The Red Balloon betwixt Anthony and Cleopatra
I watched Hou Hsiao-hsien's "Flight of the Red Balloon" with the Librarian last Saturday, at the IFC. It was visually delicate and observant, but dragged, especially towards the end. Juliette Binoche was marvellous as the harried single mother. Theater for a New Audience (a mouthful of a name!) performs Anthony and Cleopatra at The Duke on 42nd Street. The staging was inventive throughout. A tiled pool at the front of the thrust stage was pleasure pond, military aid, mirror of fate, ditch, and river. The paneled doors at the back of the stage opened for dramatic entrances and exits, revealing a corridor of power, and closed for impressionistic depictions of land and sea. In the battles scenes, the doors opened to show silhouettes of soldiers. Above the doors was a high playing area, from which the dying Anthony was lowered, laboriously, into the arms of Cleopatra in the tomb. The acting was far less imaginative. Marton Csokas, playing Anthony, spoke as if he had a cold. J...