Sh. The dyspeptic Critic is here, but I think he’s asleep. Let’s not wake him. He has a distressing tendency to belch out his poisonous opinions with room-clearing fervor. Let’s talk softly. Carole King‘s 70s album Tapestries was the soundtrack…
Author: John Olive
The Magic Flute by Minnesota Opera, performing at the Ordway
Minnesota Opera‘s production (at the Ordway through Nov 22 – a short run; don’t mess about; getcher tickets) of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart‘s glittering The Magic Flute boasts the most extensive and detailed use of projections I have ever seen. Did…
Feast Of Wolves, Workhaus Collective performing at the Southern Theater
Feast Of Wolves, a fierce and powerful drama by Alan M. Berks, is an adaptation of Aeschylus‘s Orestia Trilogy (Workhaus Collective performing, this time, at the Southern, thru Nov 15). You know, the delightful play that details the death of…
An Octoroon at Mixed Blood Theatre
Dion Boucicault was a 19th century melodramatist, the fellow who gave us such ne’er-produced masterworks as The School For Scheming and The Vampire. His overwrought potboiler The Octoroon mines the same thin vein of theatrical ore, a play in which…
Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street by Theater Latté Da, performing at the Ritz Theater
Mark Benninghfen, who plays the eponymous character in Stephen Sondheim‘s giddy and brilliantly tuneful revenge fantasia, Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street (Theater Latté Da, performing at the Ritz Theater, through Oct 25) is a revelation: board stiff…
Ariadne Auf Naxos by the Minnesota Opera performing at the Ordway
We (my lovely wife Mary; my lovely HowWasTheShow.com colleague Janet Preus; Janet’s handsome SO Tim; and yours truly) attended the “Social Media Preview Night” last night of Minnesota Opera‘s upcoming production of Richard Strauss‘s intense and turgid and tuneful Ariadne…
A Lie Of The Mind by Theatre Pro Rata, performing at Nimbus Theater
What’re you gonna do with an unwieldy – and bloodily frightening piece of stagecraft like Sam Shepard‘s A Lie Of The Mind (Theatre Pro Rata, performing at Nimbus Theater, through Sept 27)? You might just through up your arms and…
Akeelah And The Bee at the Children’s Theatre Company
Akeelah And The Bee (Children’s Theatre Company, through Oct 11) tells a real story. The characters have substance, arcs, power. There is a plot, and it’s a plot you can get your teeth into. Akeelah Anderson, a focused and passionate…
Extremities by Dark And Stormy Productions
* * * SPOILER ALERT * * * It is impossible to write about William Mastrosimone‘s crudely effective Extremities (Dark & Stormy Productions, performing in the Grain Belt Warehouse, through Sept 19) without revealing crucial plot details. So if…
The Pirates Of Penzance at the Ordway
The first thing to say about the Ordway’s rollicking production of the William Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan classic The Pirates Of Penzance (in the cavernous Ordway, through August 16): it’s good. Excellent, in fact. Especially the music. Everyone sings the…