“Cash.” This is how Nora Helmer, hero of Rebecca Gilman‘s Dollhouse (on the Guthrie’s McGuire proscenium, through July 11, guthrietheater.org), her modernization of the Henrik Ibsen classic A Doll’s House, succinctly describes what she most wants from this life. Gilman cunningly sets her play in 2004, that not so distant era of wild from-the-hip...
Read more »
Circle Mirror Transformation (at the Guthrie’s Dowling Studio, through June 13, 612.377.2224, guthrietheater.org) by Annie Baker sneaks up on you. It all seems, initially, so sweet and innocuous. Marty is conducting a class for beginning actors in a small Vermont town. She sets up some goofy exercises and improvs. But despite (or perhaps because...
Read more »
The Guthrie opened David Henry Hwang’s most acclaimed play, M. Butterfly, to a packed house that gave every indication of having left their own worlds behind to contemplate this inscrutable and fantastic story. The story is launched from both a true incident involving a French diplomat and the opera, Madame Butterfly, but Puccini’s opera...
Read more »
Theater Latté Da’s new musical, Violet – nicely suited to the Guthrie’s black box space, the Dowling Studio Theater – is a tight little ensemble piece that spins along like the bus carrying its title character on her literal and metaphorical journey. Weaving past and present into one (isn’t it all just one life...
Read more »
David Henry Hwang calls the question very early in Yellow Face (produced by the always worthwhile Theatre Mu in the Guthrie’s Dowling Studio, through Feb 21, guthrietheater.org): “Is race a meaningless construct?” Who, the play asks, is more authentically Chinese? The successful American whose Chinese ancestry is impeccable or the white man who travels to China...
Read more »
As my companion pointed out, one of the enduring pleasures of Macbeth (on the Guthrie’s Wurtele Stage, through April 3, guthrietheater.org) is that it’s so much fun. A tragedy to be sure, and stern academicians will parse the deep meaning of the blood imagery, the rich broken iambic of the language, the complex clashing ambitions...
Read more »
