The Province du lieu suivant : Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 35

THE PROVINCE, Friday, May 28, 1971 35 Lenny Bruce (1926-1966) Oive James SPEAKS 4Dirty mouth's' troubles live on Remember the old underwater films? Buster Crabbe usually led the expedi tion, and viewers were amazed to see New York Times NEW YORK Lenny Bruce made obscenity into a fine art and it killed him. is obscenity? Loose and vulgar taik about human genitalia, kids starving in ghettos, humorous various fishes and maybe a few sponges floating by. As the plot unfolded, as the violin strings tightened and. as the bongos beat faster, a shark would appear. Buster ftiini it -ii iiJiliimf 1 ii celebrat ions of sexual inter-course or men getting blown to pieces by grenades? Obscenity is usually in the mouth of the.

listener, Julian Barry's play Lenny at the is a film director and former journalist who had more than 150 interviews with friends of Bruce. The two are co-authors of a forthcoming biography of Bruce, due next winter. Schiller, in an interview from Los Angeles, said the play's producers within the last few days had "removed" a segment of their play, allegedly utilizing an Interview Schiller had with Bruce's daughter, Kitty. A spokesman for the producers confirmed the removal of the segment but said the deletion was made "for purely dramatic reasons." Schiller maintains that he received the rights to certain parts of Bruce's' life and material from the late comedian's mother and wife and that, when he sold the film rights to Columbia Pictures, he retained the book and stage rights. Columbia subsequently decided not to do the film and the script for the motion picture, according to the author of both, Julian Barry, served as the basis for the play.

Meanwhile, other suits are in various stages and the end seems nowhere in sight. Bruce's troubles with the law are not yet over. lumbia Pictures, and finally, the co-, authors of a forthcoming biography of Bruce. The litigation has already resulted in the elimination of some copyrighted material in Dirtymouth, the Herbert S. Alt-man film now showing in three New York theatres, and the closing of Fred Baker's off-Broadway production of Lenny.

(In a review of Dirtymouth, New York Times movie critic Vincent Canby called it "a very bad Legal steps are underway to halt the Broadway production. In the latest action, Harriett "Honey" Bruce was granted a show cause order in New York state supreme court last week asking why the Broadway production should not be forbidden from using her name and character. Mrs. Bruce also asks dam- -ages of $500,000. At the same time, Albert Goldman and Lawrence Schiller have had summonses issued against, the producers of the play, charging them with infringement of literary property rights.

Goldman is a music critic for Life Magazine and an. adjunct professor of at Columbia University. Schiller By GEORGE GENT New York Times NEW YORK Lenny Bruce would have laughed and then cursed. Five years after his death at 40 from an apparent overdose of heroin, the controversial nightclub comedian is still the subject of controversy and extensive litigation. 4 In recent months, a number of persons who hope to transmute the raw facts of the comedian's hectic life and career into the symmetrical stuff of art or profit through books, films or plays have gone to the courts attempting to prevent others from doing the same.

And further legal action is expected. The major principals include Bruce's mother, Sally Marr, who is the administrator of his estate; Douglas International Corporation which, with Mrs. Marr, owns the copyright to The Essential Lenny Bruce, a collection of the performer's nightclub skits; Harriett "Honey" Bruce, the comedian's wife whom he divorced in 1958; the producers of Lenny, a play with music about the comedian that just opened on Broad- -way at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre (see Clive Barnes' review at left), Co Rarely is photography used in film fo its own sake, which may seem -ironic The goal, the quest, of this film js phoj-tography. So elusive and dangerous is the Great White. Shark that the experienced skin' divers consider a film record of.

the-shark their Everest. They spend months, off the coast of Africa looking, and find hundreds of sharks folio wing, the whale- hunters. But no Great Whites. Meanwhile, the cameras keep whir- ring to record the lesser sharks and the -personalities of the men who photograph' them. In time, the men learn how to mingle with sharks with relative' safety.

It seems that sharks test their -victim by bumping him with his and if the intended victim reacts there's no attack. So goes the theory. By no means is the film a study of the. -lifestyle of the shark, or of its sex 'life" Little information is revealed about the, creature; perhaps too "It" the ultimate in encounter sessions and beast. The Great Whites finally come view off the coast of where the film-makers had spread whale oil.

5 and gallons of blood purchased from a local slaughterhouse, thereby setting themselves up as bait for the sharks, The result contains some of the startling nature footage imaginable, yet without the emotional discomfort of bloodletting. Which means that it's rec- om mended for children who are disturbed at the sight of animals being shot. Earlier, there are scenes of whales being killed by South African hunters, so it's not blood-free. There's even a little underwater comic relief. But not while-'' the sharks are around.

Crabbe would unsheath his trusty knife as a precaution, and he would be scared speechless, or bubble-less. If a villain appeared (always identified as the chap with the black snorkel who cuts the good guys' oxygen tubes) the shark would eat him up. But not on camera. The shark scene was usually stock footage shot in a Los Angeles aquarium, but at least it added to the drama. What is a ski film without a broken leg, what is an auto race film without a crash and what is an underwater film without a shark? But isn't an entire feature film about sharks, and only about sharks, a bit much? Sort of like a Three Musketeers with only swordfights, or a Zabriskie Point with scenes of a cottage blowing up? Not the film at the Fine Arts and Lougheed Mall cinemas titled Blue.

Water, White Death and subtitled The Hunt for the Great White Shark. It's a beautifully-made film containing just about everything but a script. The photography is incredible, and the knowledge that most of it was conducted in aluminum cages doesn't detract from the soul-shaking result. jts -i rot TnximwMwiimtMkSBBm 7i Ft Farewell concert MeSSer StlCks tO Old Stand byS Summer 7i Festival Actors turn Dracula play into a real mind-blower tlemen standing under the trees'ojpenihg their raincoats." "It is not the Bram Stoker Dracula (jf countless late night movies. Dracula fr" is a olay develoried by the Stable Theatre Company of Eng-, land, a play which, while it uses certain elements and incidents from the.Tran-sylvanian epic, uses them only as a base from which to examine the Dracula con- cept, the unnamed fear on all our shouk ders.

A beautiful, fascinating evening," deceptive and memorable. It is "poor" theatre, which means theatre, of the, innnOinotinn ortA nni rf mnnAti a tViooti'tt. Charlie Chamberlain added Dixie to the routine with A Little Loving Goes a Long Way, and ran through an unabashedly sentimental When Irish Eyes Are Smiling. But the audience favorite of the evening, as much for appearance as performance, was the solid Scottish singer Johnny Forrest. (It is almost redundant to add that he brought down the house with a sing-along version of Roamin' in the Gloamin'.) A relative newcomer to the group was Angus Walker of Newfoundland, who was introduced as something of a prodigy.

Alas, his flat and matter-of-fact style left the audience lukewarm, despite his well-polished appearance and easy manner. Giles Roy, another touring newcomer from Ontario, gave remarkably athletic tap dancing performances that had more success enthusiastic cheers and applause. He was sparked by some of the nervousness of a novice, despite winning national and international dancing medals. It may, in fact, prove a point. Polish isn't everything or, a little stage fright goes a long way.

Au revoir, Don Messer and amen. By OLIVIA WARD "The critics hate me," said Don Mes-ser, "but the people buy the tickets." In the backstage glare of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre the familiar melancholy face looked paler, more tired than under the pink stage lights. It was intermission, and Don Messer, veteran of some 40 years of down home music was waiting to wind up another Jubilee performance. "I like doing live stuff, but this will definitely be my last tour." After three years of rigorous TV schedules (taping as many as 26 shows a month) Messer and his group are paying the toll of public longevity. The.

audiences are there eager, keen, clapping and slapping with the fiddles but something is missing. You could be contemporary and call it soul, or follow -the train of the elderly lady who hobbled out at half time brandishing her cane: "It's too loud, and not bright enough." Most of the almost capacity audience, however, felt the opposite. They had come for a good time, and a good time they had. They also knew what to expect, and left undaunted. The program ran the gamut of Messer standbys, both people and songs.

Marg By JAMES BARBER Five actors, a bare floor, a cape and a few lights. A first class script, poetic and perceptive was born a beast and was turned into a beautiful princess. Some day a handsome prince will kiss me and I will turn into a beast again An understanding director, and a loose, open, receptive audience. That's theatre. That's when it happens, and that's when I decide that maybe movies are not going to take over after all.

Wednesday at midnight, in the Arts Club Theatre, the Summer 71 Festival Stage opened with all of those things, in a two-hour piece of fascination called Dracula Two. It is a real mind-blower, a devil's food layer cake. Superstition, fact arid fantasy are buttered with reality and stuffed with darkness, with devils, with warlocks, with vampires and "the shy gen- DON MESSER farewell from the Nova Scotian. Osborne delivered a hefty, full-bodied Snowbird with solid country and western backing. After the warmup, the bluesy, back-alley song, Help Me Through the Night, was sung with gusto, and eyes flashing with wholesome vigor.

of actors being actors, creating put of nothing an illusion of something. An out of the illusion comes the indestructible, the things you cannot define, can- not forget and do not want to remem-. ber. Mass and individual insanity, the tri-' umph of un-reason, the power of fear, and the final, inevitable sterile whimper' of the world's passing they are all prelude to the rebirth of evil. But if the evil is necessary to the good, then is it I evil? Dracula Two is so much easier than reading de Sade, so much more' relevant and objective.

Knowledge of the end. Ignorance of il. n.iL World chess match Taimanov rallies in the fifth round Brooks Atkinson Theatre is a curious play, but a dynamite shtick of theatre It raises issues, twists nerves and at times rages with scatological fury. It is neither for the prurient nor the prudish but nor was Lenny Bruce. It also has a virtuoso's performance of fevered energy and measured distinction by Cliff Gorman as Lenny- The first-night audience gave him a standing ovation such as is rarely heard in i theatre, and he deserved every last, hoarse hurrah.

The play is about Lenny Bruce, a Jewish nightclub comedian, satirist, iconoclast, sourpuss, humorist and unexpectedly latter-day martyr. Lenny was abrasive and honest. He didni just milk sacred cows, he flayed them alive. He spat dirty- mouthed insults at the church and the state, and he shocked, irritated and annoyed. He was the warning graffiti on the 1 The play is very largely composed of Lenny Bruce's own night-club routines, and goes from his beginnings in 1951 to his solitary bathroom death from a drug overdose in 1966.

We see his marriage, his court cases and, at times, his fantasies. We hear his mocking attacks on the establishment, his scorn for the misuse of words, his hatred of cant and hypocrisy. We don't see much of his drug-taking, or drinking. We don't see the body wasting, the talent eroding, the slack jaw, the forgotten lines, the lost control. I didn't much admire Bruce's nightclub act but I wasn't then ready for it.

Many people weren't. I didn't understand the moral fervor behind it. The two or three times I saw him i pretty much toward the end of. his career he seemed like an incompetent, foul-mouthed loud-mouth. But then I never saw the real Lenny Bruce.

Of course this play doesn't show us the real Lenny Bruce either it takes Lenny as a symbol of free speech, and political heterodoxy. I think it whitewashes aspects of his character I guess after what happened in his lifetime he may deserve it but does present his uncompromising honesty, and his ail-American insurgency. It also indicates, I believe with justice, that his reckoning with society was prompted as much by his political irreverence and candor as his continual stream of obscenity. It also shows the fun of Bruce. When I saw Bruce, white and ferret-faced, caught in a spotlight of notoriety and trying to face the horrors, the guy wasn't very funny.

But this like his books, sayings and records, puts it straight. Apart from the obvious trickle of obscenity, which you can find loathsome, unnoticeable or liberating according to yourself, there was here a bitter Swiftian sense of the ridiculous. And the courage of a David facing a Goliath with just a sling-shot of shocking obscenity to defend himself with. Tom 1 O'Horgan has taken the play, with its multiplicity of night-club scenes, and given it a phantasmagoric style. He has made it into an American nightmare full of crazy judges, tribal chieftans, lepers, jazzaamusicians, irreverent priests, naked prophets and the whole pressure-cooked madness of the neurotic way of life.

In part the style comes from O'Hor-gan's staging of Tom Paine and, to a lesser extent, Hair, but it is more innovative than either in its use of parody and blockbusting theatrical trickery. Here he is most imaginatively helped by the giant scenery of Robin Wagner, who provides the play with a truly Wagnerian sense of gods and twilight. Where Q'Horgan has been very successful is in capturing the pace and sleazincss of show business, and little nightclubs, and bands that laugh and customers that don't. There are some neatly turned performance! here, Joe Silver turning up everywhere in a number of roles, and each one a joy, and Jane House as Rusty, Lenny's stripper wife is both convincingly attractive and cool. But of course Lenny is Lenny and Lenny is Cliff Gorman.

Gorman doesn't look much like Bruce, and he doesn't even sound much like Bruce. But he does have a fantastic gift for mimicry, an absolutely driven style that hammers and hammers home to the audience, relentless, mocking and acerbic. Gorman is on that stage for hours and hours and hours, facing the audience, belting the material, and also revealing the scalding anger of a man who didn't want to be misunderstood. This is a performance that cannot fail to make a major star out of Gorman the man is consummate actor. Irony, Irony all is irony.

What Bruce got busted for in private nightclubs is here being displayed In Broadway Theatre just five years after his death. A man who died penniless and alone will probably make plenty of bread for the ones who come after. Perhaps he would have seen the joke. So there Is Lenny, dirty, fierce and shooK-up. Many people will be offended by Lenny and I would humbly suggest that they don't So to see it.

But always remember sticks and stnnrs may break your hones, hut hard words never hurt you. Once In a while a few hard words can be refreshing. I found Lenny sad, funny and yes, refreshing. The last laugh Is with Bruce. Q-B3 QxP R-R5 K-Bl P-Kfi R-QR1 K-Kl K-Bl 33.

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R-Q2 20. B-N4 21. B-B3 day, grandmaster Wolfgang Uhlmann of East Germany defeated Bent Larsen of Denmark in their eighth game in Las Palmas, Canary Islands. The win gave the East German 4'i points to Larsen's ZVi. The ninth game is to be played Sunday.

me eim. duiu me eijuaiiy Health and sickness, good and evil, the flesh and the spirit which is the real--' ity? And is there a reality? The script is poetry, extravagant, vo-'v latile switchings from nursery rhymes-', to social customs, from exorcisms' to'1 Freud. It has moments of apparent'' weakness when things appear to not be" working and that is what I me'an'by de-' ceptive, for just as soon as the audience" is lulled into the false security of "oh yes, here vi are in the theatre gairtJ', the script picks it up, elaborates sometimes repeats it in a. diff.erfcnt QxP 41. K-Ql Adjourned In the only other game played Thurs By PAUL RAUGUST Mark Taimanov of the U.S.S.R.

and Bobby Fischer of Brooklyn, N.Y., adjourned the fifth round in their world chess championship elimination match here Thursday night. Adjournment came on the 41st move after the five-hour time limit expired. The two grandmasters have yet to complete a game on the day it started. Taimanov, who has lost four games straight to Fischer, played his strongest game of the series with a Gruenfelder Opening, maintaining the initiative of white throughout the game. But at adjournment, the game appeared headed for a draw.

Windigo Fischer was holding a one-pawn ad-, vantage, but it didn't seem likely that he would be able to hold the advantage for long. Taimanov held a positional edge throughout, and, although it appeared at one stage that Fischer might trap white's queen, the Soviet grandmaster deftly evaded the tactic. In the late stages of the game, Fischer appeared indecisive as he jockeyed his king from Kl to Bl. In effect this was a wasted move and it allowed Taimanov to strengthen his hand. The game is to be resumed this afternoon, because of a religious holiday, Fischer has asked that game six be postponed until Tuesday.

The Vancouver match and three others being played around the world will decide a challenger for world champion Boris Spassky of Russia. The title match is to be played in Moscow next year. Indian prisoners show how they look at life lorm. There you are sitting on the edee of your seat again at one and ihe, same time the subject of and the perpetrator, of exorcism. '1 Summer Festival 71 has a season planned.

Dracula Two runs through to June 5, followed by James Baldwin's Blues for Mr. Charlie, June 11 to 19. June 25 the company opens Fairy Talcs of New York, J. P. Donleavy's "chain of theatrical pearls, nourished by a master of comic dialogue," as Kenneth Tynan described it.

Finally, July 9 to 17, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a dramatization of Ken Kesey's novel. Individual tickets are $2 (students and season tick-; ets for the four plays are $6 By JAMES BARBER Windigo opened last night at Abbots-ford Senior High School, a semi-documentary, dramatic poem by Cam Hubert, performed by the United Native Club Players, which is a group of actors formed from the residents of Matsqui. The Matsqui Correctional Institute to be precise. The cast is Indian, and each member of it introduces himself with his BLACK WHITK BLACK Flurhpr Talmnnnv l-lxcher N-KB3 22. Q-K2 R-Ql P-KN3 23.

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QFl-Nl 9. B-K2 10. N-B3 11. N-K8 Finian's Rainbow -J Musical a bit shopworn Hall too big for gentle folk singer By JEANI READ Sean Richardson sang at the Art Gallery Thursday, presenting an odd little semi-concert that left no memorable after-images except the Impression of a sincere, unassuming young man. Richardson is so unassuming, in fact, that he never really grabs hold of one's imagination, never really distributes any tangible moods or messages.

He Is, essentially, a kind of fireplace-pleasant vocalist, a kind of woodsy-pleasant guitarist, a minstrel who should sing not to audiences or admirers but to friends on an afternoon, Almost everything he attempts seems to shift down into a misty neutrality, hummahle and sometimes clappable. So while there was nothing particularly wrong with his performance, his gentleness was out of place In a cold hall with unfamiliar lunch-munchers and microphones, i On Thursday there was an interesting addition to the instrumentation: Ole Yuul on flute. The combination provided some conflicts and some very beautiful moments. Yuul is a fine flutist in his own right, but on occasion the flute, which accompanied every selection, was inappropriate and distracted from Rich-ardson'i voice. His best moments came in numbers like the sombre Pretty Polly, when the clean, haunting notes expanded the emotional tone and blended sensitively with the vocal line.

If Yuiil's flute Is used with a little more discretion, or If Richardson becomes more forceful In his overall delivery, the duo could become fine and innovative blending of styles. name, with his number, with his nation of origin Cree, Salish, Shushwap, Blackfoot and with his sentence fifteen years, five and a half years, life. I had decided before going that I was going to ignore the unusual aspects of the production, that I would treat it like any other piece of theatre the same standards, no concessions. Which is stupid, and prejudiced. Windigo is a frankly naive, emotional collection of personal statements made by a collection of unique victims of an alien culture, and any attempt to deny them that dignity is only to perpetuate the sins which Windigo categorizes.

It is a moving evening, very simple, very direct How many people ever have the chance to sit down and listen to Indians, or to prisoners? It is a strange shock to realize that these men, products and victims of our society's conflict with their culture, are men familiar with the forest and the water, that they have a heritage of memories based on the Old Way of life. They tell stories of their own lives, small and gentle anecdotes of dry, self-drprecatlng humor, and they tell fearful stories of prejudice and lack of prlvl-. lege. But their Imagery Is always rooted in the simple things they appear as almple men, as big men, men who know the color of winter. It Is an effective evening, In that It hows, unmistakably, another direction the theatre can take away from the stiffly regimented, formalized and expensive tradition of beginning and end plays.

It is not the only solution, but when an audience, seated on the floor of a high school gymnasium and watching twelve men (with a few props borrowed from the Playhouse and the Opera) can suddenly have situation expanded for them, beyond the statistics and the superstitions, there Is no denying that It is theatre. Abbotsford tonight again. Chllllwack Saturday, North Van Centennial Theatre Sunday, the Vancouver Art Gallery Monday and Tuesday. duction to sound off in Metro for some time. The singing ranges from bearable to thoroughly enjoyable.

Phillipa Purchase (Sharon) comes through extremely well If perhaps occasionally a bit mechanical with her numbers, such as How Are Things In Glocca Morra (and who isn't going to enjoy that and so does Ken Irwin with his more than sincere delivery of Old Devil Moon. When the pair are together, they earn most of the applause that even family-and-fricnd audience provides. Tom Byrne as Finian might have been a bit looser, i bit ilppier, but he was certainly adequate and made particularly effective the running current of Irish double-reverse humor that fuels much of the show. Two performers, for me, were outstanding. Young Mike Fox, who is grow ing Immensely in theatre, was quite superb in hli part as southern senator.

His moments In the mansion scene could hardly have been improved upon And Marck Norman as the Leprechaun Og Is just a constant vlbrance oh stage. He also sings remarkably well When I'm Not Near The Girl I Love. show Is worth seeing. Tonight and Saturday, and next Friday and By DON HUNTER Finian's Rainbow undoubtedly brightened a dreary world's skies in its first days about 25 years ago. Us emphasis and re-emphasis on equality for all men through the black-while-conflict microcosm was good for a continuing of flag waving and uplifting of spirits.

Flavored with an extravagant portion of exaggerated Irish whimsy and wit, and topped by two or three excellent songs, it was a winner all the way. Now It's well worn, and any company electing to produce It is facing a major challenge. Particularly an amateur company, such as the Richmond Musical Theatre which opened with Finian's Thursday at Metro Theatre for a two-weekend run. The fact that they nearly got this difficult vehicle rolling, and that in nearly doing to they displayed some remarkably potent moments, is cause for applause. I think director Bob Ross spent considerable time and thought before finalizing his cast.

And his choices, in the choreography care of Grace MacDonald, come up with a performance that, considering the demands of the show, is probably from many considerations the most successful amateur musical pro IV India's Bard RABINDRANATII TAGOKE Simon Frasrr t'nivrrsUy, In co- 0oratlon with the Vancouver Society for Asian Art, Is prrscnt-Ini; a program honoring India' NoIm'I I'rlAiMvlnnliiK poct-phlloso-. plicr, Sundnv nt 2 p.m. In the SI'U Theatre..