Star Tribune from Minneapolis, Minnesota • Page 42

SaturdayOctober 61990Star Tribune 2E Cutler magnificent in 1 4 part role in 'Drinking in America' A review sian's scenes and is particularly effective when Cutler lip-syncs a heavy metal number to the screams of a rapt audience. It's America's version of a Nuremberg rally. Set designer Steven Krahnke sets the tone of the production with a metallic collage of pipes, ramps and furniture that separately, and taken together, say STERILE. And that is what Bogosian and Cutler create, a world of empty people, floundering toward death. ROD GOEBEL i I I r-, i Way Staff Photo by Rita Reed J.C.

Cutler deftly captures the 14 characters in Eric Bogosian's "Drinking in America" at the Cricket Theatre. gy Peter VaughanStaff Writer Play and performance are inseparable in Eric Bogosian's "Drinking In America" starring J. C. Cutler at the Cricket Theatre. You can't really talk about one without talking about the other.

Bogosian, the reptilian Barry Champlain in the film "Talk Radio," wrote 'Drinking In America" as a performance piece for himself. It certainly provided him with a vast range. The play consists of 14 monologues by characters as widely separated as a stumbling, homeless drunk to a self-satisfied yuppie riding out the storm in suburban comfort. Though "Drinking In America" has been staged at other regional theaters, the Cricket is the first to ask pne actor to re-create all of Bogosian's creations. Cutler does it magnificently.

This is the virtuoso performance of the year. Cutler deftly captures each new character, easing the audience with him as he moves from one floundering, self-deluded American man to the next. He is completely in touch with the forlorn figures he finds on Bogosian's bleak social landscape. There's no question that Bogosian reveals a world as sterile as the face of the moon. With few excep- tions, his characters are pathetic creatures who don't know who they are and in their struggle to fill the void within, they turn to drugs, booze, sex, violence, power and, above all, self-delusion.

From a black street person fantasizing about life in the fast-lane to a calculating tel-evangelist selling love of Kids will use By Tim Harlow Staff Writer Downtown St. Paul will be transformed into a giant playground during the second Kids' Day celebration today and Sunday in St. Paul. Sponsored by the St. Paul Department of Planning and Economic Development, the 1990 St.

Paul Kids' Day Initiative and the St. Paul Sister Cities Executive Committees, the event is designed to promote togetherness among families and to provide new opportunities for kids, said Heidi Buss, special events coordinator for St. Paul. "We're providing free things for kids to do and trying to give them a taste of what types of opportu God through hate of minorities, Bogosian's characters are lost souls. Some know there is something missing.

A lonely ceramic tile salesman recognizes his pain but stills it with paid sex. A solitary drunk admits he has always been a drunk and will never be anything more. Others are completely blind. A suc Spiritual Flights oils monotypes Reception for the artist Thursday, October p.m. Exhibition continues through October 25, 1990 aOO CG.

REIN GALLERIES CILIIl Specialists in Fine Art Sales Leasing 3523 West 70th Street Edina, MN 55435 (612) 927-4331 DENVER HOUSTON MINNEAPOLIS ST. PAUL SANTA FE SCOTTSDALE downtown St. Paul as playground cessful yuppie extols the happiness of his existence but you know that the creature comforts only shield inner fears. And in the play's most frightening scene, a young, white construction worker delivers a harrowing account of a night of drugs, booze and violence that is totally without any sense of moral con- reation Center, 685 W. Minnehaha Av.

A talent show will be held at 3 p.m. at Hayden Heights Recreation Center, 1965 Hoyt Av. E. Other activities will be held at schools, libraries, fire stations and recreation centers throughout the city. Sunday The World is a Rainbow Fest, a celebration of children of different cultures, will be held all day at Harriet Island.

It will include dancers, musicians, crafts, art exhibits, folk tales and food. Representatives of the Minnesota Twins will conduct a clinic for children ages 6 to 9 from 1 to 2:30 Discount Gallery FINE ART Uniques and Limited Edition Prints Up to 80 Off APACHE PLAZA SHOPPING CENTER 3800 Silver Lake Rd. Minneapolis 781-2825 t3 1 1 (SSh 0EBt (33' Try it with purchase I inTAUlM UPTOWN it A'. 1 I Drinking in America Who: Cricket Theatre. Directed by William Partlan.

Starring J.C. Cutler. Where: 1407 Minneapolis. Nicollet Av. When: Through Oct.

20. Tickets: 871-3763. Review: J.C. Cutler gives a magnificent performance as he portrays 14 characters in Eric Bogosian's often funny, oflen harrowing, look at self-deluded men trying to fill the voids within them. This is a fine production of an excellent play.

sciousness. It's "wilding" for the beer-and-a-bump crowd and it's devastating in its mindlessness. Bogosian may not directly judge these characters, but the cumulative impact of his canvas is the now trendy cry, "get a life." And with all the addictions and empty lives he visits, he doesn't even get to sports, television and work. The Cricket's production, provocatively staged by artistic director William Partlan, teems with the energy and intensity of a rock 'n' roll concert. Tina Charney's lighting design alternatively pulses with color and glare and diminishes to finely etched pinpricks focused on a lonely figure.

James Scott Greeney's sound design cpmplements the emotional highs and lows of Bogo p.m. on the State Capitol Mall. The Junior Drill Team will perform at 1 p.m. on Harriet Island, and free horseback rides will be available from 2 to 5 p.m. An entertainment fair will be held from 1 to 5 p.m.

on the State Capitol Mall. It will include a performance by the Rainbow Children's Theater Company, kite flying, demonstrations by the St. Paul Police Department's K-9 dog team, science exhibits and other activities. For more information, call the Kids' Day hot line, 298-4431, between 10 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.

Saturday and Sunday. Mayberry seem more and more like a Utopian dream. An air of unreality is the essential ingredient of a cult show. Despite its reputation for escapism, prime-, time TV is relentlessly literal and "reality-based." That's not necessarily bad. Some of the most artful series ever produced for the medium, among them "thirtysometh-ing," "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "Gunsmoke," have been earnestly literal.

But they will never be cult shows. Cult shows emerge because those who want something less literal, something more fanciful, maybe a little weird, have spent most of the history of TV in a state of malnour-ishment. On those rare occasions when the powers-that-be toss these viewers a bone a "Star Trek" or a "Twin Peaks" they tend to bite hard. That's not to say Trekkers and Beasties and Peaks Freaks are interchangeable. But their impulse their need for something different, or at least their need to believe they're above and beyond the "mass" taste is the same.

"Twin Peaks" initially offered something unusual and refreshing in series TV. It had an expressive, evocative cinematic quality that heightened the oddity of the characters and the surrealness of a "town" the viewer never really saw because it existed only in allusive bits and pieces. After fewer than 10 episodes, the show looks like a more conventional dramatic series, even when Lynch is directing; there doesn't seem to be much beyond the characters' quirks except more quirks. The fascination the series holds is largely a function of the little shocks it can deliver. But how many times can Audrey Horn tie a knot in a cherry stem with her tongue? At this point, half the people who tuned in to the "Twin Peaks" premiere last spring don't care who killed Laura Palmer, who shot Agent Cooper or whether Waldo the mynah bird will reappear in a future episode as his lookalike cousin.

Peaks Freaks probably will have another question to ponder soon: CULT: Peaks Freaks may wonder who'll buy reruns Continued from page 1E was "slightly bent," but because it, too, achieved cult status almost overnight Most TV-show cults have been years abuilding. Take the original "Twilight Zone," mm 9 GEB0 GEKfc it 1M otally interactive video the likes of which you've never seen in Minneapolis. A live, video recording studio puts your creativity to the test. Combine music, special effects and "Hollywood movie magic' to star in your own mini-movie. solo, or in a group.

$25 for a 5-minute video, or FREE final nities are out there," said Buss. "We're focusing on activities, education and mostly we're emphasizing fun." The two-day event, patterned after a similar event in Seattle, features several free and inexpensive events for children and their families. Here are a few of the highlights: Today Children may make their own videos between 1 and 5 p.m. at St. Paul Cable Access Studio, 213 E.

4th St. Participants must bring their own VHS tapes. Reservations are required; call 224-5153. Children can help build and then eat a giant banana split from 4 to 5 p.m. at West Minnehaha Rec Reno tion into a dissertation on "the male peepee." She apologizes only once for her didacticism, promising to be light and fun later on, but mostly the didactic and the funny blend into each other.

She has wonderful insights about junk-bond dealers, what yuppies have done to the drug scene, designer jean-jackets. She also journeys into the world of a polite and sweet Minneapolis flasher. She ponders the invasion of perfume ads "in every magazine, even Dissent. They all smell alike, like pizza boxes." She wonders why, after an airplane crash, the black box is always intact. "Why don't they build a bigger black box the size of the whole airplane.

Then after the crash they can ask us what happened?" Some of her good ideas, like a retrospective of her favorite feelings, don't quite work yet and the occasional bad idea (like one dealing with a stranded New Mexico motorist in New York) sort of wafts into air, and she knows it, quickly eliding over the moment and crashing down another path. "I have no superego," she explains. "There's nothing holding me back. Like Oliver North." But mostly her observations are on target. What makes her terrific is that she reacts to them so personally.

Like most of us, she wants the world to accept her, and to leave her alone. But the world is relentless and, thank heaven, Reno proves to be the most resilient of women. srsss-r RENO: She lacks themes, but guilt runs through things Continued from page 1E bundle of dysfunctions but, you know, how can you not be crazy in a crazy culture? "Mary, Mary quite contrary but I'm not being judgmental. I'm too conflicted myself," she says, to get things going. She doesn't have lots of themes, she admits, "but I have guilt." It runs through things.

Guilt, contradictions, denial, control, self-esteem, identity, all the little neuroses of modern culture, motor Reno's view of the world. She's admittedly not good at abstract concepts like time and supposed to write a paper on procrastination, "but it'll wait." And herself? "Listen, I accidentally got broke," she explains. "I kept seeing my name in the papers so I figured out I was making money. Talk about denial!" Concentration's another problem. Like when she's in the middle of making love "and suddenly the idea of Jesse Helms running the country comes to my mind!" She embraces the erotic.

"Where would we all be without orgasm?" she shouts. "At your throat, Mr. Helms, that's where." She laments that artists, to get money from the National Endowment for the Arts, have to sign a paper saying "they won't even think of doing anything that's HO-MOEROTICI How does Jesse Helms know what's homoerotic?" she asks. "Who's holding his meter? "It's all faggot-hating," she says. Why? "Because they think gay men really want to be women and how could anyone want to be that? Homophobia is mysogyny." She finds the significance of various body parts, from "enormous breastal accomplishment" to parts to the back you hardly ever think about.

She comes up with potential female equivalents for flipping the bird. She turns her pondering out laud about the controversial Robert Mapplethorpe photography exhibi- 4 arguably the first cult show. Though Rod Serling's otherworldly anthology never finished a season among the 25 top-rated series, it was popular enough to survive six seasons on CBS. Only after it went into syndicated reruns in the mid-1960s, when viewers could rewatch and study its episodes, did the series' status as a cult favorite solidify, complete with the paperback companion book that has since become obligatory. The same is true of "Star Trek," the appreciation of which soared after NBC canceled it and local TV stations began "stripping" its 79 episodes on a daily basis.

Science-fiction, fantasy and horror dominate the list of cult TV shows: "The Outer Limits," the alien-in-vader-of-the-week anthology during which viewers supposedly lost control of their TV sets. "The Prisoner," Patrick McGoo-han's Kafkaesque adventure series about a disaffected spy trapped in a pleasant but inescapable "village." "The Avengers," the smart, stylized sleuth series with debonair Patrick Macnee and leather-clad Diana Rigg. "Dark Shadows," TV's first and only gothic soap, complete with vampire. "Beauty and the Beast," which staked out an intensely romantic territory somewhere between Gotham City and "Wuthering Heights," and whose fanatics are as enraptured by the sound of the Beast's poetry as Peaks Freaks are by the sight of Dale Cooper's donuts. Even "The Andy Griffith Show," one of the few comedies with a cult, falls into that category.

Although it was an indisputable mainstream success during its years on CBS, it developed a more studious following after it ceased production in 1968 years that made placid little totaling $100 from Calhoun Square merchants the day of your taping. See stores for details. Limited-time slots are available, reservations are recommended. Call 824-1240. Only at Calhoun Square.

m. CITY VMLnUUN Which cable channel will buy the reruns?.