The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 69, No. 15, Ed. 1 Friday, November 20, 1981 Page: 7 of 16
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Thresher/Fine Arts
Players make a success of Gray's modern despair
Close of Play
Hammon Hal!
Through Saturday, Nov. 21
"What's the point of loving each
other and caring for each other if
the end's always the same? Do you
by any chance know? Do you by
any God-given chance know? And
if you don't, why did you ever
bring us into the world?"
The Rice Players' production of
Simon Gray's Close of Play is
chillingly superb. The play itself
belongs in the same genre as
Sartre's No Exit: They both deal
with a type of living hell. Close of
Play is the story of a typical
weekend renunion of a British
middle class family. Typical except
for the father of the family who sits
in his armchair listening to
everyone's problems although he is
dead.
The play is a series of
confessions by each member of the
family in turn, all made to Jaspar
(John Heaner), the father. No one
ever notices that Jasper never
answers, no one ever really wants
his questions to be answered or to
be judged. Jasper passively hears
everyone's problems just as the
audience does, and he shares with
the audience the same inability to
Art
■ijiijhtjjutm*.
Burke, Boyer, Mays, and Heaner in
articulate. Heaner"s face expressed
all the emotions that we in the
audience felt with great poignance.
Heaner has only one line in the
play, at the very end, but he is the
center of our interest as he
entertains his living ghosts because
he is most like us. Jasper is a
watcher of others' misery which
will never end; the close of this play
is not a finish but an intermission
between acts of despair. He is the
t^gic figure in a semi-comedy
rehearsal of Close of Play.
because for him everything is now
too late. Heaner conveys this
tragedy to us in silence by brilliant
acting.
The rest of the cast was equally
good. Christi Mays as Daisy
(Jasper's wife) is a gossipy, fussy
old woman whose distractedness
causes great friction in the play.
Mays effectively portrays a woman
who is deeply in love with a dead
man, and makes us feel that it is an
entirely valid emotion.
Blending of a multitude of cultures
Ethiopia: Christian Art of an
African Nation
Museum of Fine Arts
Through January 23
The show of Ethiopian art at the
MFA won't appeal to everyone (it
must be a very small percentage of
the population that can appreciate
a triptych), but is is beautifully
done. The exhibit is roughly
divided into two displays: one of
ceremonial crosses and one of
diptyches and tryptyches. Both
show the influence of several
cultures—Greek, Egyptian, and
non-Christian Ethiopian. All the
objects displayed were used in
Christian ceremonies, either public
of private, but the artistry they
display gives them a value beyond
their religious use.
Ethiopia has been a Christian
nation since the fourth century,
and its church has always been
closely linked with the Egyptiarf
Church and its rituals. It wasn't
until the twelfth century that
Ethiopian Christianity came into
close contest with the European
Church, and much of this contact
was destroyed in the fifteenth
century when the country was
overrun by Ottoman Turks. Since
then, Ethiopia has been a
combination of Christianity,
Judaism, Islam, and other
religions; a duality of isolation and
contact.
The triptyches, diptyches and
singly panels are almost all
tempuraon wood, painted in a flat,
artificial "style. The influences of
Ethiopia's many subcultures are
evident in the paintings: some faces
Detail of tryptich panel
bear a distinctly Greek look; many
of the robes that the painted
figures wear are Egyptian, and in
one panel Christ is shown
shrouded very much like a
mummy. The tempura paints used
on the panels have mellowed to
barely more than pastels, giving
them the distinction of su,blety.
The other half of the show
consists of dozens of crosses used
for processionals, pendants, and
hand crosses. These crosses are
carved from wood, or molded by
the lost wax process in brass and
silver. Included with the crosses
are other ceremonial pieces, a
siver sistrucr. used to mark time
during services (this instrument
was borrowed directly from
Egypt), an iron incense burner,
prayer sticks to keep time during
sacred dances, and even silver ear
wax picks in the shape of a cross.
The work on all of these pieces is
beautifully balanced, varying from
delicate filigre-like silver work and
woodcarving to cut and hammered
iron crosses, whose balance comes
from their heaviness.
Two of the most interesting
pieces in the show are two small
crosses, one superimposed" with a
Star of David, one suprimposed
with the Lion of Judea. These
crosses give the best example in the
exhibit of the complexity and
interdependent nature of
Ethiopian cultures.
The show is altogether a curious
© one. It displays a parchment with
St. George on his white horse with
bare feet, Coptic crosses ranging
from a couple of inches to a couple
of feet, pendant trvptiches with
beaut^ullv carved wooden backs.
Everywhere there is a blending of
different styles, cultures, and
beliefs. Ethiopia: Christian Art of
an African Nation captures the
ambiguity of Ethiopian
Christiantv. both its personal
fervor and formal tolerance.
Deborah knot!
Baskets and Besides
Baskets and Besides invites you to '
see our new shipment of wicker
furniture and tropical decora-
tions. Come and do your
Christmas shopping now.
&10 Morningside -
523-7S73
V
COFFEE
Fresh Roasted
from 4 50 lb
Lou Priced
Melitta Filters
Whiting Coffee Co
2.vsS Biwmiu't >20- 10S2
O Moll -Sill 1" tn <) -
Edward Burke as Jasper's son
Benedict and Angela Roberts as
his wife Margaret are the most
self-destructive figures in the plav.
Benedict is an alcoholic and
Margaret is a modern novelist who
by losing herself in her work is
losing hold of herself. Burke was
an accurate drunk, predictable to
everyone but himself. He moved
easily in and out of the different
roles the play demands. Roberts
was the hard woman who doesn't
care about anything. The only
problem she had with this role is
her unsteady British accent,
otherwise she gave a real sense of
the tragic absurdness of modern
life.
Christopher Boyer (Henry, also
Jasper's son) and Connie Covert
(Marianne, his wife) are Burke and
Roberts' foil. Henry and Marianne
seem happy and constructive, not
tearing each other and themselves
apart like Benedict and Margaret.
Yet in the end they both confess
terrible miseries in their lives to
Jaspar. Boyer carries the message
of the play in his talk with Jaspar:
"It's all such a pitiful charade, or
perhaps it's only a charade." Henry
is a cowardly character in his
apathy, but Bover combines his
tragic and comedic pieces into a
sympathetic whole. Covert is the
most amusing in the play as the
eternally pregnant woman who
sometimes wants to kill her
children. Like Boyer, she portrays
black comedy.
Lou Ann Fields (Jenny) and Joe
Ponessa (as her son Matthew) have
the most minor roles in the play.
Jenny, as the wife of Jasper's oldest
son who is dead, is marginalized in
the play as she is in the family.
Jenny and Matthew serve to make
the comedic part of Close of Plav
blacker and the tragic part more
absurd. Fields and Ponessa
adequately manage this.
The set, by Linda McNutt was
an essential part of the play. It
provided a "typical" background
against which the dialogue and
action was more powerful. The
show ran technically smoothly,
and everyone (except Jasper)
moved with ease around and
across stage and through their
roles. There were a few minor
faults with wrong lines, but Close
of Play is, as I have said, altogether
superb.
There is one major problem with
seeing the Players' Close <>f Plav.
Anything you do afterwards will
he an anticlimax
l>cn,'rah Knall
S * ^ "yfmv
. ■■■■'■■
Alpine Brass Quintet with the instruments of their trade.
On Sunday. November 22. I9XI. the Alpine Brass Ouintet will
present a concert at Christ Church Cathedral, at Texas and Fannin
downtown. The concert, which is free, will take place at 3 p.m., with a
wine-and-cheese intermission.
The Alpine Brass 0u'ntet was formed last year at the Shepherd
School of M usic and is composed of Philip Westover. Ken Lit/gcrald.
Scott Hammann. and Don Kronenberger from Rice, and Ken Clark
from the University of Houston's School of Music.
The quintet has performed extensively, both at Rice and in the
Houston area. They have appeared on Channel I I news, and have
performed at the Galleria. the Medical Center and in Jones Hall.
Sunday's concert will include the music of Scheldt. Fwald. Scott
Joplin. Pachelbel. and Mo/art Selections from the American Brass
Journal will also be featured For more information about the
concert, including transportation downtown, call 526-5612.
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YOUR HAIRCUT;
ITS YOUR LOOK,
PERSONALITY
AND LIFESTYLE.
IT'S PERFECT.
IT'S YOU AT
HAIRCRAFT TWO.
ft.K. REDKEN
SALON
HAIRCRAFT ONE
2110 LEXINGTON
526-5472
HAIRCRAFT TWO
2011 5. SHEPHERD
528-2260
The Rice Thresher. November 20. 1981. page 7
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Davies, Bruce. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 69, No. 15, Ed. 1 Friday, November 20, 1981, newspaper, November 20, 1981; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245487/m1/7/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.