I approached the production of Dominic Taylor‘s powerful I Wish You Love (Penumbra Theatre, through May 22) with some trepidation. Dennis W. Spears is lavishly talented, tall and charismatic, with a presence as big as the grand outdoors. We recently saw him do a truly brilliant rendition of the 60s hit “Spooky”: it was...
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On rare occasions in theater, all the critical elements seem to converge in one glorious experience. The script is brilliant, the actors are perfectly suited to their roles, and the director, with great respect for both, seems to simply open up the story and let it live and breathe among us. This is the...
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This year’s Black Nativity, an annual tradition at Penumbra Theatre, takes a modern approach, hanging the nativity story on a contemporary American family. Conceived by Lou Bellamy and T. Mychael Rambo, and directed by Dominic Taylor, Black Nativity: Now’s the Time brings Mary and Joseph and the angels right into the living room of...
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The incident detailed in Adrienne and Adam P. Kennedy‘s harrowing and autobiographical Sleep Deprivation Chamber (at Penumbra, 270 N. Kent St., St. Paul, penumbratheatre.org) is, unfortunately, as common as rain: a policeman commits a vicious assault and then concocts a lie in order to cover up his malfeasance. That an innocent man might go...
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In his lovely Two Old Black Guys Just Sitting Around Talking (Penumbra, 270 Kent St., St Paul, through May 23, penumbratheatre.org) playwright Gus Edwards presents us with two gentlemen of a grand experience of life, inhabiting the trash strewn corner of a New York City park, watching the world pass by – and insulting...
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Playwright Frank Higgins does two very smart things with his vivid Black Pearl Sings! (at Penumbra, 270 N. Kent Street, St. Paul, through March 14, penumbratheatre.org). First, he shoehorns an amazingly wide range of Depression-era America into his story: the humid Texas penitentiary, complete with chain gang, the convict (Pearl) who holds, in her bones,...
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