A season of abundance

April brought many good things, among them comedy and dance. Shawn McConneloug (and Her Orchestra)’s new show, “Stand on Your Man,” and Irving Berlin’s Marx Brothers musical, “Cocoanuts,” jointly produced by Illusion Theater and Actors Theater of St. Paul, amused and delighted us.

McConneloug works off a base of popular culture, and for this show she turned to American Western images from film, art and ballet (think Robbins and DeMille). The new show is excellent but perhaps not as full of surprises as “Palace of Dreams,” the previous vaudeville, where she drew on all of American popular film. Her dance ideas are still exciting: she presents both dance and its undoing, its critique—performance in which a fumble or a collapse is as satisfying as an elegantly executed turn. Falling and sprawling—especially in classic Western garb—are as important as any dance moves. We also enjoyed her trademark gender mixing: young women taking male roughneck positions, young men prancing with dainty coyness. Stand was set against the plaintive wail of traditional Western balladry, nicely rendered by Audra Tracy and Jonathan Niel.

We went to the resurrection of the Marx Brothers hoping we would get the original Broadway show rather than the 1929 film, and we did. As much as the comic mayhem, the production features Berlin numbers choreographed in a lively, economical manner by Brian Sostek and Megan McClellan. Michael Robins has done a fine job of directing, and someone, probably George S. Kaufman, the original writer, has solved the perennial problem of the second act—throw a party, throw three parties. As for the roles originally taken by the Marx Brothers themselves, we must say we enjoyed the comic performances of Jim Cunningham (Groucho), Kevin Dutcher (Chico), and Michael Paul Levin (Harpo) very much ,both for what they were and for what they reminded us of.

The 2003 International Film Festival has come and gone, and as always we saw far too few films considering how much we revere this institution and its director, Al Milgrom, but they were mostly good ones. Also, it allowed us to discover the Crown Block E theaters where you can get up to three hours’ free parking if you see a film. “Ali Zaoua, Prince of the Streets,” a Moroccan film directed by Nabil Ayouch, focuses on a group of homeless street boys (the topic of this century), with a cold eye and a warm heart. A Jewish gangster comedy set in British Columbia, “The Burial Society” (Nicholas Racz), concerns a nebbish accountant (Rob LaBelle) who rips off the Canadian Jewish mafia and then tries to launder his money through a Chevrah, an Orthodox burial society—three ancient men (Jan Rubes, Allan Rich, and Bill Meilen) who wash the corpses and prepare them for the next world. The intricate story is both charming and suspenseful, freshly photographed and skillfully told.

A Russian adventure fantasy, “The War” (directed by Aleksei Balabanov), teams up a demobilized Russian soldier and a touring British actor, kidnapped by Chechens. The pair are freed by their captors to raise an enormous ransom for the release of another actor, a woman, who is left behind. Improbable and thoroughly unsentimental, “The War” features the last screen appearance of the gifted actor-director Sergei Bodrov, director of 2001’s “Sisters,” who was killed with his crew in an avalanche while filming during the summer of 2002.

A Mauritanian film, “Waiting for Happiness” (Abderrahmane Sissako), could have been titled “Waiting for Anything.” The characters and plot segments never intersect to become a story, as if the desert has too great a hold on human life. But we were impressed with its beauty and the originality of the director’s eye. Not so rewarding was a costume drama, “Revenge,” the film version of a classic 19th-century Polish farce adapted for the screen by the great Andrzej Wajda and starring Roman Polanski as a braggart captain entrusted with matchmaking and other scoundrelly tasks. Although played with gusto, it was a very conventional comedy.

The documentary “Only the Strong Survive,” from the reliable team of Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker, is a treat for anyone with an interest in the great singers of Memphis soul: Rufus Thomas, his daughter Carla, Wilson Pickett, Sam Moore (surviving half of Sam & Dave), the Chi-Lites, Mary Wilson, Ann Truitt, and others. “Reno:Rebel without a Pause” is an extraordinary performance film from director Nancy Savoca. Consisting entirely of comedian Reno’s cabaret act, put together in the days following the attack on the World Trade Center, it reveals Reno’s debt to Lenny Bruce as well as her startling originality. A third documentary, “Havana Mi Amor,” was less successful. Setting out as an affectionate exploration of present-day life and love in Cuba’s capital, it ended by being a mordant reflection on Cuban women’s disappointment. We were hoping at least for some good footage of the city, but found too much amor and not enough Havana.

Another fine film that will soon get its own Twin Cities release is “Sweet Sixteen” by Ken Loach, a master filmmaker who champions social honesty and political realism. Again street boys, in Glasgow this time: Liam, a loving sociopath who dreams wholesome dreams of family, and his wacko buddy Pinball. Liam’s dreams of course shatter on him and lead to destruction. The film, a collaboration with screenwriter Paul Laverty, may lack the energy and focus of Loach at his best, but it’s excellent in its own way.

Stop-flash. The new film “Confidence” is quite an anomaly: a mainstream movie that actually does what mainstream movies dream of doing—entertaining and exciting. If you’ve been waiting for a film that’s almost as good as you want it to be, the story of a multiple grift, don’t rent “The Sting” for the tenth time, just see this film, expertly directed by James Foley and written by Doug Jung (who also wrote a fast-paced cable series called “Breaking News”). The cast is excellent, particularly Edward Burns as the grifter-in-chief who models cool for the 21st century and Dustin Hoffman who returns to his Ratso Rizzo persona but this time as a crime boss. It may be a little smart-alecky for your tastes, and it’s just a bit fudgey at its center—but you have to look fast to catch that.

We saw “Spirited Away,” although we usually get a far-away comic-book feel from animated films, but this one got such good reviews we thought we’d take a chance. There is some engaging visual fantasy but mostly this story of a young girl trapped in a glutton’s paradise and freakshow brothel was a little too generic for our tastes (despite its obvious debt to Alice in Wonderland). In a world where anything can transpose into anything else, continual metamorphosis can be boring.

Chris Rock’s “Head of State,” the film where Chris uses jive talk and black honesty to win the presidency for the oppressed and underrepresented, is mostly a record of missed comic opportunities by Rock and co-star Bernie Mac. Like Adam Sandler’s “Mr. Deeds,” it’s another contemporary comic discovering Frank Capra’s America in a glow of muddle-headed misapprehension. The film is so tame and lackluster we can only speculate that Rock ran scared of the Patriot Act.

Once in a great while, live theater delivers on its promise and gets inside the head and heart of even hardened reviewers. Joe Dowling’s production of “Three Sisters” at the Guthrie pulls off this magic, with brilliant ensemble playing and a generous directorial conception. Dowling seems to understand that in much of Chekhov, nothing is being said for the first time; characters quote themselves and each other, use tags of poetry and song to indicate their feelings, and convey the claustrophobia of a dying class.

Kathryn Meisle makes a beautiful, tragic Masha, and Julie Briskman and Meghan Wolf as her sisters, Olga and Irina, equally compel belief and sympathy. Richard Iglewski turns Kulygin, Masha’s husband, from a pompous buffoon to a gentle hero; Bill McCallum gives the ruffian Solyony a sympathetic reading; and Stephen Yoakum does a beautiful job with Chebutykin, the drunken doctor (notice how Chekhov usually inserts an impaired physician?).