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Boston Globe
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Hopeful messages about humanity abound in ‘Utopian Hotline' at the planetarium
Though there are a couple of turntables on the work station at the center of the planetarium's circular theater, the show does not focus on the contents of the 'Golden Record.' Instead, the four performers, dressed in matching olive-drab jumpsuits, take turns addressing the audience in hushed tones, through headphones. Advertisement The performance is structured as a thought experiment: What is time, and what is space? What does it mean to be lonely? And how could we make the world a better place? Audience members, who are encouraged to put on their headphones in the lobby before the show begins, are introduced to a series of unidentified voices. They're ordinary people who have left messages through the 'Utopian Hotline' (646-694-8050). The question: How do you imagine a more perfect future? Advertisement On the show's opening night at the museum, responses ranged from thoughts on reforming consumer culture and ending our addiction to guns to a longing for the day 'when phones are abolished and waffles are mandatory.' Once the audience is seated and the lights go down, the performers begin to move around the work station, which is equipped with playback devices and push-button telephones. When an actor picks up a handset and begins to speak, their voice is transmitted to the audience headphones. The effect is dreamy, like an inner voice speaking to your subconscious. Overhead, projected on the dome of the planetarium, we see kinetic images of space travel and an astronaut's view of our 'little blue dot.' Circles abound, from spinning records to rotary dials. During an actor's quiet monologue about sitting on her grandmother's porch, listening to old-time music, the audience is immersed in a bubble-like field of tall grass at sunset. At one point, an actor tees up the computer voice of the late physicist Stephen Hawking, who explains his theory of black holes. The projected images that accompany this are simple geometry – pairs of circles that represent the dance of charged particles, or human attraction. The anecdotes the actors relate seem to come from their own actual lives. One recalls leaving rocks in secret places for childhood friends 'in hopes of making meaning.' Another performer explains how her mother cherished nothing more than family dinner time, during which her children were forbidden to answer the phone. Advertisement 'Don't pick it up,' her mother would warn. 'It could be the future!' If time is linear, the performers suggest, then why are clocks round? It's a never-ending circle, one says. Everything is connected. Experimental electronic music – the kind the mind typically associates with the early days of computer development and space exploration – drifts behind the voices. In stretches, the actors speak their parts as if singing in the round. The women sometimes sing a cappella: haunting versions of 'Are You Lonesome Tonight?' and Hank Williams's 'I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry.' But even if we are truly alone in the universe, 'Utopian Hotline' will leave those who experience it with a welcome sense of tranquility and wonder. We're reminded that humans, like all things, are made of stardust: 'It takes a cosmos to make a human,' one of the performers says. Is anybody out there? The curious-minded may want to attend this otherworldly show to give it some thought. UTOPIAN HOTLINE By Theater Mitu. Presented by ArtsEmerson[cq] and the Museum of Science. Through May 18 at Museum of Science, 1 Science Park. Tickets $25 general, $17.50 museum members. James Sullivan can be reached at .
Boston Globe
02-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
As an actor, Val Kilmer was a real genius
Kilmer's versatility as an actor was readily evident from his first movie, 1984's 'Top Secret!' In my favorite movie from the guys who brought us 'Airplane!,' Kilmer plays Nick Rivers, a Conrad Birdie-style singer whose gig in East Germany somehow morphs into an espionage plot to save a kidnapped scientist. Advertisement This hilarious spoof of both Elvis movies and World War II films gave Kilmer the opportunity to sing, something he'd also do in the far more respectable Oliver Stone biopic of Jim Morrison, 'The Doors.' In that film, he was so convincing as Morrison some members of The Doors couldn't differentiate between the voices of Kilmer and the real Jim Morrison. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up But back to 'Top Secret!' for a second. Some of the gags are so inside baseball that, as a geeky 14-year-old wannabe cinephile, I was the only one laughing at the Loews Jersey theater where I saw it in ′84. No matter! Nick Rivers turns Elvis's hit song, 'Are You Lonesome Tonight?' into a commercial jingle, sings a Beach Boys-inspired number about 'Skeet Surfin'' in one of the funniest opening-credits sequences ever, and gets into a bar fight while underwater . Advertisement By showcasing Kilmer's singing, acting, and comedic-timing chops, 'Top Secret!' stands out as one of the great acting debuts. Kilmer played everyone from 'The Saint''s Simon Templar to Batman (in 1995's 'Batman Forever'), but Nick Rivers may be my favorite of his performances. It's a close match, though: I also loved Kilmer's performance in his next film, 1985's comedy classic 'Real Genius.' Billed as a teenage sex comedy despite its PG rating, this is the movie that should have been called 'Revenge of the Nerds.' Set at a Cal Tech-style school for geniuses, Kilmer plays Chris Knight, the wisecracking character every film in this genre requires. His job is to help his young protégé, Mitch (Gabe Jarret), ace his senior project and have some fun while doing it. Every line Kilmer utters is quotable here — 'I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said, '... I drank what?'' — and there's a lightness to his work that he never duplicated once he became a 'serious actor.' As silly as 'Real Genius' gets, there's a scene where director Martha Coolidge showcases the same kind of silent-acting greatness that Kilmer demonstrated decades later in 'Top Gun: Maverick.' When that senior project's laser prototype is sabotaged by the film's bespectacled villain, Kent, Chris realizes that his future is shot to hell. After kicking and punching the dormitory walls, he knocks over a freezer — and out rolls the means to his salvation, a frozen nitrogen cylinder he can use to quickly recreate his laser. Coolidge fixes her camera on Kilmer's face as the epiphany hits him, and she lets the reaction play out in real time. You can see the confidence return to his wounded eyes. Suddenly, he starts to giggle. Then he launches into a joyful dance before giving the world yet another Kilmer quotable line: 'It's a moral imperative to get revenge on Kent.' Advertisement Val Kilmer, left, and Robert Downey Jr. in "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang." John Bramley/Warner Brothers Pictures I could have spent my time here ruminating on Kilmer's excellent turn as Doc Holliday in the 1993 Kurt Russell western, 'Tombstone' ('I'm your huckleberry' is yet another great Kilmer line) or listing any number of scenes from 2005's Shane Black-directed darkly comic neo-noir, 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.' His work in David Mamet's 2004 thriller, 'Spartan,' is also worth mentioning. He's one of 10 million actors who played Elvis, in the dreadful 1993 Tony Scott-Quentin Tarantino collaboration, 'True Romance.' And the informative 2021 documentary 'Val' is required viewing for fans and newbies alike. Hell, I could have really gone rogue and mentioned 1996's absolutely terrible 'The Island of Dr. Moreau' remake he made with Marlon Brando. At least his flawless Brando imitation was daring. I'm sure plenty of other tributes will mention your favorites. I chose to focus on the two movies that put Kilmer on the map for me, the films I saw as a burgeoning cinephile that made me want to follow the prickly actor anywhere from Berlin to Gotham City. Watching Kilmer in movies was more than a pleasure. Like revenge on Kent, it's a moral imperative. Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe's film critic.
