Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Apr. 18--A mysterious woman in a trench coat is putting bits of paper into bottles and tossing them overboard from a ferry to Nantucket. A stranger in a fake nose and glasses approaches her, speaks casually about the Kennedy compound and the Dionne Quintuplets, then proposes marriage.
All this, and more, happens in just the first minutes of "Landscape of the Body," before we are catapulted back to Greenwich Village where the woman is accused of decapitating her teenage son. And before her dead sister belts out woozily romantic songs with all the untamed can-do mood swings of an extended Liza Minnelli spasm. And before the Cuban travel agent in the gold lame dress over his business suitâ?¦ oh, never mind.
In other words, we are, helplessly and blissfully, in prime John Guare territory, a landscape of the imagination where sweet dreams and morbidity coexist in the grisly wistfulness of life.
This is one of Guare's lesser-known tragicomedies, an exuberantly untidy piece of wise absurdity and noir parody from 1977, resurrected by the Signature Theatre Company in an affectionate production by Michael Greif.
At the skewed center are Lili Taylor as Betty and Sherie Rene Scott as late-sister Rosalie - two marvelous actresses also in this revival at the Williamstown Theatre Festival last summer. Taylor has shaken off the plodding earnestness she was assigned as Nate's wife in HBO's "Six Feet Under." Her Betty, a country girl in the big city, has a fresh, dewy open-for-business quality that can slip into her dead sister's sad and racy life without losing all hope.
And Scott, most recently the comic heroine of "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," makes a vibrant dead vamp. As our guide in a long white gown (costumes by Miranda Hoffman), she periodically slides in with a live combo (sets by Allen Moyer) to nail Guare's ridiculous yet poignant songs with a sublime sense of silly show-biz.
We are in '70s Manhattan, where mothers are accused of murdering their children and male corpses turn up near west side sex clubs. Luscious language and terrible things appear, as if by fluke, in a world where, as Guare says, "The dreams we have as kids, we never get over."
Stephen Scott Scarpulla switches deftly between being mother's sweetheart to gay-bashing thug with adorable, terrifying, bloodthirsty friends. Paul Sparks has a lovely icky quality as the cop who interrogates Betty for murdering her kid. Jonathan Fried makes lunacy seductive as the gentleman caller, obsessed with Betty since he was the Good Humor Man back home, who just might be her ticket out.
Speaking of dream tickets, thanks to an arrangement with Time Warner Inc., the Signature is offering all seats at $15 for the scheduled eight-week run. The same deal applies to next season's August Wilson revivals - "Seven Guitars," "Two Trains Running" and "King Hedley II." Just as "Landscape" tells us with a grimace that also grins, there may be hope yet for building a theater audience for tomorrow.
LANDSCAPE OF THE BODY. By John Guare, directed by Michael Greif. Signature Theatre Company, 555 W. 42nd St., Manhattan, through May 21. Tickets $15. Call 212-244-7529. Seen at Wednesday preview.
-----
Copyright (c) 2006, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.
NYSE:TWX,
