First the good news: the design of Charley’s Aunt (at the Guthrie through Jan 15) is exquisite. The Guthrie’s tech department, the best in the country, really outdid themselves (between this play and the richly produced A Christmas Carol they must have labored overtime and eminently deserve the holiday vacation I hope they are...
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“A turkey?!” sputters the Cranky Critic, sufferer from permanent indigestion and squinty short-sightedness. “There were no turkeys in 1840 England. Ha. This is nothing more than an excuse for the Guthrie prop department to manufacture an oversized bird, stick it on a bed of plastic crabapples and wheel it onstage on a—” Hush. Go...
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As the audience enters the theater for the performance of Adam Rapp‘s taut The Edge Of Our Bodies (in the Guthrie‘s Dowling Studio, through Nov 20), actor Ali Rose Dachis sits, prim and unmoving, on the edge of a chair. She wears a schoolgirl’s plaid skirt, white knee highs, a frilly blouse (designed by...
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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, an effect reinforced by Christopher Akerlind‘s powerful lighting. When the cast processes in, accompanied...
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Steph is angry. Angry is to put it mildly. Steph is furious, screaming, in a state of howling rage, throwing pillows, stomping around the bedroom, spewing the fuck word and various other obscenities with machine-gun-like abandon. Her boyfriend Greg, the object of her wild fury, does his best to soothe and calm her –...
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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 story begins as the soldiers of Don Pedro are welcomed home from a victorious...
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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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New York is a marvelous city: compact, gorgeously slummy, ethnicities swirling together, SROs right next to upper income high-rises. The City (New Yorkers never bother with the actual name) is filled with weird clubs, outstanding eateries, architectural gems, astounding street theater everywhere you look. Funky and a touch dangerous to be sure, but this...
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Playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney lives in London and, indeed, his powerful In The Red And Brown Water (Pillsbury House Theatre performing in the Guthrie‘s Dowling Studio, through June 5) is written with an expatriate’s ardor. This begins with the play’s mythical smalltown Louisiana setting. Louisiana is, at least from this northerner’s perspective, the prime...
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In Arms And The Man (on the Guthrie‘s McGuire Stage, through May 8 ) George Bernard Shaw hides deep cynicism in plain sight, behind a veneer of flashy dialogue, sweet romance, giddy farce, lovable preening upperclass characters. We laugh, get pulled in by high energy antics, we have a wonderful time. But Shaw, the...
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