In parts, the work is marvelous, particularly toward the end when he creates ripples of canonic movement across chairs and builds momentum towards a sudden, surprising close.
Yet the production, part of the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theater, is never less than compelling, particularly because it is marvelous looking.
The impinging of real-life problems on the cultivated fiction onstage seemed particularly apt because this marvelous production, directed by Lear deBessonet and starring the magnetic Taylor Mac, ranks among the best — and most authentic-feeling — Brecht productions I've seen.
Just a few inches from poaching is steaming, which is a marvelous way (particularly using Chinese aromatics) to cook, say, snapper.
Nowadays, it's invariably taken as a digestivo after meals, though it can be marvelous in cocktails (I particularly like to jury-rig a cognac-based sidecar with it) and has its uses in the kitchen as well.
And what marvelous characters she gives us, particularly in LuLing's central narrative, with its Dickensian gallery of villains, healers, scholars and lovers.
But I've been particularly disappointed by Sue Sylvester (played by the marvelous Jane Lynch) who -- other than a very moving episode where her Downs Syndrome sister dies -- has become a sort of sinister, freak show maniac over time.
Curt Gowdy bequeathed his passion, particularly flyfishing, to his sons Trevor and Curt Jr. on the marvelous trout streams of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana.
Although there's plenty of comedy in the story line, particularly when the hyperactive errand boy Arpad Novack (a marvelous Jacob Kemp) is flailing about trying to win favor, "Parfumerie" contains some stark business.
