August: Osage County at Ordway Center for the Performing Arts on 3/16/10

By: John Olive
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Estelle Parsons as Violet in August: Osage County - Photo credit Robert J. Saferstein The setup of Tracy Letts's wonderful August: Osage County (at the Ordway, through March 21, ordway.org) is familiar: the family patriarch has died under mysterious circumstances and his three daughters, the "agitated Weston sisters", have arrived at the family manse in rural Oklahoma with t...

Iron Ring on 3/12/10

By: John Olive
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Ansa Akyea as King Jaya in the CTC's production of Iron Ring - Photo by Dan Norman Iron Ring (on the Children’s Theatre Company mainstage, 2400 Third Ave, through April 10, childrenstheatre.org) adapted by Charles Way from a novel by the gifted Lloyd Alexander is a journey story in the grandly mythic Joseph Campbell tradition. Way (one of the best and best known writers of ...

Music Lovers, a Workhaus Collective Production at The Playwrights' Center on 3/12/10

By: David de Young
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Nathan Christopher, Lindsay Marcy, Randy Reyes in MUSIC LOVERS - Photo by Travis Anderson There are plenty of things to like about Alan Berks’ new play Music Lovers (March 12th-28th at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis). The aphorism-laden and witty script will have you leaving the theater comparing memorable lines with your companions, and the music referen...

The Vaudevillian, Spirit of the American Dream at Southern Theater on 3/12/10

By: Janet Preus
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The Vaudevillian - Photo by Marc Norberg Photography Attending an event at the Southern Theater feels like taking a step back in time. Layers of remodeling and redecorating, one imagines – along with its history – have been stripped down to the bare and imperfect brick walls and proscenium façade. In celebration of its 100th anniversary, ...

Q&A with playwright Alan Berks about his new play, Music Lovers on 3/8/10

By: David de Young
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Nathan Christopher, Lindsay Marcy and Randy Reyes in MUSIC LOVERS - Photo credit - Travis Anderson Those of us who regularly see both music and theater events in the Twin Cities know that the scenes overlap a lot more than people might suspect. Musical theater aside, as exemplifed by the recent production of Rent which featurng Twin Cities Hip Hop and R&B ...

Somebody/Nobody at Mixed Blood Theatre on 2/26/10

By: John Olive
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 Elizabeth Grullon and Taj Ruler (in T-shirt) in Mixed Blood's SOMEBODY/NOBODY  - Photo by Ann Marsden Deranged starlet Sheena Keener flees the Surf Awards ("All those eyes"), stumbles out of her limo, rolls down a bebrambled freeway embankment and now with a photogenic scrape on her pampered forehead pounds on the wobbly door of Loli's cinderblock L.A. a...

Violet at The Guthrie Theater on 2/26/10

By: Janet Preus
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Violet - Britta Ollmann, Monty - Randy Schmeling, Preacher - Alan Sorenson and Young Violet - Maeve Moynihan in Theater Latté Da's production of VIOLET presented by the Guthrie Theater - Photo by Michal Daniel Theater Latté Da’s new musical, Violet – nicely suited to the Guthrie’s black box space, the Dowling Studio Theater – is a tight little ens...

Black Pearl Sings at Penumbra Theatre on 2/21/10

By: John Olive
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Crystal Fox (Pearl) and Stacia Rice (Susannah) -Photo credit: Ann Marsden Playwright Frank Higgins does two very smart things with his vivid Black Pearl Sings! (at Penumbra, 270 N. Kent Street, St. Paul, through March 14, penumbratheatre.org). First, he shoehorns an amazingly wide range of Depression-era America into his story: the humid Texas penitentiary, complete with chain g...

My Antonia at Illusion Theater on 2/19/10

By: Janet Preus
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John Catron as Jim Burden & Katie Guentzel as Antonia - Photo by Lauren B. Photography I will admit that I wondered why Illusion Theater (528 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis)  might pick this standard in American literature classes for a new adaptation. I know the book well, and even after years away from the classroom, I could recollect many images from its pages. Such is the p...

According to Coyote at The Children's Theatre Company on 2/14/10

By: John Olive
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George Keller in ACCORDING TO COYOTE - Publicity photo by Dan Norman The Trickster pops up everywhere. Reynard the Fox, Prometheus, Eshu (in the Yorba culture), the Monkey King (in Chinese mythology). In western literature, the quintessential Trickster is probably Shakespeare's Puck.     The character appears most vividly, though, in the vast and varied Native American storyt...