The Yellow Wallpaper

Come see...

THE YELLOW WALLPAPER
a new one-woman play
adapted from the classic short story
by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Adapted by Greg Oliver Bodine
Directed by DeLisa M. White
Starring: Annalisa Loeffler

What if the one person who has vowed to love you… for better or for worse… in sickness and in health… took you away… from everyone that you cherish? From everything that sustains you? In essence, the sum of yourself. Where would you go? What would you do?


THE YELLOW WALLPAPER tells the shocking story of one woman’s isolation, obsession, and descent into madness.

The Story: New England, 1891. Jane, a sensitive and imaginative woman, finds herself sequestered on a remote estate that her husband, a physician, has rented for the summer. She is forbidden to write, and must hide her journal entries as she recuperates from what he has diagnosed as a "temporary nervous depression” following the birth of their baby. Without anything or anyone to stimulate her, Jane becomes obsessed by the wallpaper in her bedroom as the effect of her domestic oppression and stifled creativity begins to take a toll on her sanity.

Costume Design by Jeanette Aultz Look
Lighting Design by Lauren Parrish
Asst. Director / ASM: Jenny Rosenbluth
Stage Manager: Laura Schlachtmeyer

Limited engagement: 2 performances only!

Monday & Tuesday
March 23-24 at 8:00pm
Tickets: $15
Reservations: (212) 501.4751
www.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/640655

Note: Due to stage configuration late comers will not be seated.

We've got tonight....

So it looks at this point that the show itself will have more surprises than the winners, but I'm hoping I'm kind of wrong. Not in all categories. Just in some? Here's my "will" and "should" picks for tonight:

Best Pic:

Will Win: Slumdog Millionaire
Should Win: Milk

I truly think our children will be astonished if MILK doesn't win Best Pic as they'll all be required to see it in history classes when studying civil rights. It's also - incidentally - by FAR the best film on the list. The Slumdog love affair will, I think, look very naive and silly...it's the CRASH of this year.

Best Actor:
Will Win: Mickey Rourke
Should Win: This is an exceptionally impressive category, there'd be no one I'd be unhappy with winning. Rourke will give the best speech and by a slim margin Penn is the "should" winner.

Sean Penn is one of my least favorite all-time (over)actors. But his work in MILK is subtle and seamless. It's the best performance of his career. He's unrecognizable in it. I would have to vote for him in good conscience (which I did for the Indie Spirit Awards), but I'm perfectly happy for a Rourke win.

Best Actress:

Will Win: Winslet
Should Win: Winslet

There's a weird scenario where Streep and Winslet split and Leo or Hathaway surprises. But it's likely Winslet's LONG OVERDUE night finnnaaalllyyyy and I'm very much looking forward to it!!! :)

Best Supporting Actor:

Will Win: Heath Ledger
Should Win: Heath Ledger

Nuff said.

Best Supporting Actress:

Will Win: Penelope Cruz
Should Win: It's tight but I'm going to go with Viola Davis.

Tomei is astonishingly good in a role that no where near written as well as she plays it. Everyone else is terrific, including Cruz (who in some ways gave this same solid performance in BLOW) but I'm pulling for Davis who manages to convey - not a string of subtext - but a full TAPESTRY of subtext in a few short minutes. It's the best short story you've ever read and it's all in her face.

Best Director:
Will Win: Boyle
Should WIn: Fincher

Boyle's work is impressive. It is. But Fincher actually achieves the most impressive technological feat presently imaginable in cinema and he does it all to serve the story, the humanity and the sometimes brutal truth of life and death and everything in between, without EVER pointing out his own prowess (unlike Boyle) and saving the films most powerful moments from the surges of sentimentality in the script.

Adapted Screenplay:
Will win: Slumdog
Should win: Doubt

This is a pretty middling category actually. The screenplay is the thing I have the most problem with in Slumdog, but it's pretty much a shoo-in here. If this is BUTTON's "consolation prize" I may be inconsolable as the screenplay is singlehandedly the worst thing about it.

Original Screenplay:

Will Win: Milk
Should Win: Milk

In fact, if it doesn't win - then wherever you are - you will hear a vague screaming and smashing coming from somewhere in Brooklyn....

Best Documentary:

Will Win: Man on Wire
Should Win: Encounters at the End of the World

Otherwise expect lots of well deserved technical awards for Button and annoying amounts of self-congratulations for the love affair with Slumdog (as if that somehow makes the Academy "humanitarians by proxy")... Last note: If Dark Knight wins Sound Editing I might break something. It's got TERRIBLE gaps and sticky mixes all over it.

Enjoy!!!! :-)

The Wrestler - A Review

THE WRESTLER may not seem like a new story. In fact it covers a lot of what we might think is familiar ground. The has-been looking for redemption, the stripper with a heart of gold and the disgruntled daughter are hardly new fodder for film. But the lack of showcase shots and the earnest, committed and infinitely understated performances - particularly by Rourke whose performance is a master class in completely inhabiting a character for the characters sake, rather than the actor's acclaim and consequently is sooooo rightly acclaimed - succeed in making us understand the complexity and ubiquity of the formulas on which they are based. While the has been athlete has a legendary treatment in Raging Bull - the wrestler succeeds not in evoking that precendent, but in unexpectedly mining the flaws and crippling failure that follows any and every man who has invested all of his self-worth in his work, no matter how spectacular or mundane the profession may be. At first, I wanted to take issue with the screenwriter for falling into formula, but as the movie settled in, it became ever so clear that the banality and brutality of the context of minor league professional wrestling gives us opportunity to refresh the formula and recapture it's emotional power. Note, that much like Darren Arronofsky's previous work, particularly REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, there are moments in the film that are not at all for the faint of heart. The brutal toll these men take for entertainments sake, no matter how "fake" the outcomes of matches are - is shocking. Arronofsky's direction is stunning, mainly because it's it's simple. PI and REQUIEM (two films close to my heart) make clear the showy cinematic wonders of which his camera is capable, but rightly and generously he foregos all of them to achieve the timeless mandate of a film director, which is to show you want you need to see, in precisely the way you need to see it. It's masterful - much like Rourke's performance - because it doesn't appear to be or announce that it is. It's dramatic and profound because he revels in precisely the moments that filmmakers have been cutting out of movies since their birth. A swig of beer, a silly thank you card, a a scoop of potato salad, a brief and somewhat awkward kiss...these are the tentpoles of life. Arronofsky honors our lives and his audience by lingering on them and leaving so many questions unanswered. Just like life.