Slasher (Urban Samurai, performing at the Sabes Jewish Community Center, through Feb 18) would make a better movie. Playwright Allison Moore‘s premise is terrific: director Marc Hunter has cast Sheena as “the last girl” – the lead, in other words – in Bloodbath and this gore-splattered film represents, Sheena fervently believes, her ticket to...
Read more »
Welcome back to the days of civilized murder and mayhem, done with style by people who wear dinner jackets and sip brandy in an elegant gold-toned living room. This is the world recreated at the Jungle Theater for Frederick Knott’s 1952 Broadway hit, Dial M for Murder, a classy production and wonderfully satisfying evening...
Read more »
To his credit, in End Of The Rainbow (at the Guthrie, through March 11) playwright Peter Quilter refuses to give us the “pretty” Judy Garland, the achingly luminous singer who wowed us in The Wizard Of Oz (age 17), A Star Is Born (32), at the famous Carnegie Hall concert (age 41 – “The...
Read more »
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 »
Produced by the History Theatre at the Minnesota History Center, in tandem with the exhibit that opened last fall, 1968 is also a collaborative project with the Playwrights Center. Seven scenes written by PWC members tell personal stories that are representative of significant events during that year. The scenes were ingeniously connected by a...
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 »
The Ordway Center for the Performing Arts is offering up a magical evening for families this holiday season with Rogers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella. No, it’s not about Christmas, but it’s a gentle and satisfying story full of sparkle and spectacle that’s sure to create a warm memory, particularly for the little girl in your...
Read more »
