On the Blog
In case you missed its first go-round, or you just can’t get enough of R&B love, the locally conceived and realized “Always & Forever” returns in all its boomer-era wonderfulness to the Illusion Theater. Set in a barber shop (it had to be set someplace, and this place is as good as any), four...
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The Department of Redundancy Department (presented at the Bryant Lake Bowl by The Recovery Party through June 26th) strikes again with a new show workshopped and performed by a solid cast of local theater regulars. It’s class A sketch comedy with material that dabbles in the politically incorrect without attempting to impress us with...
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Theater de la Jeune Lune lives on in an original show written and performed by Steve Epp and directed by Dominique Serrand, presented May 17, 2010 at the Rarig Center on the University of Minnesota campus. In case you missed its earlier run, The House Can’t Stand has returned in a slightly edited version,...
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Wormwood, which opened May 6, continues Hardcover Theater’s “less is more” approach to reducing potentially unwieldy stories to perfectly manageable ones, even on the Bryant-Lake Bowl’s tiny stage. The theater company has carved out a singular niche in this town, adapting relatively lesser known books (in the public domain) for live performance done in...
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By Janet Preus The Lincoln Center Theater’s touring production of South Pacific, now running at the Ordway in St. Paul, offers a slightly edgier take on the war-in-paradise story. Certainly one of the best shows ever written in this genre, this production does a classy job of updating the staging, movement and technical presentation...
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The Children’s Theatre Company (CTC) opened a strikingly handsome staging of the now classic Disney film, Mulan, to a full house of adoring fans – some even dressed as the title character. According to director, David Mann, the script sent from Disney was void of any stage directions, so the company that is renowned...
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The Guthrie opened David Henry Hwang’s most acclaimed play, M. Butterfly, to a packed house that gave every indication of having left their own worlds behind to contemplate this inscrutable and fantastic story. The story is launched from both a true incident involving a French diplomat and the opera, Madame Butterfly, but Puccini’s opera...
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Mixed Blood may just have the most eclectic tastes of any theater I’ve reviewed in the Twin Cities, finding little gems that beautifully reflect their larger mission, while providing us with fine entertainment. With The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity they’ve launched a play about wrestlers that even I totally enjoyed. To explain. I...
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Table Salt Productions premiered the third new work in its first season, offering a personal look at a moment in the revolution which transformed Iran’s political picture in the early 1980’s. This was writer Ali Ravi’s first foray into dramatizing what was a partly fictionalized account of his own family’s experience. The family of...
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Attending an event at the Southern Theater feels like taking a step back in time. Layers of remodeling and redecorating, one imagines – along with its history – have been stripped down to the bare and imperfect brick walls and proscenium façade. In celebration of its 100th anniversary, the performance, too, takes us all...
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