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'SWIFT-MOVING 'VICE SQUAD' By VINCENT CANBY
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"The cast, too, is unusually good, especially the leads. Gary Swanson, who recalls the young Steve McQueen and is new to theatrical films, who plays a Los Angeles vice cop..."
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MATTERS WORTH PONDERING INCLUDING STARDOM AND FLOPS - Vincent Canby
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December 19, 1982
...
Eddie Murphy makes a smashing, movie-star debut as Nick Nolte's cohort in Walter Hill's breezy and brutal comedy, ''48 Hours.'' He's got class and a wickedly cool sense of humor. Mel Gibson, the American-born, Australian-bred star of George Miller's ''The Road Warrior,'' and Gary Swanson of Gary A. Sherman's ''Vice Squad,'' don't really look alike but each possesses some of the same quality that made Steve McQueen into a bankable superstar. The year's most astonishing performance by a new - to American audiences - face is Ben Kingsley's in the title role of Richard Attenborough's ''Gandhi.''
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New York Times Review 1983
THEATER: SMOOTH MILITARY DRAMA
By ALVIN KLEIN
Published: January 23, 1983, Sunday
AS a bristling courtroom drama, Herman Wouk's ''The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,'' derived from his 1950 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, ''The Caine Mutiny,'' still works.
The play, currently at the Hartman Theater in Stamford, wastes no time getting down to business. Lieut. Stephen Maryk, the second in command on the fictional destroyer, the U.S.S. Caine, is on trial for willfully relieving Lieut. Comdr. Philip Francis Queeg of his duties during a typhoon.
AS a bristling courtroom drama, Herman Wouk's ''The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,'' derived from his 1950 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, ''The Caine Mutiny,'' still works.
The play, currently at the Hartman Theater in Stamford, wastes no time getting down to business. Lieut. Stephen Maryk, the second in command on the fictional destroyer, the U.S.S. Caine, is on trial for willfully relieving Lieut. Comdr. Philip Francis Queeg of his duties during a typhoon.
Lieutenant Maryk's attorney, Lieut. Barney Greenwald, makes it clear right away that he would rather be prosecuting than defending his client - but he is determined to fight and win. In a flash Commander Queeg, in all his psychopathic charm, is summoned to the stand. There follows witness after witness, testifying for and against Commander Queeg's mental fitness as captain and Lieutenant Maryk's justification as mutineer.
The court questions the qualifications and seemingly strange strategy of the ambivalent and inexperienced Lieutenant Greenwald, who had only four days to prepare his case. (He chooses not to interrogate the intellectual Lieut. Thomas Keefer, even though he was the one who filled Lieutenant Maryk's simple mind with mutinous ideas in the first place.)
The testimonies are engrossing, the moral issues are weighty. In the first department, Mr. Wouk crafted an expert example of the genre; indeed, they do not knit them so tautly anymore. In the second, he is in deeper and stiller water.
In a post-trial appendage - a party scene in celebration of Lieutenant Greenwald's victory and Lieutenant Keefer's receipt of a publisher's advance for the epic war novel he is writing - Lieutenant Greenwald's moral stance is spelled out (and spilled right in the face of Lieutenant Keefer, who is pronounced as the real coward.)
One does not have to swallow it for a moment, though. Mr. Wouk lunges into a defense of the authoritarian tyrant. Like it or not, the likes of Commander Queeg protected us during World War II. Commander Queeg had an unblemished military record of 14 years before this, while those such as Lieutenants Greenwald and Keefer were out getting their educations so they could ultimately do him in.
The epilogue's testament to authority for its own sake is arbitrary as the play's dramatic consequence and questionable under any circumstances.
Has the corruption and abuse of power become more prevalent, or simply more publicized in the past 30 years? Mr. Wouk's final outburst of literary pontification is simply too facile to tack onto a play that has uncoiled so smoothly and devilishly up to that point.
John Rubinstein gives a fiercely intelligent performance as Lieutenant Greenwald. The actor exudes a seething sense of the young lawyer's internal turmoil. ''Call Captain Queeg,'' he says with an audible shudder, a break in his voice and a feeling of dread over ''the shyster tactics'' he is about to unleash - and revel in. The performance is more eloquent than the after words, for it convinces us of its own nuance, ambiguity and conflict.
Where Mr. Rubinstein absorbs character details, Michael Moriarty announces them. By contrast, Mr. Moriarty's Commander Queeg is a display of externalized neuroses that graduate into real psychoses.
A bagful of acting tics is sorted out with a considerable amount of technical virtuosity. In the end, an actor has displayed his technique, but a human life has not been crushed. Mr. Moriarty's manner of Commander Queeg is scary, and it reinforces one's aversion to such petty bureaucrats who taunt their subordinates. It does not fill in the human dimension that would be in the author's interests, however.
William Atherton is a bastion of stiff upper conservatism as the commander's defender. Considering the haste with which this cast was assembled -all the originally announced principals were replaced - the production is precise.
The supporting cast, to a man, is excellent. Gary Swanson is just right as Lieutenant Maryk. He is playing the pawn, but not the fool. J. Kenneth Campbell is a smoothly condescending Lieutenant Keefer. Jonathan Hogan is a straight-on, eloquent and persuasive anti-Queeg spokesman, and Brad Sullivan is tough and convincing on the pro-Queeg side. Leon B. Stevens and Geoffrey Horne are excellent as a pair of double-talking psychiatrists. Edward Alexander is amusingly flustered and ingenuous as a Signalman Third Class.
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New York Times Review 1986
PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS IN 'TRIPLECROSS'
By JOHN J. O'CONNOR
Published: March 17, 1986
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ONE of the few bright spots in ABC's ratings picture over the last year has been ''Moonlighting.'' So it is only business as usual to find the network searching for imitations. One painful contender can be found in ''Triplecross,'' the television movie at 9 this evening. Clearly designed as a pilot for a possible series, this Tisch-Avnet production strains desperately to be a light-hearted caper.
Like Maddie and Dave in ''Moonlighting,'' the three key characters in ''Triplecross'' are private investigators who have come to their calling in an unusual way. Several years earlier, they were police detectives. After solving one particularly stubborn case, the grateful and very rich benefactor made them independent millionaires.
Still working in tandem, they have devised a game to keep things interesting. If they smell foul play in what looks like an open-and-shut case, the three friends have found themselves a ''competition.'' They make bets with one another on who will get to the solution first. They might exchange information along the way, but there are no rules. Why are they reverting to such adolescent behavior? Well, we are told, it's to compete in something you're good at. And then, why not? Some people play tennis. Our heroes are: Elliot Taffle (Ted Wass), a kind of smooth wimp with a passion for baseball; Delia Langtree (Markie Post), a fun gal with a talent for magic tricks, and Cole Donovan (Gary Swanson), a bemused brawler with a tendency toward immediate action. Their standard fee for an investigation is $1. The real payoff, presumably, is in the excitement of the chase.
The problem is that, as written and directed by Dusty Kay, ''Triplecross'' adds up to a series of would-be comic routines in search of a purpose. When we first meet Elliot, for instance, he is watching a baseball game on television while a butler and maid serve hot dogs on a silver platter. That is the last we see of his house staff. In another scene, Elliot interviews a beautiful woman sunning herself in a bikini while he stands, fully clothed, in the middle of a swimming pool.
Meanwhile, the action stops periodically and the characters look directly into the camera to chat with the audience. The same device has been used on ''Moonlighting,'' reportedly as a last-minute effort to fill up time on a episode that ran short. There, it looked inspired. On ''Triplecross,'' it is an irritating contrivance. Life is unfair. Or more to the point, ''Moonlighting'' has Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis who, as a team, can get away with just about anything. ''Triplecross'' is stuck with amiable but unconvincing copies.
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New York Times Review 1988
April 26, 1988, Tuesday
Review/Theater: Ignoring the Holocaust, in Congress's Own Words
By WALTER GOODMAN
Some subjects, the Holocaust prominent among them, are so inherently powerful that they almost defy dramatization. After the photographs of ovens and bodies, the testimony of survivors, the Eichmann trial, Anne Frank's diary, Eli Wiesel's books, the movie ''Shoah'' and so much more, what can the playwright do to stir us afresh?
''Rosenfeld's War,'' Gus Weill's misleadingly titled documentary play now at the Mosaic Theater, works hard to arouse indignation at the failure of Congress in 1939 to pass a bill that would have admitted 20,000 German children to America. The indignation comes easily, but you don't need a play for that.
Six actors take 150 roles, which consist mainly of very brief descriptions, pleas and exhortations that amount to a survey course on the Nazi campaign against the Jews. The evocation of oppression from the Nuremberg Laws to Crystal Night cannot but move one, yet we sit through the uneven first half of this one-act play wondering where the familiar material is leading. What is Mr. Weill going to add to the grim record?
That turns out to be excerpts from Congressional hearings on the 1939 bill, with emphasis on the nativist anti-Semitism of the time. The rant of the flag-wrapped bigots is juxtaposed with an account of the voyage of the St. Louis, a ship that carried several hundred Jews from Germany to Cuba in 1939 only to find refuge barred to them. Once the hearings begin, the play becomes an exercise in speechifying, bad guys versus good ones, with not a human being in sight.
The hard-pressed director, Terry Knickerbocker, groups the actors and moves them around smoothly, with the aid of a few screens and tables. His main device for pumping drama into what is essentially a you-are-there radio show, however, is to raise the decibel level. Gary Swanson, who plays Goebbels, Joe E. Brown (one of the good witnesses) and a concentration camp victim, among many others, manages to put a touch of life into each characterization, but for the most part the actors are as impersonal as figures in a morality pageant. It is no fun having your lines written by the people who prepare testimony for Congressional committees.
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New York Times Review 1992
3 One-Acters Showcase Major Writers
August 16, 1992
In mourning, Tamara (Mira Sorvino), a model, wanders through the park. She strikes up a conversation with Leon (Gary Swanson), a poet resembling her close friend who died of AIDS. She is looking for redemption. Joyce Carol Oates, who wrote the two-character work, calls it "Greensleeves."
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New York Times article 1999
Savoring Inspiration Amid the Mundane
By NAOMI SERVISS (NYT)
November 14, 1999
A SANCTUARY for the soul. An endless source of inspiration.
Is this Long Island, the place so often vilified as a pop cultural wasteland of big hair and exaggerated accents?
It is indeed.
Just ask the Cold Spring Harbor rabbi, a black belt in aikido, whose Sabbath sermons are enriched each time his martial arts partner is dropped to a sweaty rubber mat in Glen Cove. Or the actor whose work is enlightened by dancing spirits of American Indians on Montauk...
The Peace of the Past
Gary Swanson, an actor who lives in Montauk, also has a love of spirituality and a respect for ancestral divinity. That explains his attachment to an American Indian burial ground in Montauk. His mother, who died last September, is buried there.
''There's a hill below the Montauk Manor, where in one sweeping view you can see the ocean, the lake, Gardiner's Bay and, on a clear day, Connecticut,'' he said. ''This spot has always meant a lot to me because I would come out here as a young kid and fantasize and dream, and it's still exactly like that."
Fifteen years ago there was an effort to turn the area into condominiums. But this was the high ground for the remains of the tribal chieftain, and the area had been an Indian burial ground for the last 6,000 years, he said.
Fortunately for Mr. Swanson, the condos were never built. ''You can feel a creative force here, filled with the spirit of the peace-loving Montauk Nation,'' he said.
The actor, seen in the recently released film ''The Bone Collector'' and often recognized as the man in the Irish Spring commercials, runs the Bunkhouse Theater Company in Montauk for fledgling and accomplished actors. A lifetime member of the Actors Studio, he was selected by Paul Newman to jump-start the Actors Studio's master's program at New School University.
Mr. Swanson traces much of his acting technique to his boyhood summers on Montauk. ''This hallowed ground has a palpable force felt by everyone I've brought here,'' he said. ''When my mother died last year, I decided this would be the perfect spot to memorialize her, since she loved this land as much as I did.''
Mr. Swanson has placed a bench there as a memorial to his mother. ''Sometimes I'm here at 2 a.m. and swear I could hear a thunderous herd of running deer,'' he said. ''It's an extraordinary place of sanctuary and peace.''
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