Specialist WARWICK ARTS CENTRE University of Warwick, Gibbet Hill Rd, Coventry, 024 7652 4524, www.warwickartscentre.co.uk Carnage (15): Jodie Foster in Roman Polanski's
stagey God of Carnage adaptation.
It's all well-intentioned and written with care but its theatre roots mean that this film can't help but feel very
stagey and a bit slow moving.
HBO didn't want this to seem
stagey and contrived."
amplification out perform
stagey poets volume-wise outtalk west winded
What they did on TV was so stiff and
stagey. You wanted to watch them but not to cook and eat the same things.
Stagey dialogue would have punctured the intense mood piled up by the power of the songs.
The preening of the two dancers alludes to the way in which both citizens and city put themselves on display, while the
stagey backdrop and mannered camping of the performers foreground the theatricality of Turin's most famous building itself.
Also, the score is bombastic and relentless and doesn't sit well with the slightly
stagey dialogue in Justin Hay the's script.
Films based on plays are often too
stagey and a '70s-set political docu-drama could easily turn audiences off - but this is absolutely engrossing.
The bouts themselves become almost incidental as Sheridan takes a hard look at the logic of violence, the strategy of deliberately inflicting pain in an effort to secure a score, and the terrifying addiction to violence exhibited by mobs of frantic spectators who voyeuristically live out pent-up aggressions through the
stagey spectacles into the ring.
The secondary roles are characterful, in a somewhat
stagey manner, but any Werther stands or falls by the quality of its principal singers.
At the trial, the tape's
stagey antics reduced the judge to laughter, but Zappa was found guilty and ended up spending 10 days in jail, an experience, Miles writes, that changed Zappa forever: "By the time he got out, he no longer believed anything the authorities had ever told him.