The best theater kicks down walls, pulls off the gloves and starts swinging. Mercy Killers, written and performed by Michael Milligan and produced by Pillsbury House Theatre, is that kind of play – a piece that rages against America’s broken systems – banking and lending, for one, but that’s just part of a larger...
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Tarell Alvin McCraney‘s The Brothers Size (a Pillsbury House Theatre and The Mount Curve Company co-production, performing in the Guthrie‘s Dowling Studio, through September 29) is, on a superficial level, a troubled-young-brother drama. Oshoosi Size, recently released from the penitentiary, has moved in with his stolid older brother Ogun, automobile mechanic, and struggles: to...
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Jomama Jones and her piquant band of accompanists have arrived at the Pillsbury House Theatre with a terrific show, Radiate Live! (through June 24). My firm advice: call the Pillsbury BO and make your rezzies. This show will take you through the summertime theatrical doldrums and the goodvibes will last – well, almost –...
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The past is painfully present in Tracey Scott Wilson‘s evocative (and challenging) Buzzer (Pillsbury House Theatre, through March 18). Jackson is the very model of a successful three piece suited attorney: perfect pedigree (Exeter/Harvard University/Harvard Law School), salary augmented by fat bonuses, the constantly buzzing cell phone (the past again). Jackson has “made it”...
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Ooh, a good one. Alexi Kaye Campbell‘s taut The Pride (Pillsbury House Theatre, through Oct 16) is a modestly scaled play on a huge subject: the nature of sexuality. Campbell creates three main characters, Oliver, Phillip and Sylvia and then fashions two stories, one set in 1958 and the other 50 years later, using,...
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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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Broke-ology (Pillsbury House Theatre, through April 10) breaks no new ground. Playwright Nathan Louis Jackson‘s writing is lovely, but it’s straight forward realism, a father-son drama played in a modest and tidy living room/kitchen. The designers, led by the estimable Joseph Stanley, have done first rate work but, really, any number of plays would...
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Pillsbury House Theatre opened the final production of their 2010 season, a crafty and winning play by Morris Panych. Vigil’s premise is simple enough: Kemp (Steve Hendrickson) is called to his dying aunt’s side, but it is clear that death is not as imminent as Kemp would like. He talks to her, however, as...
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