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| 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.”
