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| Urban Amusements |
| by Marty & Martha Roth Adios Minnesota. Apologies to our readers for a skimpy column, but we had to leave town in mid-December to see an only grandchild who is living in a Mayan village in the Yucatan. As is often the case, many of the productions we review have already closed (or will have by the time you read this), tucked away with last year’s memories, good or bad. Cymbeline is one of Shakespeare’s later plays, and a weird one at that. Even though its plot grows tendrils all over the place like a badly pruned creeper, Ten Thousand Things Theater Company has embraced this text (probably corrupt) and wrestled it into shape. Director Michelle Hemsley and the actors who work with her perform for audiences who aren’t theatrically sophisticated: inmates of prisons, workhouses, shelters, and other nontraditional venues. Paradoxically the simplicity of their work brings with it a high degree of excellence. If you’ve ever seen Ten Thousand Things you know that they work on a bare floor, barely transformed by a few pieces of wood and metal. In Cymbeline the playing space becomes a king’s court, a battlefield, a cavern, or a lady’s boudoir. All audiences love to watch actors deftly transform a palace archway into a four-poster bed or a mountain cave. The action is lusty and bloody, and if the play has a lesson, it’s about trusting those you love. Some of the language crackles, as when one character says, “The thanks I give is, that I am poor of thanks, and cannot spare them,” or another describes a friend as someone who has “less without and more within.” Much of the dialogue, however, is clouded in obscurity. We won’t begin to summarize this thick stew of romance, mistaken identity, treachery, cruelty, and lovely sounds that Hensley has cooked up with the help of her magnificent actors and musicians. It’s easy to see why performers relish the challenge of working for her. Ten Thousand Things works without a net: when the costumes are only a few neutral-colored rags and the set consists of breakaway pipes, theatrical magic must come from the actors’ faces, bodies, and voices alone. Only the best can compel the kind of attention that makes an audience care what happens to these absurd characters who speak archaically and carry metal curtain rods as though they were swords. They bring it off in epic style, giving their asides to the audience and whooping convincingly as they wage war inside a shabby room. As in other late Shakespeare plays, the tone of Cymbeline wobbles from tragedy to comedy of manners to rude farce. Ten Thousand Things has cut away a lot of murky text, and the cast zips through the exposition and lingers on the sexy, funny, or gory bits. Musicians Mike Croswell and Tom Adams use a number of simple instruments for their excellent accompaniment to the shifting moods of this bizarre play. Steve Hendrickson and Norah Long stand out from a fine cast, as does Terry Hempleman’s ferocity in the battle scenes. There’s a brief schedule of theatrical bookings yet to come. For information about remaining performances, call Ten Thousand Things at (612) 724-4494. You Can Count on Me, writer-director Ken Lonergan’s first film, reflects credit on a long system of support for independents up to and including Sundance, where this film tied for a Grand Jury prize. You Can Count on Me stars Laura Linney as Sam, a single mother who alternates between independent womanhood and rash plunges into any nearby emotional abyss, and Mark Ruffalo as Terry, her younger brother who has never quite figured out the whole thing about life, jobs, love, or human relationships. Linney is the stalwart presence that holds the film together. Ruffalo is more special and eccentric: his character is indelible even if his performance wobbles slightly; we’ve all known charming screw-ups like him. Located in upper New York state and shot in a mountain community, You Can Count on Me also enjoys the services of Matthew Broderick, as Sam’s stuffy and exploitive boss, and Gaby Hoffmann in a small but delicious role as a rebellious co-worker. It’s not a perfect film but better than any we’ve seen in a while. Brother and sister were orphaned early and cling to their family patterns of dependence and limit-testing. Terry comes to visit and introduces his young nephew Rudy (Rory Caulkin) to some unsavory facts of life. Everybody has perfectly credible trouble managing their feelings, and Lonergan’s good humor and intelligence turn a story about ordinary misfortune into a surprising entertainment. The film is not a love story; in fact, all such relationships are broken, stalled or ugly. It draws its power from an equally deep and universal source of strength—the power of siblings to attract, repel, and manipulate one another. We can’t think of another story that has done this other story as well. Sam and Terry love one another deeply, but cannot be together for long. One of the entries in this year’s University Film Society’s Jewish Film Festival was an energetic and effective comedy about middle-class Jewish life in Paris, Dad is Running, by Dante Desarthe. Some of the charm of the film for us was the uncanny reflection of middle-class American Jewish life provided by the social and religious celebrations that the film is threaded through (one circumcision, one bar mitzvah), and when Grandma spoke yiddish, she could be anywhere. Clément Sibony plays Jonas, a young and tentative new father. For his son’s circumcision, the family decides to follow the ritual practices of the (southern) Sephardic Jews according to which the foreskin must be buried within three days. That evening, with the precious article securely tucked in a napkin in his pocket, he works a bar mitzvah celebration with his friend Paco (Isaac Sharry) as a wedding singer team. The mother of the bar mitsvah boy is an old high school teacher who initiated him sexually. She is bored by her marriage to a pudgy businessman, gets a little drunk, and comes on to him. The businessman who seems to be a bit of a mobster wants his revenge. Off they go—Jonah frantically looking for a bit of space and enough time to perform the ceremony; mobster’s henchmen frantically looking for Jonas—into a Paris preparing to celebrate a visit by the Pope. Thousands of pilgrims have descended on the city and they carry Jonas off, hoping for a lucky conversion. The film is funny in a screwball way and, coming from the French, it is even more delicious. The foreskin, fountain pen, and wafer of the film, however, is an electrifying comic performance by Rona Hartner as a Romanian Catholic who must get to meet the Pope. We remember her with great admiration from a previous role as a Romanian gypsy in another wonderful French film entitled Gadjo Dilo. Finally, for hard-core Arnold devotees (like Marty), 6th Day is definitely seeable! It has a plot that lasts almost as long as the movie and a couple of worthy action scenes. Like the older Fred Astaire, Arnold masks his aging body quite successfully. The movie has been likened to Total Recall, one of his very best, and indeed the comparison holds. The film gets a little bit carried away with cloning, its main idea, and that makes it go cartoonish from time to time. But definitely seeable. |
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