Cemetery buries
traditional 'Hamlet'
in live performance
BY SHARON KOLBET
When it opened its doors Friday evening, the
Swan Theater became the area’s newest dramatic
venue.
* The unusual setting within the gates ofWyuka
Funeral Home & Cemetery, 3600 O St., makes the
playhouse certain to get theatergoers’ attention.
As part of a broad renovation project for the
cemetery, the Wyuka Historical Society decided to
bring theater to the funeral home's empty carriage
house.
Accepting the challenge of converting a former
horse stable into a playhouse, Nebraska Wesleyan
University graduate Suzanne Evans is directing the
production of Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and
Guildenstem Are Dead.”
The play’s last performances are Friday at 7
p.m. and Saturday at 2 and 7 p.m. Tickets are $10
for adults and $5 for students.
The dark comedy focuses on two minor char
acters round in anaxespeares
|- “Hamlet.” With a story line
' : . ' familiar to those who know
-—“T Shakespeare’s classic tale,
Rosencrantz and “Rosencrantz and
Gildenstem Are Dead auidenstem Are Dead- puts
^iwwiwwi It ™ W fcTWHiy a modern twist on the well
-CWhereJSwan Theater While some Lincoln resi
Wyuka Cemetery dents may have questioned
Carnage Hoise the appropriateness of the
K.,„ _ .. _ _ ater within a cemetery, the
® performers at the Swan
Saturday @ 2 p. m. Theater work hard to put peo
« • Pm* pie at ease.
/U ,' ^.1 * ... "We are very respectful of
lU0St: 52° the space,” said actor Vince
$5 students Learned.
■ hi.. i i Ti i i i Learned has the role of
the Player, the leader of a
troupe of down-on-their-luck thespians. In keep
ing with Shakespeare’s idea of a “play with a play,”
these actors attempt to win the favor of the trou
bled Hamlet and end up confounding the hapless
Rosencrantz and Guildenstem.
'■ With a sand floor and open-air seating, the lay
out of the carriage house lends itself well to an
Elizabethan-style production. The carriage house
architecture allows actors to climb up ladders and
over balconies, utilizing all areas of the historic
building.
“The space is really different,” said Gregory
Peters, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln graduate
who plays Rosencrantz. “It is classic and experi
mental at the same time. It comes ready-made
with all kinds of levels, entrances and exits."
Lawrence Mota, who plays Guildenstem, said
the cast members were respectful of their location.
“What we do, we do with the utmost respect for
the space,” Mota said. “Theater is an art whose
strength derives from its rituals; it seems only
appropriate that we perform it in a place connect
ed with last rites."
Photos by Sharon Kolbet/DN
TOP: Speaking as the Player, Vince Learned leans out from the carriage-house balcony. Using an Elizabethan-styled stage, the cast of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstem Are Dead" moves
in and around the historic building in Wyuka cemetery.
LEFT: Larry Mota and Gregory Peters perform as Rosencrantz and Guildenstem in the Swan Theater production of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstem are Dead."The play is being pre
sented at the historic carriage house in the Wyuka cemetery, 3900 0 St., this weekend.
RIGHT: Hamlet's soliloquy to Yorick takes on a modem twist in the Swan Theater's production of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstem Are Dead."
Murky movie marks Stallone return
■ A poorly directed search for truth in a murder
leaves'Get Cartel with unrelated subplots and
incoherent threads.
BY SAMUEL MCKEWON
Sylvester Stallone dropped off the movie radar
screen for three years - not by choice, but Hollywood
banishment, Stallone once bemoaned to the New
York Post after his so-so “Copland,” a loaded film that
apparently re-established his acting chops.
Woe is Sly - three years in dark country, and his
newest endeavor, “Get Carter,” on top of being a
steaming pile of genuinely odd performances and
readily incoherent plot threads, is one of the darkest
pictures ever made.
It’s as if the director, Stephen T. Kay, wanted to
pass on the effects of half blindness to the movie
going public.
Consider one scene where Stallone's Jack Carter, a
Las Vegas headbuster who returns home to Seattle to
investigate his brother’s murder. He asks an old
enemy (Mickey Rourke, another has-been) to take off
the yeljow neon sunglasses "to get a good look at
him.”
• Maybe Carter does. Maybe he doesn’t. Kay has
drained so much color from the scene that we don’t
see Rourke's eyes. The murkiness generally sums up
the entire experience of watching "Get Carter.”
It holds die cards against its vest for so long, you’ll
have left the theater either in confusion or in certain
ty ty nothing more was about to occur.
It’s quite a switch from the original, English ver
sion of the film, a 1971 cult hit of sorts that starred
Michael Caine, who plays a small role here.
Funny, as Caine was shooting the worst disaster
movie in history, “Jaws 4,” after winning his first
Academy Award for “Hannah and Her Sisters,” he was
shooting “Get Carter” in the mid& of winning for
"The Cider House Rules.”
The man knows how to make a encore.
Caine’s Jack Carter was a oily brute bent on
revenge for the sake of revenge - the very notion of
partaking in loutish beatings appealed to the charac
ter, and it appealed to audiences. Taut, wiry B-movie
scripts usually do. I’m not sure what David
McKenna’s script could be called. “Taut” and “wiry”
fail to come to mind.
Carter returns to Seattle, stocked with smokes, a
grubby goatee and a stash ofVegas glimmer suits that
apparently retard the rain that falls in scene after
scene.
As he returns, he seems certain of foul play,
though both his brother’s wife (Miranda Richardson)
and daughter (Rachel Leigh Cook) would prefer to let
slimy dogs lie.
Carter has a guilt complex for disappearing on his
bro, though.
He finds himself bent on beating the truth out of
his victims or threatening “to take it to the next level,”
a flurry of fists and facial contortions only a “yo” man
like Rocky could love.
The "level” scenes, as it were, feel rather obligato
ry, especially one where a villain takes Carter to
another level, after which Carter responds with a
whole new level all his own. It’s quite a spectacle to
behold, this grunting one-upmanship of flabby
skinned ex-stars.
Just what was Carter’s brother embroiled in? A
quarter to anyone who can guess that in the first
hour.
It has something to do with a bar, a computer
pom mogul (Alan Cumming, conjuring up Pee-Wee
Herman’s ghost), a seedy hooker, Rourke’s character,
Caine’s char- -
acter, a courier -
whose name ✓ ‘ -v
learn,antftvro Get Cartel* J
goons from .■
Carter’s Las Director: Stephen I Kay
Vegas gig. , -
The goons —QStars: Sylvester Stallone,
show up to Mickey Rourke,
bust Carter’s Michael Caine,
chops in an Rachel Leigh Cook
unrelated, —_—
entirely use- —Rating: R (language,
less subplot. violence that has
T o been “taken to
Stallone’s another level”)
credit, he
seems as gen- of 4 stars
uinelylostin . .
the movie as
the audience
will be, and his scene with Cook, off the radar since
“She’s All That,” borders on dramatic sincerity.
All other performances are lost in the stew of
speed-up camera tricks, freeze frames of Carter and
double-screen fun. Lord knows what Miranda
Richardson, a classic and subtle actress, is doing in
this.
That’d be a good question to ask Stallone. He
knows enough about writing scripts that he surely
must have spotted this turkey. Maybe he figured that
if Kay made “Get Carter” dark enough, the flaws
would wash away. If only he didn’t own the Vegas
shimmer suits...
Note: “Get Carter” wasn’t screened for critics; the
New Line marketing clan knew better than to let all
the mainstream pundits make kabobs of it.
Hard life knocks blues into singer's rock-swing
“Just dial trouble; I’ll say ‘Hello/ ” blues diva
Candye Kane sings on the opening track of her
newest album, “The Toughest Girl Alive.”
The single mom found herself on welfare in
East Los Angeles at 16-years-old and has since
attained other killer attributes: battered wife, porn
star, bisexual, blues singer and plus-size woman
that’s “200 pounds of fun,” as she proudly
describes.
Kane has all the makings of a true and raw
diva. In fact, she may be considered the diva of all
modern divas; she will be playing tonight at the
Zoo Bar.
The singer began writing poetry as a child and
wrote her first song at 16. As a struggling single
mother, Kane turned to topless modeling and
stripping for money.
Unlike many, she proudly embraces her past
as the force that has allowed her to develop her
music career.
At 35, Kane’s voice is reminiscent of the blues
of Bessie Smith and the oomph of Etta James.
Kane’s personal heroes include Etta James, Koko
Taylor and Dave Alvin.
Kane’s sound is packed with blues-rock-swing
that borders on the naughty.
In performances, audiences are promised
loads of dramatics to enhance the whole spectacle
of the show - as if she needed help. Kane has been
known for playing the piano with her breasts. She
makes it clear that “every song has its own life.”
Kane will perform at Lincoln’s internationally
known Zoo Bar, 136 N. 14th St. The show starts
around 9 p.m., and there is an $8 cover charge.
Compiled by Emily Pyeatt
