Part 78, page 367

Transcript

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one thing right—even if it is too late and even if it is wrong. In the process, in extremity, we see the unrecognized (or defeated) better feelings and possibilities that had lain sadly fallow in him all along.

This sounds very heavy, but Or- lock and the Cricket crew drop it on us only after laying a deceptive groundwork, part frisky inconse- quence and part commonplace hu- man troubles.

Fred Thompson is Aaron's busi- ness partner and original "brains" of the hijack scheme to break them out of their circular hopelessness. Clive Rosengren is the other loud- mouthed boob, equally unlikely for such high enterprise.

Mildly surreal staging devices establish the fantasy tone: All the props (beer cans, eating utensils, "things") are twice life-size; the people wear ghastly bargain-base- ment garments in clashing colors and patterns; revolving backdrop panels inject them into changing

times and places.

I found the music only sporadi- cally effective. "Betty's Waltz," sung by Jane Murray, broke my heart as Aaron's wife mourned dead love over a box of face pow- der—the long-ago last gift he had given her—"bought on sale." "This Is My Sister" is delightful comic patter, the roommate complaints of sexy Camille Gifford and "plain- Jane" Dolores Noah—unwittingly involved with the hijack plotters.

Too many of the numbers, how-

ever, seemed irrelevant padding, and not interesting enough as sepa- rate songs. Perhaps intentionally (to avoid slick "musical" lyri- cism?), most were played in the wrong key for individual singers, making the voices unmelodious and words often unintelligible.

But, a gritty truth and deeply moving humanity cut through both the usefully distancing whimsy and the unneeded artifice to make "D.B. Cooper" a rare theater expe- rience.

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