Anything Goes (currently docked at the Ordway for a week, though May 12) hails from the early tradition of American musical theater, when musical plays mostly consisted of comic sketches interspersed with (often brilliant) songs. There are a few notable exceptions – Showboat – but this is the basic m.o.; little effort was...
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Playwright Crispin Whittell and the determined Guthrie cast endeavor to turn Ivan Turgenev‘s melancholic, poignant, dreamy, and oh-so-Russian novel Home Of The Gentry into a brisk, bracing and breezy drawing room comedy — and they, for the most part, succeed. The story of The Primrose Path (at the Guthrie, through June 15) will be...
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“I don’t want realism,” Blanche DuBois cries in A Streetcar Named Desire (Ten Thousand Things Theater, various venues, through May 26), “I want magic!” The great Tennessee Williams serves up juicy dollops of both in this play. Streetcar celebrates eroticism, passion, marriage, the transformative power of raw storytelling. And heat: has New Orleans in...
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Actor Craig Johnson‘s layered, knowing, subtle and intelligent portrayal of Oscar Wilde is by far the best reason to see Gross Indecency: The Three Trials Of Oscar Wilde (Walking Shadow performing at the Minneapolis Theatre Garage, through May 4). Gross Indecency dramatizes the (successful; I don’t think I’m revealing too much here) efforts of...
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The great Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca died a nasty and sordid death: murdered by homophobic fascists, alongside a road, at night, his bullet-riddled body flung into an anonymous mass grave. It is the achievement – and it is a major one – of Nilo Cruz‘s Lorca In A Green Dress to...
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If you missed John Catron‘s intensely silly, hootingly funny and utterly astonishing work in The Winter’s Tale at the Flying G a few seasons back, you should endeavor to journey back in time and check it out. Failing that, you should see Misterman, at Frank Theatre (performing at the Southern, through April 28). Catron...
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“Do you have any idea how much,” Sidney Bruhl rhapsodizes in Deathtrap (at the Jungle, through May 19), “a play like that is worth in today’s market? Two million dollars!” Is it really possible? That a combination of glib theatrics, rapier-thin characters, twisty thrilleresque plotting and nasty comedy could transform an innocent dramatist into...
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Joey Stoshack has an amazing ability: he time-travels. Using an old baseball card, Joey whirls and twirls his way back into the past. In the case of Jackie And Me (playing at Children’s Theatre Company, through April 14), Joey visits Brooklyn in 1947, where the young, black, fiercely talented Jackie Robinson is being invited...
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Bollywood is the common term for the lengthy (they are usually 3+ hours with intermission) Hindi language extravaganzas made in India. These movies, also called masala (i.e., spicy) films, feature genre-mashing combinations of melodrama, romance, love triangles. They contain nasty villains, hunky men and astonishingly beautiful sari wearing women. And of course catchy songs...
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Review written by Janet Preus and John Olive. Penumbra Theatre came charging back to life last night with a production of Spunk, an adaptation of three stories by the great Zora Neale Hurston, written for the stage by George C, Wolfe, with music provided by Chic Street Man. Penumbra’s iteration of Spunk is directed...
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