How can one actor play the size, the scope, the meaning of the Trojan War – or any war? He plays it as one man against another. He gives these men names and families. He puts them in a place in time: Ancient Troy or modern-day Ohio; a champion named Hector or a kid...
Read more »
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...
Read more »
The Children’s Theatre Company returns to an old favorite with Sharon Holland’s script of Lewis Carroll’s classic fantasy, Alice in Wonderland. About ten years after Dominic Serrand directed for CTC, artistic director Peter Brosius takes a more traditional path down that famous rabbit hole, but it’s still brimming with the splendid technical virtuosity and...
Read more »
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...
Read more »
“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...
Read more »
It’s April, it’s still snowing, and The Guthrie Theater launches a show about ice fishing. What are the chances? The forces of nature, the theater muses and Fate itself must have all played supporting roles. But the theater also patiently angled for this one and after a long, cold winter, the Guthrie’s landed a...
Read more »
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...
Read more »
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...
Read more »
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...
Read more »
Mixed Blood Theatre brings another adaptation by Caridad Svich with the world premiere of In the Time of Butterflies (En El Tiempo De Las Mariposas). Produced by artistic director Jack Reuler and directed by José Zayas, it is an engaging and moving portrait of siblings caught up in the stormy politics of the mid-20th...
Read more »
