“Do you have any idea how much,” Sidney Bruhl rhapsodizes in Deathtrap (at the Jungle, through May 19), “a play like that is worth in today’s market? Two million dollars!” Is it really possible? That a combination of glib theatrics, rapier-thin characters, twisty thrilleresque plotting and nasty comedy could transform an innocent dramatist into...
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Nobody does musical theater better than Theater Latté Da. Notice I didn’t qualify that with an “in the Twin Cities.” If theater were a competition (and thank heavens that it isn’t) this company could offer courses in how to do it right. I don’t gush often, but I’m gushing now. First lesson: How to...
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Joey Stoshack has an amazing ability: he time-travels. Using an old baseball card, Joey whirls and twirls his way back into the past. In the case of Jackie And Me (playing at Children’s Theatre Company, through April 14), Joey visits Brooklyn in 1947, where the young, black, fiercely talented Jackie Robinson is being invited...
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Bollywood is the common term for the lengthy (they are usually 3+ hours with intermission) Hindi language extravaganzas made in India. These movies, also called masala (i.e., spicy) films, feature genre-mashing combinations of melodrama, romance, love triangles. They contain nasty villains, hunky men and astonishingly beautiful sari wearing women. And of course catchy songs...
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Review written by Janet Preus and John Olive. Penumbra Theatre came charging back to life last night with a production of Spunk, an adaptation of three stories by the great Zora Neale Hurston, written for the stage by George C, Wolfe, with music provided by Chic Street Man. Penumbra’s iteration of Spunk is directed...
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The Guthrie’s Dowling Studio Theater is the site for Mu Performing Arts fresh, new production of their founder and artistic director’s play, Yellow Fever. Although it’s been thirty years since the play’s premiere – and the W. W. II-era internment camps are a generation or more removed – the play’s premise remains as meaningful...
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Money porn. There’s a long tradition in American storytelling of asking audiences to gawk at the shallow goings-on of the ultra-rich. The tradition began in the 20s with the work of Edith Wharton, came into its own during the Depression (My Man Godfrey), found real traction in the Ronald Reagan 80s (Tom Wolfe’s hootingly...
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Ten Thousand Things’ (TTT) Artistic Director Michelle Hensley has a way of spotting the timeless themes in a play and grounding her company in them. In this case, she served as producer, but her vision and focus was surely guiding this wonderful theater on its path with a new play, The Seven cleverly conceived by...
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The past is ineluctably and achingly present in Jon Robin Baitz‘s moving (and occasionally frustrating) drama, Other Desert Cities (at the Guthrie through March 24). The Wyeths, Polly and Lyman, have left smoggy L.A., chockfull of ego and intrigue and have moved to the desert, to happy happy Gerald Ford-land – Palm Springs –...
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One hates to begin a rave notice with a negative, but it has to be said and I may as well say it now: if you’re looking for a straight forward, coherent and accessible reading of Washington Irving‘s enduring Halloween masterwork The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow (Walking Shadow Theatre Company performing at Red Eye,...
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