Newsday (Suffolk Edition) from Melville, New York • 103

1 4 a 44 4 4 ft' a B3 3 Ifichael Hayden bad boy Billy Bigelow and Sally Murphy as his wife Julie la are romantic hillsides that slope like gentle flying saucers on hyper-realistic dabs of landscape floors that turn suddenly into rippling water that can float rowboats to an island picnic oppressive wharfs with operatic shadows plus a celestial limbo for dead Billy with a sci-fi file cabinet and angels amusingly dressed as New England pilgrims Hytner known here mainly as the man who staged the helicopter in has taken one of the very darkest shows from the golden age of American musicals and turned it into our own Beneath the pretty lawns and behind the jolly clambakes is Bily beating his loving wife Julie while she claims it hurt at all Decent women are cynical about dull marriages There is heartless hist rough justice an anti-hero who kill himself cycles of poverty and violence that no matter how hard Oscar book and lyrics try to make nice during the sentimental climaxes seem unlikely to stop which came after the why they are running In fact except for some shocking weaknesses in several critical roles there is not a spepk of stock about this intensely smart and magnificently reinvented Nicholas Hytner who first staged it to enormous acclaim at Royal National Theater has re-cast all but one part (Michael surprisingly small-scale bad-' boy Billy Bigelow) for Lincoln Center Hytner is going for an ensemble drama with music here using Richard ambitiously extended musical set pieces to propel the dark story and understating as much as possible the tendency of Oscar book to turn to preachy pap The acting is relaxed and remarkably natural for a musical and everyone not just the superb dance chorus in Kenneth mostly splendid and thought- fill balletic choreography knows how -to move Bob sets morphing on a computerized turntable are almost inconceivably beautiful: deeply poetic visions of a fishing village enveloped in a universe of perpetual night blue There taamtamtt Making Hanks Perfectly Clear 1 LIKE TO say a few words about Tom Hanks In fact 7 I'd like to say a few words for Tom Hanks You should know up front that I have never met the man And yet I presume to speak for this total stranger to offer my own helpful annotated notes on his brave and heartfelt and uh confusing Oscar acceptance speech Why do I dare? Partly for the same reason this actor could sell a gay man with AIDS to the mall market and the same reason he received one of only four standing ovations at the Oscars Monday night (Two others were lifetime achievers Paul Newman and Deborah Kerr the third went to history and Steven Spielberg) That is Hanks makes you think you know him really well He is sublimely competent and stupendously easy to like "Likable and charming and cleaned up and all he once described the universal take on him complaining in a likable and charmingly bitter way that never even let me wear because moviemakers think sinister people wear But another reason I feel strangely entitled to interpret his words upon being named Best Actor for That is people keep asking me what on earth he possibly could have been trying to say up there And since completely crazy about him and have been rooting for him for years (I mean before accepted the burden of the task with my usual grace and presumption After an award show with zero controversy the lingering talk is about the poignant and utterly incomprehensible moments after Hanks was named for his performance in first mainstream movie about AIDS Thus been listening again and again to a tape of his speech trying to figure out the English translation or more precisely trying to crack the code behind the words that adrenaline delivered in our perplexing and dangerously sensitive world Yes got a lot of nerve But I mean well First things first Did Hanks his high school drama teacher by thanking him and a friend who died of AIDS as of the finest gay Well the phrasing is weird but as I understand the verb it means an aggressive act exposing a homosexuality against his or her will as in Roy Cohn was outed by a virus But even the Post which ran the annoyingly excited headline on its front page Wednesday AT THE OSCARS: Tom Hanks Lifts the Lid on his Secret said the teacher had given Hanks permission to use his name in front of maybe a billion viewers worldwide The teacher reportedly said he was cloud nine and very very Did Hanks himself? More than a few people heard him describe his teacher and friend as wonderful men I had the good fortune to be asaodated with to fall under their inspiration at such a young and figured Hanks must have been talking about more than artistic inspiration Of course he had juBt begun his speech with an ecstatic thanks to an love a lover that is so close to fine we should all be able to experience such heaven on Apparently not everyone recognized that Hanks has learned to avoid the word a creature all self-protective heterosexual actors praise with great passion and clarity after portraying gay men Then Hanks bless him indulged in what could be considered a flight of PC humor He played with the controversy over his casting within the gay community and tweaked nervousness about sexuality in his seductive thanks to Antonio Banderas who plays his lover in the movie to my Hanks said is the only person I would trade It wasn't exactly English but it was sweet And finally is Hanks a religious fanatic? Is he a flag-waving yah-hoo? After eloquently lamenting that streets of heaven are too crowded with he launched into a florid declaration that they rest in the of the Creator of them then said something about aomething being by the benevolent Creator of us all and written down on papei by wise men tolerant men in the city of Then he shocked the secular and disillusioned among us billion by exclaiming a bit wildly bless you all! God have mercy on us all! God bless Yes he sounded a little nuts What I think he was trying to do despite his overheated frenzy was to reclaim those words and feelings back from the religious righteous As Norman Lear named his progressive People for the American Way in the language of the Other Hanks seemed to be trying to put us all under the same sky again I wish he screwed it up but I loved watching him try Please see CAROUSEL on Ifege B21 1 roommates from left Lucetla Santos Norma Bengell and Maria Zilda Bettilem tiable Madalena (Maria Zelda Beth-lem) on sexual forays But the real action is in their apartment where they fire psychological volleys at each other and attempt to hide the despair that links them tion) of her dead husband taking cover from her pain by doting on 20-yearold Lucia (Lucelia Santos) a malingerer feigning madness and malnutrition The 36-year-old Madalena serves as both the fulcrum and a source of friction between the others She spends her days working as a nurse at a mental hospital and the rest of her time either taunting old-fashioned Gertrudes with her liberated ideas or acting them out with a variety of men she picks up in MOVIE REVIEWS ON PAGES B7 B15 I i Quite a threesome Gertrudes (Norma Bengell) both roommate and landlady is a 60-year-old widow haunted by the memory (and the occasional appari Please see BRAZIL on Ffege B21.