Saturday, July 25, 2020

240. HOTEL FOR CRIMINALS. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

Lyn Gerb, Gene West.

HOTEL FOR CRIMINALS [Musical/Crime/France/Period] B/LY/D/S/L: Richard Foreman; M: Stanley Silverman; C: Whitney Blausen; P: Lyn Austin, Mary Silverman, and Charles Hollerith in the Music-Theatre Performing Group Production; T: Exchange Theatre (OB); 12/10/74-1/12/75 (15)

One of the few commercially produced works of experimental writer-designer-director Richard Foreman, this offbeat diversion parodied the silent movie melodramas of French filmmaker Louis Feuillade, whose weekly series in the 1900s followed the devilish adventures of the arch villain Fantomas (Paul Ukena) amid a Parisian underworld populated by vampires. These creatures of stealth are the constant concern of the ever-vigilant heroic detective, Judex (Ken Bell).

Using a predominantly black and white visual scheme, Foreman and costume designer Whitney Blausen evoked a nostalgic picture of 1902 Paris where anachronistic silver Rolls Royces tooled about, and where dire deeds done by viperish villains to helpless heroes and heroines constituted the action.

Forman’s theatricalist hijinks, which employed dance-like choreographic attitudes and tableaux, and Stanley Silverman’s widely eclectic score, were the chief attractions in this obscurely plotted work. As often in Foreman’s oeuvre, the effect was frequently “style over substance,” in Clive Barnes’s words. This critic found the surrealistic goings on “not nearly so engaging” as the earlier Foreman-Silverman collaboration, Dr. Selavy’s Magic Theatre, but Edith Oliver was charmed by “this ravishing little work.” Barnes thought the music, which purposely reflected many composers’ styles, was “too much,” but Oliver called the tunes “enchanting.”