Customer Reviews

The Shady Hill Kidnapping (Broadway Theatre Archive) [VHS]

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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