One Man'
Story
By Ann Stack
Senior Reporter
All it took was a photograph, and
a play was bom.
Actually, it took several photo
graphs and a push from a friend in
the business for Jeff Raz to write and
produce “Father-Land,” a one-man,
one-act production.
Raz is a theater artist visiting the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln with
the College of Fine and Performing
Arts’ Artists Diversity Residency Pro
gram. He performed “Father-Land”
Sunday nigjit at Kimball Hall, to a
nearly full house.
“Father-Land” is about Jeff, an
actor, who gets an audition for
Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of
Venice” in London. It’s there he meets
a German woman named Helga who
is obsessed with Jews.
Jeff lands the role of Shylock in
“The Merchant of Venice,” and the
director tells Jeff he needs to research
his character. He and Helga begin
working together to research the role.
During the course of the play, the
audience finds out that Helga’s grand
father was a Nazi, and that she can
not escape the guilt she feels being the
granddaughter of a Nazi.
The ghosts of Helga’s grandfather
and Jeffs father appear, as Helga and
Jeff realize issues in their pasts that
they need to come to terms with in
order to go on with their own lives.
A circus performer on the side, Raz
incorporates humor, audience partici
pation and circus theatrics into “Fa
ther-Land” as well.
“I think that humor and serious
ness are wedded instead of being op
posites,” Raz said.
The idea for “Father-Land” came
about after a trip to Europe in 1989.
While in Germany, Raz visited
Dachau, a town that, during World
War II, was the site of the infamous
concentration camp.
While he was there, Raz said he
u
To get to the truth of the matter, I had to
create fiction.”
JeffRaz
playwright
remembered that his father had been
a photographer with the United States
Army during World War II. He said
he even wondered if his father had
taken some of the photos hanging in
the Holocaust museum in Dachau.
“I got home and I asked my mother
about it,” he said. “She did one of
those classic, ‘Wait here’ things, and
came back with a photo album.” In
that album were letters Raz’s father
had written to his own mother (Raz’s
grandmother) during the war.
“I just started writing down the sto
ries,” he said. His friend, director and
co-writer Jael Wiseman, encouraged
him to make those stories into a play.
The play began as an autobiogra
phy, Raz said. The character of Jeffs
father in the play is based on his own
father.
“There’s certainly a large connec
tion to my life,” he said. “To get to
the truth of the matter, I had to create
fiction. There’s as much truth in the
film ‘Casablanca’ as there was dur
ing the war.”
“Father-Land” does a superb job
of looking at the issues Raz dealt with
growing up Jewish. The play also dealt
well with the guilt the main
character’s father faced looking at the
suffering of his own race through a
camera lens.
Uanny Aiello, James
Spader and the rest of
the cast give a good
performance in Two
Days in the Valley.’
By Cliff Hicks
Film Critic
Every year, Hollywood is required
to release a film that comes from deep
left field and this year, it gives us “Two
Days In The Valley.”
“Two Days In The Valley” draws
comparisons to “Pulp Fiction” only
because the storytelling method is
similar.
Five groups of people start out and
slowly converge together at one point
where their lives all intersect. Some
groups are fascinating, some are not.
As an ensemble piece, none of the
groups really have the spotlight. They
all just share the film with one another,
trying not to upstage anyone else.
Still, two people really stand out
in this film: Danny Aiello and James
Spader.
Aiello, one of Hollywood’s most
underappreciated actors, plays a
down-on-his-luck hitman named
Dosmo whose life, it seems, can only
go downhill. He shows both a comic
and serious side to the character and
gives the audience someone to relate
to.
There’s an absolutely hilarious
scene where Dosmo threatens a dog
at gunpoint. Dosmo’s toupee is
crooked, and his hands are shaking
like crazy.
Spader, on the other hand, plays
Lee, who is about as opposite from
Dosmo as possible. He is the ul timate
control freak, grinning yet wicked.
Spader’s performance is flawless with
this gleefiil psychopath — he is the
reason to see the film.
Out of all the creeps in movies to
The Facts
Film: “T\vo Days In The Valley”
Cast: Danny Aiello, Greg Cruttwell;
Jeff Daniels, Teri Hatcher, Glenne
Headly, Peter Horton, Marsha Mason,
Paul Mazursky, James Spader, Eric
Stolz, Charlize Theron
Director: John Herzfeld
Rating: R (violence, nudity, language)
Grade: B
Five Words: “Two Days” is really
weird
Hauer), Spader is one of the best. De
spite his lanky appearance, there’s
something in his eyes and a smile that
has a way of making viewers feel like
they’re under a microscope.
Greg Cruttwell is the guy every
one will hate, which is an indication
of how well he played the part. Paul
Mazursky is excellent in the most re
alistic part of the film, an out-of-work
writer/director.
Both Teri Hatcher and Charlize
Theron also put on fairly good perfor
mances. A fight scene between them
will go down in history as one of the
biggest all-out brawls between two
women. It’s a no-holds-barred, win
ner-takes-all slugfest,
Glenne Headly offers a so-so per
formance, and there’s not really much
for Marsha Mason to work with. Her
character has little dialogue; she func
tions more as a plot device than a char
acter. The dialogue in her first scene
with Paul Mazursky is strange, like a
lot of this film.
The bedroom scene between
Spader and Theron is not excessive
bo&use it’s fun to watch but weird.
Weird is definitely the right word.
Weird describes a lot of this film,
from the sudden cut-transitions to
some of the unusually worded dia
logue. This film just has weird writ
ten all over it.
But the film does have shortcom
ings. Out of the hour and 45 minutes
•v^r :» Photo coumsY of MGM
CHARL1ZE THEEON, left, and James Spader star in “Two Days in the
Valley,” a new release from MGM that has drawn critical comparisons
to the 1994 hit "Pulp.Fiction* because of its wide range of characters
and convoluted story Hnes. _
that make up the turn, more than an
hour of the picture is for setup. It takes
too long for this film to get off the
ground. -
A couple of the characters are also
left without any real sense of comple
tion. They just sort of trail off into the
distance with out making exits like the B
rest of the cast. ■ ~ ■
it’s hard to talk about the film with-1
out spoiling anything, so let’s just say r
that, while worth seeing, this film isn’t
worth a full $4. At leastcatch it at the L
Starship. S
McGraw,
Hill perform
to eager fans
Bt David Wilson
Music Critic
Country stars Tim McGraw and
Faith Hill kept the Pershing Audi
torium on its feet for over three
hours Saturday night as the “Spon
taneous Combustion” tour passed
through Lincoln.
Before he even took the stage,
McGraw had the crowd chanting.
His antics on the stage — fully
equipped with neon lights and
multiple sets of stairs and platforms
— kept them pumping all night.
McGraw, who puts on one of the
most enthusiastic shows in coun
tiy music, played a wide variety of
his songs, past and present.
After his opening song, “Ren
egade,” McGraw followed with
“Down On The Farm,” his second
No. 1 single—and one of his more
typical country-sounding songs.
McGraw, whose facial expres
sions could be seen on three large
video screens, teased the audience
with the introduction to “I Like It,
I Love It,” which spent five weeks
as the No. 1 spot on the Billboard
country music charts last summer.
He ended up playing the entire song
as his finale.
Although McGraw didn’t al
ways reach the high notes in his
17-song show (and even forgot a
verse to one), his enthusiasm en
couraged the crowd to cheer him
back for an encore.
His eight-piece band was led
back on stage by lead guitarist
Darren Smith
Smith, who wore a cowboy hat
and a Superman T-shirt, wrote
“Where The Green Grass Grows,”
which will be on McGraw’s fourth
album.
His second encore finished the
concert with the controversial song,
“Indian Outlaw,” which, despite
stereotypical lyrics, received the
best reaction from the crowd—and
numerous breakouts of the toma
hawk chop.
Hill displayed the flexibility of
her voice through her opening act
singing everything from blues, to
gospel, to honky-tonk country.
For her final song, Hill and her
six-piece band performed a dance
mix of her hit “Piece of My Heart,”
before their encore of the pop hit
“Open Anns.”
Box Office
Top 10
4.2 Doyt in the Valley
6. Independence Day
10. Tin Cap
SOURCE: AP