In a just world, the Hollywood Theater, that Depression-era temple to the art of cinema, would thrive. A small but worthy arts group – like, oh, say, Theatre Pro Rata – would take over, quickly find the dough for lovely and efficient air conditioning, silent and effective air circulation. New plumbing would get laid...
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Elmer Rice‘s brilliant Street Scene (beautifully done by Girl Friday Productions, performing at the Minneapolis Theater Garage through July 30) burst onto the Broadway stage in 1929. Groundbreaking, realistic but not grimly naturalistic, Street Scene explores the textures of life in a lower-class NYC neighborhood during one incident-rich 24 hour period. Characters struggle with...
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Perhaps director Joe Dowling and playwright Jeffrey Hatcher (provider of “additional material”) are right: as it stands Gilbert and Sullivan‘s gloriously English, emphatically 19th century H.M.S. Pinafore (at the Guthrie, through August 28) is too dry and dreary for 21st century Americans. The story, of the sea captain’s daughter torn between her love for...
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In Panic (at Park Square Theatre, through July 10), playwright Joseph Goodrich creates a “cozy” mystery: characters are powerful, wealthy, self-assured. They live postcard-perfect lives. Henry Lockwood, famous film-director, prepares to open his latest film (a grand success, of course) and is starting work on his newest (a mystery, naturally). His semi-invalid wife, Emma,...
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Seeing Finland’s Arto Järvelä and Minnesota’s Kaivama perform together at The Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis Friday night made me feel downright happy. For a musical performance to be a success, happiness need not be either the intention or the result, but regardless, it’s a great bonus. Arto Järvelä is a founding member of...
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“What kind of doll are you?” Sky Masterson, high-roller extraordinaire, asks incredulously. To which Sergeant Sarah Brown, proud marcher for the Salvation Army, now sober after getting herself roundly sloshed on Bacardi-flavored milkshakes, replies defiantly, “I’m a mission doll!” End of Act One. I tried hard, I really did. But I couldn’t entirely shrug...
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Upright Egg Theatre Company has opened a company-created show set in a steampunk world laced with dozens of metaphor fragments about love and loss, manmade machines versus nature, lower versus upper classes, beauty versus functionality. But that doesn’t really tell you what to expect. In Songbird, written by Brian Watson-Jones, Inventor Zebulon Volt finds...
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