Guess what’s come to town

by Marty and Martha Roth

Whether it’s spread across three rings in a big top, tucked into a shabby theater in Moscow, or mainstage in Minneapolis, the circus is irresistible. In this case, it’s the “Cirque du Soleil,” the 18-year old circus from Quebec. It can’t quite decide that it’s not a Las Vegas lounge act and it’s seen too many Andrew Lloyd Weber musicals—the glitz and glitter are just too new—but it’s still the real thing: aerialists, fire dancers (our personal favorite, Maria Silaeva), contortionists, tumblers, and of course clowns (both the transvestite “Mollies” and the tramp clowns). We miss the animals, although the animals don’t miss us—not the lions and bears so much as the tufted horses of the opening (tufted chorus boys just don’t make it) and the stately elephants. As circus purists, we miss the smell of manure. Still, Cirque’s “Alegría,” showing on the riverfront at Tenth Avenue until about Sept. 22, delighted us. The prices are steep but it’s a unique phenomenon.
The Guthrie’s mainstage offering, Arthur Miller’s “Resurrection Blues,” presents a set of variations on Fyodor Dostoievsky’s “Grand Inquisitor,” which tells the story of Christ’s brief return to earth during the Spanish Inquisition. Recognizing him, the Inquisitor arrests him as “the worst of heretics” because everything he represents is antagonistic to what the Church has come to stand for, and so, with all due respect, he must be crucified a second time. Miller’s second coming takes place in a contemporary Central American military dictatorship and the questing characters include the military dictator, a U.S. crew come to film the crucifixion for prime-time television, a member of the country’s ruling elite turned philosopher, and his revolutionary daughter. 
The play takes the form of an endless but entertaining Shavian dialectic as all the possibilities of another messianic visit are explored and overturned with jesuitical ingenuity. On the down side, some of the talk sounds like an old man’s whining, particularly the set speeches delivered by Miller stand-in Henri Schultz (played by Jeff Weiss). While Miller is very good in his presentation of the stink of history and social oppression, the play remains in a register of liberal existential angst because the devil’s position is left empty: the playwright includes no critique of U. S. policy in Latin America. The fact that we in the audience are all comfortably laughing means that the analysis is going where we want it to go—there are no uncomfortable surprises. Nevertheless, the play is well-constructed, well-written, and very well performed, especially by John Bedford Lloyd as the General, David Chandler as the TV producer and Bruce Bohne as an addict.
As for movies, a fascinating sleeper at the Parkway Theater, Daniel Cohen’s “Diamond Men,” tells an interesting story about the diamond trade in central Pennsylvania at midcentury. An older salesman on his way out (Robert Forster) must train in his replacement (Donnie Wahlberg). They are strongly contrasting characters, a stolid citizen and a randy, fast-talking hustler, and the film makes a sweet story out of their eventual bonding and Wahlberg’s attempts to get Forster laid. Martha admired the film even though she is always bored and unhappy with a story that reduces men’s friendships to having sex in the same brothel.
Steven Soderbergh’s “Full Frontal” marks a return on the part of this Hollywood darling to his early, murky, grainy, self-reflexive films (“Schizopolis,” “sex, lies, and videotapes”). Here his eye is trained on contemporary yuppie Hollywood, with a curious mixture of disdain and affection. For a while we wanted to dismiss the film, as many critics have, but it grew on us. “FF” is a loose shaggy dog of a movie, mostly shot in a video fuzz that signifies time past—or real time—or something. 
A number of small stories involve characters who will eventually attend a hotshot producer’s birthday party, and they alternate between a compelling domestic realism—David Hyde Pierce and Catherine Keener are particularly good as a disintegrating couple—and a scandalous ultra-realism—the cataclysmic orgasm of David Duchovny and an “off-off” production of a Hitler comedy starring the remarkable Nicky Katt. Full frontal is exactly what the film is not. 
About Miguel Arteta’s third film,”Good Girl,” we can only wonder what drew the director and his scriptwriter/actor partner, Michael White, to this story of a severely depressed young woman in a small Texas town who sleepwalks her way through an affair, a burglary and a shootout with the police. In the title role, Jennifer Aniston is consistently heavy-lidded. Somnambulism may be, as the title implies, the essence of a good girl; Aniston’s character hates her job and her marriage but takes no positive action, and all of her reactions turn out destructively. Rather than the promised critique of gendered behavior, however, “GG” seemed to us to be more about intellectual and emotional life at the point of mechanical failure. We’re not going to take it as proof that Jennifer Anniston can act; her performance may all have been an act of grim concentration.
In Clint Eastwood’s latest film, “Blood Work,” it is unclear whether the character of a recovering heart-transplant patient who moves slowly, and absent-mindedly clutches his chest with one hand, is called for by the story or is just where Eastwood is at these days in his 70s. Eastwood’s character, Terry McCaleb, an ex-FBI profiler, is called back to crime work (with possibly fatal consequences for him) by the sister of his organ donor. Who could resist such an invitation? As in his earlier crime films, Eastwood is careless about choosing supporting actors (although Jeff Daniels has an easy charm as a stoner loner). Beyond that, there’s nothing much wrong with the film, but there’s nothing much right with it either. 
As part of the Oak Street Theater’s Roman Polanski festival, we had a chance to see “Repulsion,” one of his best early horror films. Its portrait of Catherine Deneuve as a sex-obsessed, agoraphobic whack-job mesmerized us. Polanski may have a repulsive sensibility but his cinematic touch is deft; he clearly learned from Hitchcock, Cocteau, Fellini, and Dziga Vertov, and we’re once again grateful to the Oak Street for making such a ghastly little gem available.
The Fringe Festival is gone, but some of the best productions will turn up at various venues in the coming months. Of the few shows we were able to catch, “Shakespeare for Breakfast” and “The Worst Show in the Fringe” were surprisingly good but “Attack of the Killer What-Ifs” should be avoided at all costs. We note the Festival’s passing to remind you that this is a rich urban event and you want to mark your calendars for next year’s. “Worst Show,” however, will be appearing very shortly at the Bryant Lake Bowl. It’s a taut three-man comedy by Joseph Scrimshaw, who also appears in it, about an actor who responds to a terrible review by kidnapping the critic, and the lines whiz by like the play of a volleyball game. All three actors are fine but as the critic, Craig Johnson is especially impressive.