Books, Arts & Manners: Dishonored Bones

OOOO that Shakespeherian Rag (to jive with Tom Eliot)! The boys are at it again, tearing Shakespeare to rags. This time we have Tempest, Paul Mazursky’s modern-day fantasia on The Tempest, in which more than the definite article gets lost; and Woody Allen’s A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (the very title is offensive), in which Shakespeare’s airiest invention as well as Ingmar Bergman’s mellowest comedy are reduced to absurdity.

Tempest concerns Phillip Dimitrios, a supposedly brilliant architect, tired of building a gambling casino for the crime lord Alonzo, and restless in his marriage to Antonia, a former actress planning a rather desperate comeback. Antonia and Alonzo, he discovers, are having an affair, and the disgruntled Phillip leaves for an indefinite stay on a Greek island off the romantically godforsaken Mani in the southern Peloponnese. He takes along his teenaged daughter, Miranda, who is disgusted with her mother’s infidelity, and picks up in Piraeus a sexy young American woman, Aretha, who, between major relationships, is supporting herself as a chanteuse in Athens. Though Phillip and Aretha became lovers, on the island he has gone celibate, much to her annoyance. Apparently the only other inhabitant of the island is Kalibanos, a goatherd who speaks good English, absorbs American pop culture from his television set, and acts as the local tourist guide, though there seem to be no tourists. Yet a boat makes periodic stops at the island; well, logic is not Mazursky’s strong suit.

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John Simon

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OOOO that Shakespeherian Rag (to jive with Tom Eliot)! The boys are at it again, tearing Shakespeare to rags. This time we have Tempest, Paul Mazursky’s modern-day fantasia on The Tempest, in which more than the definite article gets lost; and Woody Allen’s A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (the very title is offensive), in which Shakespeare’s airiest invention as well as Ingmar Bergman’s mellowest comedy are reduced to absurdity.

Tempest concerns Phillip Dimitrios, a supposedly brilliant architect, tired of building a gambling casino for the crime lord Alonzo, and restless in his marriage to Antonia, a former actress planning a rather desperate comeback. Antonia and Alonzo, he discovers, are having an affair, and the disgruntled Phillip leaves for an indefinite stay on a Greek island off the romantically godforsaken Mani in the southern Peloponnese. He takes along his teenaged daughter, Miranda, who is disgusted with her mother’s infidelity, and picks up in Piraeus a sexy young American woman, Aretha, who, between major relationships, is supporting herself as a chanteuse in Athens. Though Phillip and Aretha became lovers, on the island he has gone celibate, much to her annoyance. Apparently the only other inhabitant of the island is Kalibanos, a goatherd who speaks good English, absorbs American pop culture from his television set, and acts as the local tourist guide, though there seem to be no tourists. Yet a boat makes periodic stops at the island; well, logic is not Mazursky’s strong suit.