Romeo and Juliet, A Four Humors Theater Production at Bedlam Theatre on 5/12/08

By: Carl Atiya Swanson
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Take heart, Romeo & Juliet can be saved from Baz Luhrman and other melodramatic acts that have turned Shakespeare into a cliche. Four Humors Theater makes a wonderful case for the comic awkwardness of young love in their current production directed by Jason Ballweber, a pearl of a clown in his own right.   Set in lengthways down the Bedlam’s playing space, the stage is bookended by whimsical houses, an evocation of a Twin Citie...

TV Men, a nimbus production at Intermedia Arts on 5/10/08

By: David de Young
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TV Men, a nimbus production at Intermedia Arts (Saturday, May 10th, 2008) TV Men - Publicity photo by Jon Behm   By David de Young   “Our reality is just a TV set / inside a TV set inside a TV set, with nobody watching / but Sokrates / who changed / the channel in 399 B.C” – Anne Carson.   TV Men, the latest production by nimbus and directed by ...

Gem of The Ocean at Guthrie Theater on 4/27/08

By: Jon Behm
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  August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean is a bit like a Skip James song: slow to build, bitter and full of religious allusion. One particular lyric of James’s sticks with me:   I would rather be dead and six feet in my grave Than to be way up here, honey, treated this a-way   This idea is central to Wilson’s play, which deals with just what it means to be free in America ...

Jacobo Langsner 's Esperando La Carroza (Waiting for the Hearse) at Mixed Blood Theatre on 4/19/08

By: Janet Preus
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Waiting for the Hearse - Publicity Photo Mixed Blood Theatre closes its season with its 10th bi-lingual production, a farcical sitcom replete with flawed personalities and just over-the-top situations. Three families – one middle class, one wealthier, and one poorer – are united in blood by three brothers and an aging mother – apparently suffering from dementia – who is driving every...

You're No Fun, A Bedlam Theatre Production at Bedlam Theatre on 4/19/08

By: Carl Atiya Swanson
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You're No Fun - Photo courtesy of Samantha Johns I hate musicals. So does Samantha Johns, director of You're No Fun, a new musical at the Bedlam Theatre. This makes for the best musical I have ever seen (excluding Spamalot, a favorite for personal, sentimental reasons.) Johns sharpened the end of the cane to poke musical conventions in the eye and give us a hilarious romp with some biting satire and real punch...

Zenon Dance Company's 25th Anniversary at Southern Theater on 4/17/08

By: Jon Behm
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   Photo by Jeffrey Austin In its 25 years, the Zenon Dance Company has become the premier contemporary dance company in Minnesota, if not one of the top in the U.S.  Now celebrating a quarter-century’s worth of artistic achievement, the nine current dancers have brought a “best of” performance to the Southern Theater. It showcases some of the company’s finest work to date...

Broken Brain Summit at Old Arizona Theater on 4/5/08

By: Janet Preus
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  Directed by Scotty Reynolds   What if a group of brain damaged people gathered to discuss “what is the brain?” This is the premise that drives the plot of Interact’s Broken Brain Summit, which opened last weekend at the Old Arizona Theatre. The company makes a decidedly not funny subject laugh-out-loud funny, proving once again that good comedy is always about something serious. ...

Puntila & his Hired Man Matti, a Frank Theatre Production at City of Minneapolis Public Works yard on 3/20/08

By: David de Young
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Grant Richey as Herr Puntila and Carson Lee as Matti -  Photo by Tony Nelson Directed by Wendy Knox                                     The magic of a Frank Theatre production begins before the proverbial curtain even rises.&nbs...

The Drowsy Chaperone at Ordway Center for the Performing Arts on 3/18/08

By: Jon Behm
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Photo provided by the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts “I just want to be entertained. I mean, isn’t that the point?”   This was the question posed by "The Man in the Chair," the narrator of the Broadway hit The Drowsy Chaperone, when musing about the lack of pizzazz in theater today.  He says this in reverence of the gold...

Frozen at Park Square Theatre on 3/14/08

By: Janet Preus
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Frozen - publicity photo by Petronella J. Ytsma, Frozen by Bryony Lavery  Directed by James Cada Park Square Theatre in downtown St. Paul bills itself as the place for “entertainment that matters”, and delivers on that statement with the Tony-nominated play, “Frozen”, which opened Friday. Don’t stay away from this show because of the subject matter – ...