, the hit play at Studio 54, is writer and director Robert Ickes' modern - and riveting - version of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. Since that play was written around 425 B.C., I'm not spilling the beans by telling you it's about the King of Thebes (Oedipus) who unknowingly fulfills his destiny by killing his father and marrying his mother. When he discovers what he has done - what he can never "unsee" - he gouges out his eyes.
The corpse of a man killed trying to rob the place days earlier lies in the dirt nearby, covered by a hunk of cardboard. The local cops roll up before Armando can depart and harass him, presumably because he's driving a Beetle and has a beard. Armando keeps his cool and continues on his way, Chicago's "If You Leave Me Now" coming out his car's speakers as he arrives in the northeastern city of Recife,
The most important moment of "Last Dance at the Country Club" is not its final, Casablanca-inflected image but a brief, devastatingly telling exchange between Kate and Stuart. After learning that she has no idea what their budget would be like, or who they'd be reporting to, he turns down her offer to leave Embassy London to join her on her next adventure, as Special Envoy to Europe, saying, "I can be an ambassador, though. It's what I've been working toward for 20 years." Kate's quiet, wistful "Yeah, me, too" makes me want to cry.