Cheap Leonard Bernstein: Trouble in Tahiti (DVD) (Tom Cairns) Price

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Customer Reviews of Leonard Bernstein: Trouble in Tahiti

A brilliant performance of Bernstein's greatest theater work
I'll lay my cards on the table immediately: I think West Side Story, as affecting as it often is, is uneven and ultimately overrated. On The Town is better because Comden and Green were more mature and skilled lyricists in their late twenties than Stephen Sondheim was in his. Candide remains intermittently brilliant but somehow unfinished, rather like Tennessee William's Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, with all of its alternate endings.
All this to say that Trouble In Tahiti is a very great one-act opera and one of a handful of works of its time that asks unanswerable questions. Now, some 50 years after its creation, Trouble In Tahiti is a coruscating indictment of "The American Dream," decades ahead of its time and still appallingly relevant.
It is often entertaining, but never cheap or facile. And its ending offers not a tidy ideological package, gift-wrapped and beribboned (as West Side Story does), but a deeply disturbing question: if you've been paying attention at all, you'll find yourself asking, "Am I happy, or merely contented?"
Bernstein's masterpiece receives a performance worthy of it in this great film. Some flashy elements - too many establishing shots of Manhattan, for example - do not really detract from the fine performances of the two principals, the excellent work of the jazzy trio that serves as a Greek chorus, and the ultimate message that one can only hope, never assume.
Miss this one at your soul's peril!