Brilliant Traces Pdf
Brilliant Traces by Cindy Lou Johnson Boy’s Life by Harold Korder This Is Our Youth by Kenneth Lonnergan Assignments: Presentation of one “open, contentless. Just the Facts. 'BRILLIANT TRACES is kooky, weird and definitely off-kilter, but if taken in the right spirit, illuminating about how we live today.' 'deals with common issues of love and family, and does so with characters, story and dialogue so fantastic that they could exist only within the enchanted realm of the stage.' Brilliant Traces is a powerful, jaw dropping, emotional-knockout-of-a-play written by Cindy Lou Johnson. It was first presented by the Circle Repertory Company at the Cherry Lane Theatre, in New York City on February 5th, 1989. It was directed by Terry Kinney and starred Joan Cusack and Kevin Anderson.
February 6, 1989,Section C, Page11Buy Reprints
We are, as the Playbill announces, 'in the state of Alaska, in the middle of nowhere' in Cindy Lou Johnson's new play, 'Brilliant Traces.' The setting is a wood cabin more forbidding than Charlie Chaplin's in 'The Gold Rush.' Outside is a howling blizzard; inside is one indistinct occupant, sleeping beneath a bundle of blankets. And soon comes a fierce knocking on the door. The sleeper, a young man played by Kevin Anderson, awakens to admit a distraught young woman, played by Joan Cusack, who invades his cabin in full bridal regalia, from silver satin slippers to ice-encrusted veil.
Even if Ms. Johnson had few other talents - and she seems to have many - one couldn't dispute her ability to grab an audience's immediate attention. The opening moments of 'Brilliant Traces,' a Circle Repertory Company production staged at the Cherry Lane Theater, possess the same kind of tall-tale abandon that marked the company's previous (and equally snow-dusted) play, Craig Lucas's 'Reckless.' Like Mr. Lucas, Ms. Johnson has spun an alternately comic and anguished fable about contemporary men and women who run away from home - whether from parents, children or mates - and she has written it with an imaginative disregard for pedantic reality. While these new Circle Rep plays deal with common issues of love and family, they do so with characters, stories and dialogue so fantastic that they could exist only within the enchanted realm of the stage.
Ms. Johnson is not yet as experienced or accomplished a writer as Mr. Lucas, but there is much to enjoy during her play's intermissionless 90 minutes, starting with a powerful performance by Ms. Cusack. Best known now for her flamboyant turn as Melanie Griffith's close friend in the film 'Working Girl,' this actress demonstrated last spring, in the English play 'Road,' that she can also convey the wary fragility of a lost girl-woman terrified of being crushed by men. The role of Rosannah DeLuce, as Ms. Johnson's heroine is named, capitalizes on Ms. Cusack's full range. The bride blown in by the blizzard is dizzy - she has driven to Alaska arbitrarily, after abruptly fleeing her wedding 3,000 miles away - and yet she is also disfigured by 'brilliant traces,' the playwright's conceit for the scars of love.
No less wounded is Rosannah's involuntary host, Henry, another refugee from civilization. For reasons that Ms. Johnson too teasingly withholds until the play's final moments - and which will remain undisclosed here - Henry has sworn off the 'roller coaster' of a personal life forever, to hide out in a hermit's isolation. To him, people are 'wild cards' who serve only to wreck a man's tranquillity and bring him grief. To Rosannah, people who 'touch your soul' and get 'under your skin' inevitably leave you 'ruined and alone.' It's only a matter of time, of course, before these two strangers fall into each other's arms, ready to try once more to connect.
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Henry and Rosannah's fusion comes about as it usually does in romantic comedies. Their chance meeting is followed by an angry misunderstanding, a lowering of defenses, an exchange of confessions and a final embrace. Adobe 7.0 professional free download.
Brilliant Traces Script Pdf
But the conventions are transformed by the absurdity of the setting and the situation and by the raw articulation of the characters' pain. Henry and Rosannah not only journey to the end of the world to escape the traumas of intimacy - a feat many can accomplish while staying put -but they also express themselves in heightened language that veers without warning between hardened, comic cynicism and naked, life-and-death panic. 'Brilliant Traces' redefines the familiar by recasting it in histrionic extremes and poetic images (from those of ice to charred shoes) that are as theatrical as the Alaskan weather that establishes the play's tone.
Brilliant Traces Review
It's when the author pushes her metaphors self-consciously that her characters cease to be people and become the pawns of a claustrophobic literary scheme. So much is made of the metaphysical properties of nourishing food, winter whiteouts and aimless highway driving that 'Brilliant Traces' can sound like a joint parody of Anne Tyler, Don DeLillo and Joan Didion. Ms. Johnson's more straightforward speeches can sometimes dip into sentimental cliche as well. Hearts are too often hurting or breaking or pounding, especially as the play pants too hard in order to force its conclusion.
Brilliant Traces Play Pdf
That 'Brilliant Traces' usually holds the stage in even its arch passages is in part a tribute to the alert production. It was a smart idea to entrust a playwright who aims for the emotional jugular and the esthetically rambunctious to a director, Terry Kinney, from Chicago's artistically like-minded Steppenwolf Company. In league with the usual Circle Rep designers - notably Dennis Parichy (lighting) and Chuck London and Stewart Werner (sound) - Mr. Kinney gives 'Brilliant Traces' a volatile atmosphere of mystery and danger that recalls Steppenwolf's 'Orphans.'
Brilliant Traces Pdf
Mr. Anderson, who acted with Mr. Kinney in 'Orphans,' is a compelling presence as Henry, though the role is limited by Ms. Johnson's coy insistence on protecting the character's privacy for most of the evening. The playwright's spirit seems more heavily invested in Rosannah - who, in Henry's accurate account, keeps 'flinging out wild kinds of energy at everything in her path.' In Ms. Cusack's performance, that energy is piercing, whether she is thrashing madly like a bird with a broken wing or arranging her pale features into a vacant passivity, hoping that protective coloration will save her from being wiped out by love once more. 'I'm hovering,' says Rosannah, in her most frequent description of her exile from the world. Ms. Cusack's hovering is such a convincing emotional highwire act that 'Brilliant Traces' becomes overwhelming when she makes her final, cathartic descent through the blizzard for a warm sanctuary that may yet be home. Blizzards Without And Within BRILLIANT TRACES, by Cindy Lou Johnson; directed by Terry Kinney; sets by John Lee Beatty; costume design by Laura Crow; lights by Dennis Parichy; sound design by Chuck London/Stewart Werner; production stage manager, Fred Reinglas. Presented by Circle Repertory Company, Tanya Berezin, artistic director; Connie L. Alexis, managing director. At the Cherry Lane Theater, 38 Commerce Street. Henry Harry .. Kevin Anderson Rosannah DeLuce .. Joan Cusack