It’s a dark and stormy night. Working in a rented and calculatedly funky New York City rehearsal studio, director slash playwright slash occasional actor Thomas is ending a long day of auditions for his adaptation of the obscure German novel Venus Im Pelz by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Thomas phones his girlfriend Stacy and vents:...
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Lauren Yee‘s The Tiger Among Us (Mu Performing Arts performing at Mixed Blood Theatre, through Feb 10) sprawls. Literally: director Ellen Fenster utilizes Mixed Blood’s widest configuration and in her firm hands the play ranges from Dad’s extreme stage right deer stand, to the car (we assume it’s a Minnesota beater) located on the...
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It’s January. Your impulse is to curl up under a throw blanket on the couch and disappear into a good book, right? Or a fine, classic movie? The Guthrie Theater’s new production of Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” is a better pairing for the season than either. Dark, long, a lot of...
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Good Lord, what are they going to do on two show days? Pinocchio (at the Childrens Theatre Company, through Feb 24) is the clutch-poppingest, lustiest, take-it-to-10-and-let-her-rippest, most insanely creative show to come down ye olde pike in a long long time. One imagines the performers, after the show, staggering down to the dressing room...
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Do we count William Shakespeare‘s pastoral romance As You Like It (the Acting Company, performing in the Guthrie‘s Dowling Studio, through Feb 3) among the bard’s weaker efforts? A mere pot-boiler, a crowd-pleaser? Lovers and court sophisticates retreating to the Forest of Arden, finding love and country simplicity and little else? Many literary critics...
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First the good: Aida (Theater Latté Da performing at the marvelous Pantages, through Jan 27) is a rippingly good show. If you like full-bore, rock-’em-sock-’em musicals, Latté Da delivers the goods. Anchored by a stirring Elton John/Tim Rice score (those soaring love duets!), the ageless story of doomed lovers in ancient Egypt has undeniable...
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If you want to glean a sense of the transformative power of masks watch as Maria dons the Virgin Mary mask in La Natividad (a co-production of In The Heart Of The Beast Puppet And Mask Theatre and St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, through Dec 22). Suddenly the performer, who had been merely human, becomes… ...
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The story of a youthful con artist, staying one step ahead of the law, living by his wits, naïve and fearless, is a great story. In the hands of accomplished writers, it transfers to the musical theater genre surprisingly well. “Catch Me If You Can,” running this week at the Orpheum Theater, is set...
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Need a little “Sparklejollytwinklejingley” this Christmas season? Looking for an overload like indulging in an entire plate of Christmas cookies? I’ve got just the thing: take someone who could use a little Christmas to the Broadway musical, “Elf,” showing through December at the Ordway Theater. You’ll come out smiling and laughing, stuffed with cozy...
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The Servant Of Two Masters (at the Guthrie, through January 20). First some mechanicals come out in semi-darkness, speaking pidgin Italian. They kill the lights and we have an exquisite firefly effect: twinkling lights, hundreds of them, seeming to float o’er the McGuire stage (three cheers for lighter Chuan-Chi Chan). Then the lights shoot...
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