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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It doesn’t lack for exuberance, this latest in an ever-lengthening line of Sherlock Holmes adaptations. Katie Forgette‘s Sherlock Homes And The Case Of The Jersey Lily (at Park Square Theatre through July 3; 20 W. 7th Place; parksquaretheatre.org) begins, as always with these plays, with Holmes and Watson relaxing in their cluttered Baker Street...
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“Cash.” This is how Nora Helmer, hero of Rebecca Gilman‘s Dollhouse (on the Guthrie’s McGuire proscenium, through July 11, guthrietheater.org), her modernization of the Henrik Ibsen classic A Doll’s House, succinctly describes what she most wants from this life. Gilman cunningly sets her play in 2004, that not so distant era of wild from-the-hip...
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Circle Mirror Transformation (at the Guthrie’s Dowling Studio, through June 13, 612.377.2224, guthrietheater.org) by Annie Baker sneaks up on you. It all seems, initially, so sweet and innocuous. Marty is conducting a class for beginning actors in a small Vermont town. She sets up some goofy exercises and improvs. But despite (or perhaps because...
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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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What a pleasure to actually see Autumn Ness. In The Biggest Little House In The Forest (on the Children’s Theatre Co.’s Cargill Stage, 2400 3rd Ave. S., Minneapolis, through June 20, childrenstheatre.org) Ms. Ness wears none of the feature disguising makeup or the over-the-top costume effects that marked her work in Cinderella, The Iron Ring,...
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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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Ten Thousand Things’ production of My Fair Lady (Ten Thousand Things, various venues, though note that the “public performances” are at the MN Opera Center, 620 N. 1st St., Minneapolis, May 7-30, tenthousandthings.org) owes more to George Bernard Shaw (creator of the source material) than to Lerner and Loewe. If you want to hear the...
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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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