2. Charles is currently playing james again on Port Charles.I'm not sure how long he will be on screen.

Review by Carol Zerucha

Excellent film! I never saw the original, but this one totally kicks! Pierce Brosnan's a babe (almost in the category of too cute to live, but less cute this time!), and does a fine job. I'm not big on Rene Russo, but her performance was excellent, too! Lots of NY stuff, especially the Metropolitan Museum. This film has plenty of action and suspense and keeps you guessing right up to the end. Slick and clever beyond belief! Totally unpredictable! Totally wicked! And lots of steamy sex (soft to medium R) -- plenty of butt and boob stuff with Brosnan and Russo. I'd recommend this movie even if CK were *not* in it!

Now to CK! You have to wait about an hour and twenty/twenty-five minutes for his scene, but it's so worth it! We are so lucky he got to do this part after all! He does have billing up front, right before Faye Dunaway, so I was thrilled to see that. He has about 30 seconds to a minute of screen time, but he packs all his humor, charm and cheekiness all into that brief moment! Woo Hoo! Way too much fun! His beard looks slightly scruffy, and he is toying with a cigarette. He has an *extreme* close up, and he looks super! He totally steals the scene, in the best way possible. That's all I can tell you without giving the story away, or CK's role in it! I think this film will do very well, excellent word of mouth from the sneaks, so he's gonna get great exposure from this.

2. Christmas Voices
Review by Carolyn Williams from the 12/11/98 performance

This is a recap of the Christmas Voices, from my perspective.

It is very much a work in progress. It is amazing to see two such talented people bring something to life such as this. It was not really what I expected, which should not have surprised me at all.

Knowing the actor's fondness of research and digging out the interesting and unknown, I was fascinated by the way they drew and bonded pieces of poetry and prose together to form a mental image of Christmas through the last 300 years.

The crowd pleasers were Victoria taking on the persona of a young Irish girl with a serious drive to keep her Christmas Chocolates away from her sisters during the season. "The Best Christmas Present" was delivered with a twinkle of the eye and the accented inflection of a child hard at work. The audience broke into applause at the end of that piece.

Charles quieted the audience with the last major piece, a recitation of Dylan Thomas' "A Child's Christmas in Wales". A study again at play, as a child, you could see the snow on the fences and snowballs and felt a part of the family celebration with aunts, uncles and cousins. I can't wait to see what they do with this material on an album. My favorite parts were when they stopped and explained what was going on during that time or place in the author's life, and what it meant to the development of the celebration of Christmas over the centuries. After one piece Charles recited, Victoria asked if anyone understood it, announcing that she didn't the first time she heard it. We went back over the main body of the piece and she explained what she researched about the phrasing and content. I felt like I was back in an English Literature class, and I wanted to take notes and wanted more! "But professor, what if.... and then... but... "

I've listened to the Couplets album a couple of hundred times and seen them perform live only once, in Muscatine. But, this was different. Couplets was more of a refined project that captured you and stopped you cold. Christmas Voices was interesting, entertaining and more thought provoking than Couplets.

And it was wonderful to see the two actors together again doing what they love to do, sharing good stories and entertaining people. Because there was so much material in this show, I'm very glad I get to see it two more times.

3. "The Night Lives On"
audio book recording by Charles Keating

review by Carol Zerucha

Just in time for the September 1 release of the video of the film "Titanic" comes the release of the audiobook version of Walter Lord's (author of "A Night to Remember") "The Night Lives On", published by HarperAudio, and performed by Charles Keating. It is a non-fiction account of the sinking of the White Star ocean liner that we've all come to be so familiar with, especially lately with James Cameron's Oscar winning film and numerous television documentaries. It is a well-researched and up-to-date account of behind-the-scenes events, and some of the lesser-known stories connected to the tragedy.

Charles Keating is the *perfect* choice to perform this audiobook. With a non-fiction work of this type, there is a danger of the reader sounding dry and pedantic. There is none of that here. Keating makes you feel like he is telling you this story in front of a blazing fire on a cold winter's night, drawing you in with his velvety voice, like the bards of old. His delivery is soft and intimate, yet brings plenty of excitement to the occasionally dry statistics and other enumerated facts of the story. He even manages to work in a few dialects here and there when quoting from the accounts of survivors and witnesses! An excellent performance that does justice to the material and makes it even more exciting than reading the book alone.