A one-man show in which Eric Bogosian plays, in succession, ten characters, none of whom interact with or refer to any of the others; each inhabits his own eerily self-contained world. The surprising thing about this acting tour de force is that its radically disparate parts really add up to something: in rock-and-roll terms, it's a concept album, not just a collection of singles. This picture, directed (erratically) by John McNaughton, was filmed in concert-movie style, with multiple cameras and before a paying crowd, and Bogosian looks relaxed and confident. In the past, his performances often felt desperate, coercive; he seems more willing now to allow the audience some freedom in responding to his characters. There's a real progression in the course of the film, from characters who provoke immediate, visceral reactions to characters whose effect on us is more ambiguous. Bogosian warms us up with surefire stuff to prepare us for the riskier, more demanding material in the final part of the show. His last three monologues are the funniest in the movie-probably the finest work he has ever done. In them, he manages to lure the audience into very strange emotional territory. We begin to see the poetic sense of the monologuists' bizarre belief systems; we see, that is, why each of the lunatics and fools in this movie is convinced that his skewed perspective is a comprehensive vision of the world. That's an amazing thing for a comic performer to do. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006
The New Yorker
