Category: Theater

Two Trains Running at Penumbra Theatre

August Wilson’s probing and evocative portrait of Black America and the African-American experience can be seen in this searing and inspired production of Two Trains Running (Penumbra Theatre, through October 30). It is the seventh play of Mr. Wilson’s 20thCentury…

Burial At Thebes at the Guthrie Theater

First you see Monica Frawley‘s astonishing set: raw crumbling concrete walls, soaring, high and deep, inset with urn and coffin-holding cubicles, incense smoke rising up.  The set is simultaneously ancient and modern, late 21st century catacombs – and very creepy,…

“Neighbors” at Mixed Blood Theatre

Mixed Blood has opened their season with an outrageous play and an equally outrageous concept, and I am equally impressed with both. The play is Neighbors by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, a biting satire of every Black stereotype you’ve ever heard of;…

“Much Ado about Nothing”

The Guthrie Theater opened its 2011-2012 season last night with a new Joe Dowling production of Much Ado about Nothing. One of Shakespeare’s more serious comedies, it is rich in life lessons as the work of a seasoned playwright. The…

The Pride at the Pillsbury House Theatre

Ooh, a good one. Alexi Kaye Campbell‘s taut The Pride (Pillsbury House Theatre, through Oct 16) is a modestly scaled play on a huge subject: the nature of sexuality.  Campbell creates three main characters, Oliver, Phillip and Sylvia and then…

A Short Play About 9/11 by Workhaus Collective

Nine-eleven.  It’s no longer just a date, it’s code, for an impossible-to-describe national catastrophe. Even at this remove nine-eleven remains a series of jangled images: a jet plane slamming into a tall building.  Conservatively dressed businessmen hurtling to their deaths…