Jeffrey HatcherRezensionen

2407

Bekend verhaal, maar mooi uitgevoerd dus fijn om naar te kijken.½

I read this because, surprise, I'm thinking of writing a play. Not the liveliest writing I've ever read, but excellent information and background on playwriting and structure. The author goes over the history of plays, how they how evolved over time, and how to go and reverse engineer an existing play to understand how its structured. A valuable first introduction.

Great play! A hysterical and interesting look at gender and performance.

In the movie's present, Sherlock Holmes is 93 and World War II has recently ended. He has just returned from a trip to Japan to acquire jelly made from the prickly ash plant, which he hopes will help his rapidly failing memory. While tending his bees and living a generally quiet life, Holmes strikes up a friendship with Roger, his housekeeper's inquisitive and intelligent young son. It is Roger who helps Holmes remember more details about his last case, the one that prompted him to retire to the countryside.

Viewers get glimpses of Holmes's trip to Japan (his memory so bad that he wrote his host's name on one of his sleeve cuffs so that he wouldn't embarrass himself) and also his final case. In that case, Holmes investigated a woman whose husband was worried she was being used. She'd had two miscarriages, and the only thing that seemed to help her grief was the music lessons her husband encouraged her to take. However, she became obsessed with the music and seemed to think it allowed her to communicate with her dead children. Watson's version of the case indicated that it ended successfully, but Holmes knows that can't possibly be true. If it were, why would he have quit being a detective afterward?

This was a very slow movie, almost too slow for my tastes. It was extremely painful to see Holmes this way, constantly forgetting people's names, things he said he'd do, and more. Even worse, he knew he was forgetting things, and a part of him knew that his efforts to get around his problem weren't quite good enough. The prickly ash was him grasping at straws.

I guessed how Holmes's last case had gone well before it was revealed, so that part didn't really interest me much. In general, this movie wasn't so much a Sherlock Holmes mystery as it was a sentimental drama. I had gone into it hoping for more of a mystery, so this and the general slowness of it all was a bit of a disappointment. I enjoyed Holmes and Roger's budding friendship, but found myself wishing this had been an adaptation of Laurie R. King's The Beekeeper's Apprentice instead.

Near the end of the movie, things became so depressing that I found myself wishing I'd never started watching it at all. Holmes was a lonely old man who'd become estranged from Watson, his best friend, and who had outlived all the people from the original stories (Watson, Mrs. Hudson, and more). He'd gained a new friend in Roger, but Roger's mother was determined to find employment elsewhere, before Holmes either died or deteriorated to the point that she'd have to be his nurse in addition to his housekeeper. Then a thing happened that made me feel like I'd been kicked in the gut, it was so horrible on top of everything else.

The movie does end fairly happily, but for a while there it was deeply depressing. I don't think I could watch it again. It was decent, I suppose, if not exactly enjoyable, but I have a feeling it would be far too sentimental for most Holmes fans.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

Don't go into this film expecting a crime drama. It isn't. It's more about getting old and senile and fighting against that. And trying to come to terms with your regrets. It's a quiet film and rather sad but with an end of acceptance.½

Famoso por seus desempenhos no palco como mulher, o ator Ned Kynaston do século XVII tem a carreira quase arruinada quando o rei Carlos II proíbe que homens interpretem mulheres no teatro. Uma estranha mistura de brincadeira histórica e drama romântico em que um homossexual é subitamente marginalizado e se 'redime' nos braços de sua ex-camareira Maria, este peça mistificadora e super-irritante foi calculada para confundir o leitor e o espectador quanto a orientação sexual em geral, apesar dos esforços de Jeffrey Hatcher para criar ambigüidade na relação central. A sexualidade de Kynaston é tratada como uma aberração desde o início. Ele permite até que dois admiradoras o toquem, só para provar que é homem. Francamente, não entendi [a mensagem] e não gostei [seja qual for a dita cuja mensagem].

This book is a typical craft book, nothing particularly new or different. It was reading this book, however, that I finally figured out what is wrong with most writing craft books. They tend to make statements of "fact" that are "known" by everyone, but which they back up totally by anecdotal evidence, in some cases twisting the anecdotes mercilessly to make them fit the particular fact they are being used for. That being said, this wasn't a bad book, there were some interesting points made, and the exercises were solid. The best part, in my opinion, was the interview with Jose Rivera, who didn't pontificate about the "only" way to write a successful play (which Marsha Norman, unfortunately, did). Rivera did provide some pithy quotes that I will remember and utilize for a long time.

From the back cover: In the last decade of the twentieth century, a beautiful young woman in nineteenth century clothing is found floating on an iceberg in the middle of the North Atlantic. When rescued, she says only one word: Titanic. The woman, is taken to an isolated spot on the coast of Maine where an expert on the sinking of the liner, a mysterious individual in his own right, has arranged to interrogate her for six days. His goal: to crack her story, get her to confess she's a fake and reveal her true identity; his one clue: her enigmatic references to an unknown place called "Scotland Road".

I loved this very quick little play, a scant 48 pages in length, which reads IMO just like a thrilling short story! With only four characters, one stage setting, two acts, seven scenes and a playtime of 90 minutes (according to the playwright) this one really kept my attention. The stage directions included made this one very easy to visualize, along with the sparse props. Great characters and dialogue to engage an audience, even if they - like me - are not as a general rule fascinated with the story of the Titanic and its survivors.

If you enjoy the cat and mouse game of an interrogation, have a love for things that whiff of history and if you can lay your hands on a copy of this one, I suggest you do so. It is well worth the short one hour it will take to read it.

Though the play is set in the final days of Janusz Korczak's life in the Warsaw Ghetto, and is thus inherently depressing, it's kept from being too sad by its protagonist's witticisms. From what I've read about Korczak, I think Jeffrey Hatcher came as close as was possible to capturing the real man. A-plus.

Short, sweet and easy to read. Morrie sounds like a great guy to have known and a sad loss to his family and friends

Apparently, there are rules to art. Who knew? In all seriousness though, this book has been an important tool in pretty much anything I've attempted to write, and the lessons learned from it have helped not only with plays, but prose and essays as well. Either within the specific contexts of play writing or on a larger field, this book has made me, and could make any student, a better writer.

Da Georgiana Spencer giftet seg med Hertugen av Devonshire på slutten av 1700-tallets England, trodde hun at hun inngikk et ekteskap som skulle bli varmt og fortrolig. Hvor feil hun dessverre skulle ta ... Hertugen har helt bestemte oppfatninger av ekteskapet og i særdeleshet av hvor mye han er villig å gi av seg selv i dette arrangementet. Han er og blir en kald mann som utelukkende er opptatt av å få en arving. Varmen akter han å finne andre steder.

Georgiana fortæres av ensomhet og lengsel etter kjærlighet i sitt kalde ekteskap. Et ekteskap som blir enda kaldere etter hvert som det viser seg vanskelig for henne å bære frem en sønn. På tross av den tragedie hennes ekteskap viste seg å bli, ble hun likevel en innflytelsesrik kvinne i sin samtid. Hun vanket med landets aristokrati, ble et moteikon og var dessuten kjent for sin appetitt på gambling.

Men det er da ektemannen helt åpenlyst tar Georgianas beste venninne til elskerinne og ydmyker sin kone ved å ha venninnen boende på slottet at Georgiana for alvor holder på å gå i frø. Trekantdramaet dem i mellom utvikler seg til å bli en maktkamp hun ikke har noen mulighet for å slippe fra. For å overleve innleder hun et forhold med Jarl Grey - bare for å oppdage at det er andre regler for henne som kvinne enn for ektemannen. Det er han og han alene som bestemmer hva som sømmer seg og hva som er tillatt.

Keira Knightley og Ralph Fiennes rollertolkninger i denne filmen er intet mindre enn mesterlige. Spesielt imponerte Ralph Fiennes som en humørløs, gretten hertug av det erkeengelske slaget. Dette er virkelig en må-se-film!½

A dissapointing how-to on playwriting. While on the one hand Hatcher is engaging and is right-on about some things (like what it means to realize that a play is 2 hours of the audience's life), very often he is didactic and uninspiring. Large portions of the text consist of pointing out how famous plays conform to his interpretation of Aristotle's Poetics (like half a page on the "music" in Glengarry Glen Ross). There is not much practical craft advice; more "see how it is" than "what does this do?" Despite the fair amount of common sense, ultimately his vision is too restrictive for either a beginner playwright (who should be given tools, not rules) or a more experienced one (who will find no new inspiration, unless they've never even heard of the Poetics).

(I admit I am plenty biased in how I think playwrighting should be taught, but hopefully you can gather something from this review.)

The interviews at the back of the book with Lee Blessing, Jose Rivera and Marsha Norman are nice, but not particularly insightful.

If you are expecting a realistic story about Casanova and 18th century Venice, you'll be disappointed. If you're in for a comedy about mistaken identities, then you will have a pleasant pasttime. Lena Ohlin and Helen McCrory are the best. Costumes good, but a bit dull.

PG