The Shady Hill Kidnapping (Broadway Theatre Archive)
by Paul Bogart
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Dorothy Blackburn, Katharine Balfour, Paul Dooley, Ralph Clanton, Robert HittDirector: Paul Bogart
Brand: Kultur
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 59 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-01-28
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Kultur Video
Movie Reviews of The Shady Hill Kidnapping (Broadway Theatre Archive)
Movie Review: Not amusing, not on-stage theatre performance, not interesting!
Summary: 2 Stars
The 1982 production of John Cheever's The Shady Hill Kidnapping is NOT what I prefer to see of a theatre stage performance. I want to view and experience the exact theatre performance with a few different stage scenes. It needs to look like a copy of theatre performance, not turning into some pathetic movie get-up.
One of the most recognized faces in Shady Hill Kidnapping is Polly Holliday, (the Kiss-My-Grits Lady). Celeste Holm stars in ..... ok, this is really bizarre for a theatre performance, commercial for "Elixircol" a mocking of a drug that may save the lonely, dejected, depressed, older, nameless, and unnoticed people. The bottle comes in regular and supersize. These "commercials" are interspersed within the theatre/movie production. Highly unusual.
So, the story is an elderly couple have their two adult children at home, and one child who was mistakenly "kidnapped". The child was actually with a neighbor lady. But, the grown son goes to report the child, is ignored and decided to write his own ransom note to get attention for the lost kid. The town then gets involved in raising money.
Maybe in John Cheever's day, this may have been humorous, but I got nothing out of it...nothing funny, nothing amusing, nothing interesting....rather boring, and with those ridiculous commercials. This reminds me of another John Cheever play that had that some homey-town feeling, and look to it, and was equally unamusing, John Cheever's The Sorrows of Gin (Broadway Theatre Archive)......Rizzo
Summary of The Shady Hill Kidnapping (Broadway Theatre Archive)
In this finely crafted comedy of errors, the life of upper-middle-class suburbanites is portrayed with humor and poignancy. John Cheever's The Shady Hill Kidnapping revolves around the alleged abduction of young Toby Wooster; an event that jolts the complacent and well-fed suburb of Shady Hill into surprising action. A fake kidnappers? note, a community fundraising campaign to raise the ransom money, a police stakeout at the railroad station, and George Wooster?s reluctant decision to build the town?s 34th kidney-shaped swimming pool are some of the outlandish events found in this "hilarious and touching satire" (Time Magazine). A superb cast includes Emmy®-winners George Grizzard (Wonder Boys) and Polly Holliday ("Alice") and Oscar®-winner Celeste Holm (All About Eve).