On the Blog
E. L. Doctorow was the author of two respected but not widely read novels when in 1975 he thundered onto the literary scene with Ragtime. Set 1902-17, the novel blends history and fantasy, private characters with oversized historical figures (J.P. Morgan, Booker T. Washington, Henry Ford, et al), all rendered in sharp but refined...
Read more »
In Harold And The Purple Crayon (at Children’s Theatre Co, through Feb 26) a company of first rate artists and performers collaborate on a deceptively simple, sweetly accessible and yet highly sophisticated… Well, what would you call Harold? A play? I suppose, but it’s really more a celebration of elegant design, tuneful music, astute...
Read more »
In Flesh And The Desert (Workhaus Collective performing at the Playwrights Center, through Jan 28), playwright Carson Kreitzer doesn’t concern herself with the air-conditioned glitter of contemporary Las Vegas – the Bellagio, the Venetian, pot-bellied cowboys meandering through the neo-fascist splendor of Caesar’s Palace. None of this. Rather, Kreitzer wants to examine the Vegas...
Read more »
Julius Caesar, asserts the officious and buttoned down Brutus in his oration at Caesar’s funeral, “was ambitious, I slew him.” But isn’t ambition the assassins’ over-riding motivation? They pay poor lip service to serving “great Rome,” but “lean and hungry” Cassius and his furtive cohorts react mostly to the man’s raw power. ...
Read more »
“I don’t do children’s theater,” director Julie Taymor informed the powers-that-be at the vaunted Disney Corporation “and I don’t do cute.” To their immense credit, they hired her anyway. The inventive Ms. Taymor then proceeded to transform the animated Disney film, with its simple story of a young lion, Simba, coming into his own...
Read more »
First the good news: the design of Charley’s Aunt (at the Guthrie through Jan 15) is exquisite. The Guthrie’s tech department, the best in the country, really outdid themselves (between this play and the richly produced A Christmas Carol they must have labored overtime and eminently deserve the holiday vacation I hope they are...
Read more »
Go to the Ordway and experience the “timeless enchantment” of Cinderella ($113 per ticket). Or try the Guthrie’s A Christmas Carol, after 35 years still “as powerful and uplifting as it ever was” ($73). Or maybe CTC’s “beloved” The Wizard Of Oz ($70). All this overpriced holiday feel-good about to send you shrieking into...
Read more »
“A turkey?!” sputters the Cranky Critic, sufferer from permanent indigestion and squinty short-sightedness. “There were no turkeys in 1840 England. Ha. This is nothing more than an excuse for the Guthrie prop department to manufacture an oversized bird, stick it on a bed of plastic crabapples and wheel it onstage on a—” Hush. Go...
Read more »
CTC’s The Wizard Of Oz (Childrens Theatre Company, through Jan. 8, 2012) imitates the 1939 MGM classic beat-by-beat: the structure is identical, the character conceits, the exquisite Arlen/Harburg songs. Much of the play’s dialogue comes directly from the movie. All the classic lines – “I’m not a witch at all!” “Who’d've thought a...
Read more »
Would, I wondered, Ellen McLaughlin‘s effective Ajax In Iraq (Frank Theatre, performing at the Playwrights Center, through Nov 27) work in 2011? The U.S. involvement in that country is winding down, measured now in days. For Iraqis, of course, the conflict – Sunni vs Shiite vs Kurd, autocratic fundamentalist vs democratic modernist – grinds...
Read more »
