Review: Audra McDonald, Martha Plimpton Sizzle in Film Adaptation of Michael John LaChiusa's HELLO AGAIN

"Date movie" would be too tepid a phrase to describe director Tom Gustafson's sizzling film adaptation of Michael John LaChiusa's tensely erotic 1993 musical drama, HELLO AGAIN. The term "foreplay flick" comes to mind.

Inspired from Arthur Schnitzler's controversial 1900 play LA RONDE, the chamber musical that premiered Off-Broadway at Lincoln Center's Mitzi Newhouse Theater involves ten characters in a series of one-on-one encounters that explore the nature of love and sex in all its cruel, destructive and self-delusional glory.

On stage, each scene takes place in New York during a different decade of the 20th Century. For the screen, composer/lyricist LaChiusa and screenwriter Cory Krueckeberg have ventured a bit into the 21st, adding contemporary elements and a sexy new voyeuristic framing device that connects the encounters into the erotic fantasies of one mind.

Playing an unnamed woman, Martha Plimpton enters a discreet doorway into a plush, intimate theatre where she sits alone as a panel lifts to reveal a masked Sam Underwood, lounging in red fetish gear. She is apparently a regular visitor to this secret venue.

"I've been looking for someone," the woman confesses. "But I don't know how to get to where I don't know where I'm at."

"Once you've finished looking outside," her host advises, "look within."

And soon, with the help of what may be a hallucinogen (the context for the musical scenes is a bit vague) we're at the spot where the stage musical begins. The year is now 1901, and in the dark early morning hours a soldier (Nolan Gerard Funk) strolling through Central Park is proposition by a prostitute (Underwood, in women's clothing) who is seeking something more tender than cash.

After their ruthless liaison, the soldier is suddenly taken to 1944. He's the same age and the same person, but of a different lifetime, now enjoying a night of fun at the Theatre District's famous Stage Door Canteen (located across the street from the Shubert Theatre), where soldiers would enjoy free food, free entertainment and free attention from the young volunteer hostesses.

Looking for some action before shipping out the next morning, the free-spirited enlisted man has a quickie in a car with a lonely kitchen worker (Jenna Ushkowitz), hungry for a self-esteem boost.

While extremely touching in her first scene, when the story switches to 1967, Ushkowitz is very funny as a wryly humored home nurse caring for a young man with a bum ankle (Al Calderon). When his mother steps out, she introduces him to the pleasures of being tied up and sexually dominated.

Thus, the film continues, vignette to vignette, with one member of each coupling finding a new partner in a different life in a different decade.

Rumor Willis plays a 1920s woman, dissatisfied in her marriage, who gives her young lover (Calderon) oral sex in the balcony of a movie theatre. Three decades later, she's still dissatisfied, married to a closeted homosexual (T.R. Knight).

Knight gives an exceptional turn in the next scene as a First Class passenger on the Titanic, who is serving a sumptuous private dinner to a handsome young man from steerage (Tyler Blackburn). When the host is informed that the ship is sinking, he doesn't share the news with his guest, wanting to experience just one unbridled sexual encounter with a man in his lifetime without fear of the consequences.

Cheyenne Jackson is great fun as a skeevy 1970s disco club denizen on the make and is next seen pleasuring Audra McDonald, who plays an actress trying to remake her career, in order to make her feel more comfortable recording a cheesy pop power ballad. That song is "Beyond The Moon," penned for the film, which is featured in a parody of ridiculously artistic music videos.

If intelligence is sexy (and of course it is) the most satisfying sequence of the film is when Plimpton is once more seen, this time as a 1980s senator who is trying to keep her relationship with McDonald's actress as an "arrangement," though her partner is ready to reveal their status to the world. This is the only scene where its apparent that the couple is truly in love, fueling the passion in their lovemaking to arousing heights. The two women subtly convey the mixture of their characters' devoted affection while publicly holding back their emotions.

Back in her private club, Plimpton's final encounter completes the circle.

Given the subject matter, HELLO AGAIN is visually quite modest. Aside from the occasional bare male butt, the amount of skin shown is no more than what you'd see on a day at the beach.

It's LaChiusa's richly-textured chamber score that provides the erotic enticement. Predominantly conversational in style, the composer allows flourishes of jazz, blues, disco and other 20th Century forms to emerge with each scene. Most intriguing is how his music dictates the rhythms and tones of each sexual encounter to match the emotions of the participants, making HELLO AGAIN an experience that truly looks within.

To post a comment, you must register and login.