippie hearse; an electrical failure in the house; the eerie strains of a Moog synthesizer that nothing rings true. Further, the entire still can't stand each other.

Mid-way through the film she discovers he has an incurable disease and only about three months to go. It all takes place in one day as they wander about the dying city's glories, with a few flashbacks to happier days. For a brief moment they revive their love with a passionate bed episode and then, to sustain the autumnal tone, the mood darkens Peter rabbit -TXLES OF BEATRIX POTTER AT ZOO 3-30 5:00 6:30 6 00 TONISHT AT 1:30 Tom'w ft Sat Nltts MUSICAL THEATRE II TEL RES. 536-4011 MUSICAL THEATRE I JACQUES SOMERSET HOTEL. 400 Cmm.

a Sfe- 2i hum, n. tOOIIS Tt3P i. CNfll TNEITIES IvCHTED OPPOSITE THE SMUTOI I0ST0I MTfL Elliott Qould TONY FLORINDA MUSANTE BOLKAN i ycncuaiLD iGPj A i JOHN SCHLESINGER VSUNDAY BLOODY there's so much to say. I 1 A (w 8:11 a M. 21S TIEMONT iljprj 2-7040 lis.

I I might have made it in the 30s. It is really the type of film you have to be in the. mood for, otherwise it becomes a batch of bathos. The tone is autumnal, with some glorious scenes of Venice in October. A decaying city as a backdrop for the last attempt at love of a dying man.

But actors Tony Musante as Enrico and Brazilian actress Florinda Bolkan as Valeria, his estranged wife, and director Enrico Maria Salerno keep it all from getting too. sticky. The picture is about as simple as possible, with only two characters, except for a few bit players. Enrico, a musician who never achieved his goal of becoming a conductor, summons his estranged wife to a meeting in Venice. She had left him with their son eight years ago and is now the mistress of a wealthy older man in Fer-rara.

At first she is puzzled at the cause of the reunion, as they bicker, turn sentimental, reveal that they still love each other and TTX7T jf UUJIiLlf.iWil' if mgyAti jf Chateau dc Villa I AT dinner Route Nine Framingham By George McKinnon Globe Staff You could call "TheAn- onymous Venetian" at the Pi Alley a "Love Story" with marinara sauce, an Italian pasta of a movie written by a Latin Erich Segal. But that would be only part of the story. True, the picture is a Venetian soap opera (the hero is dying, 'naturally) and would probably rate two kerchiefs for the susceptible. But there is such a lovely old-fashioned ro-' mantic air to it that Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer Daily calendar 'THE FANTASTICKS" Hotel Somerset's Musical Theater II preview 8:30 (formal opening at 4 p.m.. Oct.

3). The world's longest-running" musical (now in its second decade in New York is directed in Boston by Lucia Vic- tor whose credits include "An on Broadway. "CHANGES" Theater Two. 33 Garden Cambridge, at 8:30. "Circus of the mind" with three rings represented by three short plays: "Werewolf." "Clowns, and "Hawkins and Grabber." "THE PROPOSITION" 241 Hampshire Inman Cam-bridgs.

at 8 and 10. Piquant lm- pressions and frequent digres-i sions. BREL Hotel Somerset's Musical Theater I. at 8:30. Troubadorable tribute to a popular singer-composer.

DOUBLE BILL (in German Loeb Drama Center. Cambridge, at 8 P.m.. through Saturday. Schiller's "Kabale und Liebe" and Kafka's "Der Prozess. presented by the German company 1 Szene '71.

THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT" Experimental Theater. Loeb Drama Center. Cambridge, free preview at 8:30 (formal opening date to be A Terrence McNally Eiay adapted by the Cambridge aMama company. DEBORAH AND WIIXA MORI-ARTY. PIANO FOUR-HANDS Gardner Museum at 4 p.m.

1E8 GRAND BALLETS CANADI- EXS Music Hall at 8:30 P.m. "Tommy" and "Hip and Straight." STMPHONT ORCHESTRA Symphony Hall at 8:30. William Steinberg conducting: Christiane Edinger. violin Beeth-. Oven, Symphony No.

Emem. Violin Concerto: Hindenuth. "Mathis der Maler." HELD OVER 0 few Pa mil at Dmntj I "The BEATLES Away with WORDS" 8 10 P.M. WITH I0t TfIIt. Stmu HOHVf INN BOSTON 277 A I GOVT CNTf NEXT 0 TMfc McCABE and MRS.

MILLER Shown at 7:30 9:30 P.M. THRU as night falls on the water-bound city. Basically, it is a beautifully photographed sad love song. All very Italian and if you are in the correct mood, an expert escapist romance. "The love story Prom Denmark I 70mm 6 channel sound A story of love.

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