Kansan Reviews
FILMS: 'Parties' and 'Roses'
By TOM SWALE
There is a tendency these days for stories to reach the screen secondhand. They start as well-known novels or plays—presold financial successes—but rarely as screenplays.
Essential weakness or extensive revision is likely to be the result. Camus' "The Stranger" and Harold Pinter's "The Birthday Party" are more or less faithful to their original form, with predictable difficulties. In the novel "The Stranger," careful prose persuades us Mersault kills the Arab because "the sun was too bright" and that he is convicted because he did not show sufficient emotion at his mother's funeral. This sort of subtlety seems to elude film's abilities to convey convincingly.
Similarly, Pinter's play "The Birthday Party," combining equal parts of vague surrealistic allusion and purposely banal smalltalk, is difficult to make palatable on the screen.
The trouble is that "The Birthday Party" is simply a play on film. In spite of agile camera work and occasional attempts at "artistic" photographic effects, the film's meaning lie in its words. The images are secondary; they only illustrate Pinter's dialogue. The result is a peculiar form of stagnation.
Robert Shaw is Stanley the roomer, quietly disintegrating in an English seaside town. He appeals to us at first. He recognizes the silly habits and sloppy minds of his middle-aged landlords. But where we would be polite, Stanley dares to be rude. He abuses his well-meaning friends. He mercilessly assaults the inedible meals and empty conversation served up for him by spreading, wrinkled Meg. Stanley possesses the power and cruelty of the weak. But not for long.
When two strangers arrive to help him celebrate his birthday, the party degenerates into nightmare as they begin a protracted war of nerves and eerie non-sequitur interrogations. Already teetering on the brink of sanity, Stanley topples over the edge at the party's end.
Shaw and Dandy Nichols as Meg turn in convincing and, at times, poignant performances. But it is Sydney Tafler as the glib and mercurial Goldberg who walks off with the show. He makes us see how fascinating his own brand of spiritual decay can be.
"The Birthday Party" is overlong and a little schizophrenic in its simultaneous concentration on banal verbal exchanges and conversations bristling with vague implications. The disparity between the two often provokes unintended laughter. "The Birthday Party" raises questions of identity, responsibility and guilt. But there are so many questions and so few answers. It is unfortunate that in this adaptation of the first full-length play by a well-known American playwright there is so little to remember beyond a carefully contrived interplay of words among unreal caricatures.
Bv MIKE SHEARER
Patricia Neal, newly recovered from a series of near-fatal strokes, gives "The Subject Was Roses" one element of professionalism
Her performance will not only win her an academy nomination, but also may make her a close match for Joanne Woodward and Barbra Streisand for the Oscar. And when one considers Miss Neal's excellent performance amidst such slop as is in her film, her acting stature increases.
Her support in the film—two actors who look like recruits from a junior high musical comedy and a director who must have had a strange desire to do justice to an originally rotten play—make the film itself a very forgettable flop.
It must have been an off year when Frank Gilroy received his Pulitzer for the play "The Subject Was Roses." If nothing else, however, his winning the award must be of great encouragement to other playwrights who can't write.
"The Subject Was Roses" is about the problems of a middle aged couple, their stupid son and a few suggested closet skeletons. It is, to be more explicit, a family argument. Edward Albee's George and Martha fought with a passionate art. Gilroy's trio fights like a trio of dragged baboons.
If the viewer wants to see more than one notable performance, he should avoid "The Subject Was Roses." If he wants to see a real family feud, he should fly home for a weekend; anyone's family can do better than Gilroy's.
The dean of American folk singers had been singing the gospel of love for nearly two hours, and his voice had been hoarse to begin with.
By JOANNA WIEBE
But the more than 1,000 students who jammed Pierson Hall on the University of Missouri (Kansas City) Saturday night to listen to Pete Seeger drove him back onstage with tumultuous applause after his final song.
"If you love your Uncle Sam . . . , Support our boys in Vietnam, bring 'em back," he sang, accompanying himself on his twelve-string guitar.
Seeger knows how to turn'em on
After several verses, he paused to talk to the students.
"I want to give you a chance to disagree," he told them. "Now is your time to boo if you don't like the song."
Pierson Hall was silent.
"Yea!" yelled a girl, and the audience again broke into applause as Seeger finished the song.
It seemed a fitting way to conclude the first Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Symposium on Dissent.
Seeger's affinity with dissenting students has a long history, going back to his early opposition of McCarthyism, and continuing when he was questioned in the early 1960's by the House Un-American Activities Committee because of his political beliefs.
For about 17 years, Seeger was blacklisted by the major television companies for his political opinions, which he spoke and sang across the nation. The CBS Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour bravely broke the ban in September of 1967.
Prefacing one of his songs Saturday night, Seeger said, "In 1953 the students were the only sector of the U.S. population that would not blacklist me." He was invited to sing at Oberlin College, where he picked up a little ditty called, "They're Poisoning the Students' Minds." As he sang of the "establishment's" fear of corrupting the minds of students with radical political opinions, it was clear that Seeger's 1953 song, like most of his repertoire, is still contemporary.
I first ran into Pete Seeger on a Joan Baez album I picked up at a sorority auction one
Seeger's audience Saturday night was an amalgamation of peace symbols, beads, beards, Afro haircuts, hippie-type
But they all seemed to be with the man, singing along on the choruses, waving their "V-signs," clapping their hands and jiggling their feet in time to the music.
outfits, with an spattering of clean-cut "straights."
Popular folk singers such as Bob Dylan, the Kingston Trio, and Joan Baez acknowledge their debt to Seeger for promoting folk music—the music of the people—and for establishing a unique style which was promptly adopted across the nation.
Seeger's reputation as a political dissenter was established in an earlier era when his listeners were working men in AFL shops, but his comments are still fresh. His mild diatribes touched on everything from the Pill and the Pope, to the racial strife tearing at grass-roots America.
Wednesday
Tuesday
In a wry comment on old age, he sang of an old man whose "get up and go has all got up and went." But he can still face life with a grin, when he thinks "of the places my get-up has been."
Today
8:20 p.m.—"Destroy Rides Again"—Experimental Theatre
8. p.m.—Master's Recital—H a r l a n Jennings, baritone—Swarthot 8:20 p.m.—"Destroy Rides Again"—Experimental Theatre
& 8 p.m.—Classical Film—"Woman in the Dunes"—Dyche Auditorium 8 p.m.—Little Symphony—Pianist Richard Reber—Swarthout
And Seeger grinned as he sang.
4:30 p.m. - Poetry Hour - Contemporary Brazilian Poetry - Forum Room, 212 Fifth Avenue
Classical Film Series
7 & 9 p.m.—Broadway
His get-up is still going places.
summer on the Northwestern University campus in Evanston, Ill. Included on the album was the song of love and hope—"Guantanamara." I was enchanted with his gentle, almost conversational style of singing, and began listening to the rest of Seeger's songs, including those he has written himself, such as, "Turn, Turn, Turn," "If I Had A Hammer," and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone."
8:20 d.m.—"Destroy Rides Again"—Experimental Theatre
Thursday
8:20 p.m.—"Destroy Rides Again"Experimental Theatre
Kansan Arts Calendar
Friday
7 & 9 n.m.-Special Film—'I'm No Angel- Dyson-Diesel's New Body- Senior -Recital-C. Ann Rickert, soprano -Swarthout Recital Hall-
20 n.m.—"Destroy Rides Again"—
Friday
7 & 9:30 p.m. *Polariser Film—"Loilis* —Dyche Auditorium
7:30 p.m.—Folk Dance Club—173 Robinson
7:30 p.m.—University Film Series—"Nazarin"—Hoch Auditorium
Feb. 17
1969 KANSAN 5
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