Edmonton Journal from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada • 19

TI Edmonton Journal (C Sunday, Qctobw 1965 Eetertaiinimeinit Real Estate C4 Bob Remington C8 TV Listings C8 EDITOR: Jim McNulty, 429-5345 Ham outweighs beef 7 v. I By LIZ NICHOLLS Journal Staff Writer In the world of jaded, boozy gumshoes who inhabit grimy offices and try to avoid getting their lights punched out, Tyrone Power has bottomed out. In fact, the teary-eyed hero of George F. Walker's clever private-eye spoof embraces the credo Yeah-I've-seen-it-all-and-it-stinks with a deep sorrow that makes Philip Marlowe and others of his ilk look positively sophomoric. "I don't get involved with the dirty poor and they're at least worth getting involved with, and if I don't get involved with the dirty poor, I sure as hell don't get involved with the filthy rich.

I'm a cynic. Get it?" The trouble with the creaky, unatmospheric Northern Light production directed by Jace van der Veen is that it espouses world-weariness with the sort of eager, likeable hamminess usually associated with amateur bedroom farces. It sends up seediness with an earnestness that is briefly funny and mostly wearing in a 2Vi-hour show. True, Walker's play is a parody of a genre brought to a pinnacle of languid wit by the likes of Raymond Chandler. When Power snarls, "Do as I've asked you or I'll shove the entire collected works of Thomas Mann down your throat," the echoes of Marlowe bribing a cabbie with T.S.

Eliot's complete poems are unmistakeable. The odd gallon of bourbon may pass their lips but these guys are no dummies. But the funniest parodies are rooted in the plausible, in recognizable style. The broad hyperactive farce created by van der Veen might make a tasty half -hour sketch. But in a full-length entertainment, some sense of the thing itself, a complex intrigue in which romance and political corruption spiral to an unexpected revelation, is sorely missed in the long (and I use the word advisedly) haul.

Filthy Rich Northern Light Theatre at the Kaasa through Nov. 10 As the romantically-named Power (thank his mum) reluctantly scraps his 15-year novel project and his freelance articles on how architects spend their weekends, for the dirty world of beautiful treacherous women, missing persons, pay-offs, extortion, the usual city hall stuff van der Veen has his cast endlessly gesturing, signaling, acting out everything they say. It's as if the production were designed, especially in the first act, for the hearing handicapped. In fact, it's fair to say that more atmosphere is generated during the black-outs (what with John Roby's slinky music, and Don Mackenzie's lighting effects) than in all the scenes put together. Wendell Smith is indisputably a gifted comedian, and he serves up stage buffoonery with real panache.

But he delivers Power's world-weary wit with a uniformly vigorous, polemical enthusiasm that often thumps on the humor. "Cases like this are always loaded with metaphysical angst. Or even worse. Existential nausea." He doesn't toss off the line; he declaims it. The effect is vaguely reminiscent of a demented scholar delivering a paper than of a detective who sticks his head into his aquarium to "see what life is like under there." Filthy Rich has its moments.

But you do tend to count them. And it's no coincidence that it's in sharp-edged cameos the production occasionally scores. As Henry "The Pig" Duvall, professional snuffer and nasty bit of goods, Blair Haynes is terrific. A dandified villain with a psychotic glare that could stop the presses at 400 yards, Haynes creates the portrait with a few, well-aimed strokes it's a model of economy the rest of the production would do well to adopt. And Christian St.

Pierre provides a bland, sinister detective. I 1 PICTURE: Chris Schwarz Wendell Smith plays the reluctant detective in Filthy Rich world-weary detective of Northern Light production seeks 'underwater pastoral' Children love Raffi's songs i it Si4ifc Kjf Sir '4r By JOANNE IRELAND I i. Springsteen 7 Columbia's forthcoming White Nights flick might have to find success without much help from its stars, Mikhail Ba-' ryshnikov and Gregory Hines. Studio execs say they're still waiting to learn whether the ballet great, who underwent knee surgery in August, will be in shape to hit the promotion trail for the adventuredance drama. And Hines is busy filming something called Running Scared.

While Carl Weathers awaits release of Rocky IV, which will see his demise as Apollo, he's getting in shape to start a new career as the hero of Moving Parts. The ABC series goes into action next month, with Weathers playing an ex-cop who works closely with a woman mayor. Actor Michael Beck and his writer wife, Cari, are expecting their second child in June. He reports they learned the good news after returning from London, where he was teaming on stage with Lauren Bacall in Sweet Bird of Youth while rumors made the rounds in Los Angeles that he was romantically involved with his co-star. He says "I went through the roof" when he heard about the gossip.

Though he loves Bacall "as a person, she is old enough to be my mother." Album prices have also played a substantial role in Raffi's attempts to open up the U.S. market. In Canada, a number of the children's records sell for the standard album price but "that situtation doesn't exist in the U.S as yet. So it's sort of like starting at square one. "Mind you, I think they do find it helpful to know that these records have been extremely popular in Canada and I've given concerts in, and have sold out performances, all over America These successes have helped both the distributer and the retailers to feel that this is something that's viable in the United States." Under the new agreement his newest album, One Light, One Sun, was released on both sides of the border simultaneously and the supporting tour which brings him to the Jubilee Auditorium, Nov.

7 includes a six-month stint in the U.S. Accompanying Raffi on his first American tour will be Rise and Shine Band members Ken Whiteley, Bucky Berger and Dennis Pendirth. Musician-producer Whiteley and a trio of primary school teachers have worked closely with Raffi from the start. "The songs are chosen by a group, comprised of my wife (Debi Pike) and our friends, Bonnie and Bert Simpson." Pike, who has also co-written songs with the group, has taken time off from her career and is currently travelling with her husband. Raffi was recognized for his work in 1983 when he was presented an Order of Canada medal.

Although he would be a natural candidate for a Juno, Raffi has no interest in the award. "I don't see any real meaning in the exercise. Competition in the arts misses the whole point of what the arts are all about. And children don't need to be told what they enjoy." Journal Staff Writer His fan mail comes in all shapes and sizes and may only be a wrinkled piece of paper with four words: I love your songs. Joining the pint-sized in their admiration of Raffi are parents and teachers as Canadian sales of his albums now exceed 930,000.

"They are a popular item in homes," says the children's entertainer. "But I think the pre-schoolers hear them a lot in nursery school. It's sort of my radio air play." In Edmonton recently, the warm and friendly man is aware of his success, but remains far from pretentious. "What I do is so rewarding, the relationship that I have with my fans, their loyalty. It's important for them to know that Raffi is a person.

And when they write, they definitely seem to relate to me as a friend." Despite his success, he originally had no intention of pursing a career in the field of children's music. In 1975 he formed his own company, Troubadour Records, and recorded an album of folk songs. It only sold 2,000 copies. The following year he recorded his first children's album, Singable Songs For The Very Young. Since then both his recording career and the record company have flourished.

With five platinum and one gold album to his credit and a label that has sold well over one million copies including releases by Fred Penner and the Junior Jug Band Raffi doesn't plan to return to the adult music field. "It's nine years since the first children's record came out and it did take me a couple of years to make that transition and feel comfortable in what I was doing with my newfound career. But since '78, I've concentrated entirely on children's music and it's been tremendously rewarding." Singer-songwriter Raffi children's loyalty rewarding Although a Raffi album is a common sight on the Canadian family's record shelf, he has yet to enjoy the same status in the United States. Until an agreement with records was signed, his albums in the U.S. were imported and sold mainly in bookstores and educational outlets.

"Last year we finally acquired national distribution for the records and we were very pleased about that. But just because you have a distributer doesn't mean that the records are going to show up in every record store in America overnight." I ,35 The Bard meets Japanese drama If I i P- J' Enough, Boss, 'enough: believe it or not, Bruce Springsteen is set to become a big-screen star. These are the facts: just weeks after the super singer was insisting he had no intention of turning his talents to film, he reneged and signed with Taft-Barish Productions for a 20th Century Fox film to be based on his record-shattering Born in the U.S.A. Stars and stripes forever, and all that Posters for Death Wish III are being altered frantically to remove the name of writer Don Jakoby from the credits of the Charles Bronson-Deborah Raf-fin vigilante caper. "He's elected to have his name removed on the grounds the movie is too violent which is ridiculous," says director Michael Winner.

While Winner admits "the ending almost looks like World War III on the streets of New York," he maintains Jakoby's script "was too violent even for me. Even more peculiar, says the filmmaker, was the reaction of the motion picture ratings board. According to Winner, when the film was initially given an he protested, only kill 60 people. There are 83 people killed in Rambo I sat through it four times with a notepad and pencil and it got an And I was told, 'Well, the people killed in Rambo were There'll be a reunion of Troop 20 years later with most of the old military bum-blers on hand, including Ken Berry, Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch. The script is being readied for the ABC special and a replacement being sought for Frank deKova, the Chief, who has since died.

The last rewrites on the Splash II script have been completed and now the task begins of trying to net Daryl Hannah, Tom Hanks and John Candy to reprise their roles from the 1984 hit film. Splash made the talented trio so hot that each suddenly had an ocean of projects from which to choose. Candy has two projects in development at Paramount with Carl Reiner. Tom is starring with Jackie Gleason in Tri-Star's Something in Common. And Daryl's set to dive into production of Universal's Legal Eagle with Robert Redford and Debra Winger.

However, the trio should be available for Splash II before the new year gets too old. By LIZ NICHOLLS Journal Staff Writer What happens when the most famous case of depression in the English theatre meets the "noblest theatre form in After all, cultural adjustment wasn't exactly Hamlet's forte. For one thing, according to Kuniyoshi Munakata, who has spent the better part of a decade finding out, to be or not to be is not exactly the question when the Prince of Denmark sports a kimono, split-toed socks and a mask. The climax of Munakata's version of Hamlet sees the melancholy Dane brooding onstage in front of Ophelia's grave. The ghost of the neglected maiden appears (to flute accompaniment), blesses him and vanishes.

And, says Munakata professor of English drama at Japan's Shizuoka University and founder of the Noh Shakespeare Group Hamlet quits harping on the subject of his own existence and concludes that "to live in the present moment is the most important thing." The charming Munakata, a Ful-bright lecturer this term at the University of Nebraska, was in town recently to explain the how's and why's and hazards of marrying the Bard to a theatre tradition a world away in which "everything every movement, every gesture has been fixed for 600 years." The Noh canon is nothing if not well-rehearsed, says Munakata some 200 plays written in the 14th and 15th centuries, and strictly performed in the Japanese classical language, with a hand from a four-piece orchestra and a chorus. In fact, it was on the treacherous business of combining Shakespeare's highly complex poetry and Non-style chanting (in which all syllables are equally stressed) that the whole project nearly foundered. As Munakata points out, just try saying a line from a Hamlet soliloquy with identical weight on every syllable, and discover for yourself a bizarre new form of comedy. No self-respecting Noh actor the elite of Japanese theatre would even remotely consider tinkering with the sacred style. So at first, Munakata's casts were almost exclusively amateurs.

And his innovations were not embraced with great joy, he admits. "There were many obstacles. In Japan, the general atmosphere is that's impossible." But gradually, the tact of Munakata's adaptations and their fidelity to Noh have won a following. The single most striking feature of Noh to the Western eye is probably that the hero is masked. "Everything is made so that audience attention is focussed on the main performer," explains Munakata, removing an exquisitely de- PICTURE: Colin Shaw Drama professor Kuniyoshi Munakata the wooden mask is central to Japanese theatre Jillian Ann Jillian will no longer be making a living on It's a Living.

She and producers of the new syndicated version of her ABC 1980-82 series couldn't get together on contract negotiations; she'll depart the company in December, when she completes work on the first 22 episodes of Living in its revival form. Ann has no other acting assignments set at the moment, but has made a commitment to serve as spokesperson for the Hospital Corporation of America's breast-care centres. She recently had a double mastectomy. Wild Geese II has opened and died in Denver and Salt Lake City. The Laurence Olivier-Barbara Carrera-Scott Glenn starrer pulled in a total of $31,000 in 48 theatres in three days for a disastrous per-screen average of $215 per day.

Don't expect to see Geese winging your way. Russian matinee idol-turned-defector Oleg Vidov testifies before the U.S. Congress Oct. 29 on the subject of artistic freedom, and the lack of it, in the Soviet Union. rectors, who fret about how to raise the dead without raising giggles in the audience.

By contrast, ghosts and spirits populate the Noh stage without raising eyebrows in the house seats. "Noh is much interested in the unseen the next world, the subconscious, the world of our dreams." Munakata, who hopes to bring his Noh Shakespeare Group to North America next fall, is intrigued by projects that leave his colleagues shaking their heads. Othello is next on the roster, and after that, he smiles, Macbeth will be simplicity itself. tailed wooden mask from a brocade bag. "It's a very beautiful art object; a slight change of direction will change the countenance dramatically." Making a mask, which can take three months or more and cost several thousand dollars, is roughly as easy as turning out a fine violin, says Munakata.

The choice of mask for the lead actor is the artistic decision of the production. "Some people say that the mask is the director." Shakespeare's ghosts, including Hamlet's late papa, have traditionally made sleepless nights for di.