- Gangsters and cartoons
by Marty & Martha Roth
September, 2001, was not a good month for urban amusements.
The horror of the suicide bombings in New York and Washington, D.C.,
dulled our appetites for diversion; real life became more intense and absorbing although
our lives were not directly touched by the attacks, except to the extent that we live in
this country. Like our readers, we pray for truth and reconciliation.
Still, there was a column to be written. We look forward eagerly to new
productions by Frank Theater and are usually not disappointed–certainly not by the
recent opening of Bertolt Brecht’s “The Resistible Rise of Arturo
Ui,”playing for much of October in a large and engaging studio arts warehouse at
Metropolitan State College.
Under Wendy Knox’s direction this 60-year-old play crackles with
energy. She has framed it as a political cartoon, a puppet-play for muddle-headed adults
(Brecht would approve). Clown-faced cast members zip through their paces in high style.
“Arturo Ui” is a thinly veiled allegory of Hitler’s rise
to power in the 1930s. Brecht sets the action among gangsters in a bloated and corrupt
Chicago who move in on the city’s small vegetable sellers, taking over the
Cauliflower Trust and eventually controlling both the big city and neighboring Cicero.
Brecht–a hard-minded anti-capitalist with no positive program for the hopeless plight
of humanity–lifts even his own flimsy veil; actors break from their roles to announce
the historical parallels between the produce plot and the rise to power of National
Socialism in Germany and Vienna.
Like all of Brecht’s political commentary, “Arturo Ui”
is obvious and strident, a Punch-and-Judy version of contemporary crisis, but no less
persuasive or telling for all of its exaggeration.
Why then, we wondered, had its impact subsided since we last saw it at
the Guthrie in 1968? What has changed in 35 years? Well, obviously, we have, but also the
face of evil in our time runs so much more to faceless corporate bureaucrats than to Al
Capone or Adolf Hitler. The gangster just doesn’t work as well any more as an
analogue for the evil of history. Or it just means that, contrary to the platitudes of
English professors, wonderful works of art grow old and lose their edge. This is just as
it should be, and we revere them anyway.
Particularly noteworthy are Maria Asp as Giri (Goering?), Tom
Sherohman, who plays the political boss Old Dogsborough (von Hindenberg?), Grant Richey as
Arturo’s comrade Roma (Ernst Roehm), and Bernadette Sullivan herself as Arturo,
although she is not volcanic enough in her portrayal, spending too much time in sullen
poses.
Theater Gallery’s staging of “Archy and Mehitabel,” a
charming minor masterpiece of American literature, is also a fine piece of theater that
pairs wonderfully with “Arturo” as a blitzkreig of cartoon and cabaret savagery.
Archy, as anyone who writes on the topic delights in communicating, is
a free-verse poet who has returned to the world in the body of a “cock-er-oach.”
Mehitabel is an alley cat who claims to have been the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra in one of
her former lives. Archy has arrived at a state of accommodation with the real-life writer,
Chicago newspaperman Don Marquis. Marquis leaves scraps of food and a clean sheet of paper
in his typewriter every night, Archy hops on the keys with all his might, and Marquis and
the world are rewarded with a free-verse poem.
Archy and his fellow insects are philosophers and social commentators,
roles forced upon them by their lowly status at the receiving end of casual violence. But
“a biting satire about the poor and under-privileged” it ain’t, despite
Theater Gallery’s press release, nor is it the Broadway musical. Paul Hervig as Archy
gives the show its pace and fierce comic energy; Kym Longhi is a good Mehitabel,
especially when she arches her back and growls provocatively, and the supporting players
and live musicians all do well. One of the strengths of “Archy & Mehitabel”
is the original music by Marc Doty.
Several cast members come from dance theater and the movement of the
piece is stunning–especially the insect ballets involving cockroaches, spiders and
moths. The cockroaches dominate the stage, scurrying about to touch and devour anything
edible and running for cover at the least noise. Actually, the production is so high on
invention and talent that it was a shame that all of this joy was undermined by the undue
length of the second half. Several of the unrelated individual segments
(“Archy’s Extraterrestrial Fans” certainly) could be easily cut.
Most films continue to be a burden for your faithful reviewers to bear.
A bright exception this month was Mel Smith’s “High Heels and Low Lifes,”
showcasing a delicious new American comic actor, Mary McCormack, whose rubber face and
body reminded us of Martha Raye.
The story is trifling: Minnie Driver’s soon to be ex-boyfriend
spends all his time composing soundscapes, musical pieces made up of intercepted phone
conversations. After she kicks him out, Driver and her buddy McCormack discover a phone
call made by the lookout for a big London robbery. The two women decide to cash in. The
ensuing duel between the two daffy, skittery dames and an assorted set of cockney hard
boys (with lack of assistance from a couple of bumbling coppers) grows in violence and
takes on the shape and contours of a Roadrunner cartoon. Smith also made one of our
favorite British comedies, “The Tall Guy.”
By contrast, “Greenfingers,” another British comedy, pleasant
enough for watching, had a bit too much of that self-appointed smirking parochialism that
marks recent British comedy. It comes out of the same mold as “Brassed Off,”
“The Full Monty,” and “Blow Dry”: films about defeated men who
shoulder their crumbling masculinity with ever-growing relish and apply it to some humble
occupation at which they will excel and will give their life shape and meaning as England
falls apart around them. Clive Owen, last seen in “Croupier” as the sexy, silent
title character, extends his range here though he’s still silent, still sexy, and
Helen Mirren is, as always, a joy.
Two of our films came from the Hanif Kureishi series shown at the
Walker Art Center: “Sammy and Rosie Get Laid” and “The Buddha of
Suburbia.” The first, directed by Stephen Frears, we remembered with pleasure as a
cheeky, multiracial look into sexual and political life in London under the Thatcher
regime, and the second we hadn’t seen at all. A four-hour series originally made for
BBC-TV, and directed by Roger Michell, “Buddha” turned out to be a jaunty,
semi-autobiographical soap opera, fascinating for its subtle weaving of South Asian and
British characters but a bit slow, hesitant and lacking any major modality.
Another two films came from a recent bike trip in the Rochester/
Winona/ La Crosse area, where local cineplexes offered scant fare. “American
Outlaws” was the nth retelling of the Western foundation myth of the James and the
Younger boys. It was watchable, and notable only for having an adorable Jesse (Colin
Farrell), although Timothy Dalton gave a remarkably crusty performance as the arch-cop
Alan Pinkerton.
“The Princess Diaries” reminded us of how mindless most
Disney comedies are, of how they gidget through a complex world and turn it to comedy only
by flagrantly ignoring so much about it.
Finally, almost running off the page (we hope), is Woody Allen’s
latest, “The Curse of the Jade Scorpion,” so bad even Helen Hunt can’t lift
it out of its slump– so bad we couldn’t even sleep through it. For those who
remember the younger Allen’s work with pleasure, this current imposter is the curse
the film points to. He seems intent on dragging us down with him into a cranky,
increasingly grotesque old age while he worships every tick of his failing energy.
