Like the recent The Music Man, Follies (Artistry Theater, through May 6) exudes sturdy but rough-around-the edges sweetness and charm. Director Benjamin McGovern has done a crackerjack job casting Follies, (music and lyrics by the great Stephen Sondheim, book by…
Author: John Olive
Review | The Skriker: Churchillian theatricality
Fortune’s Fool Theatre, through April 22Newness: a relatively new (to me anyhow) theater, Fortune’s Fool. FF has done a half dozen plays, plays by Dan Pinkerton, Kira Obolensky, etc. Now they are performing a newish (well, seldom produced in any event) play by the great…
Review | The Wolves: breezy charm
Jungle Theater, through April 29The Wolves (Jungle Theater, through Apr 29) concerns a group of young women, 9 by my count, prepping for a series of soccer games. Soccer-haters (a category that includes myself) take note: you don’t have to watch these women play.…
Review | The Great Divide II: wonderfully uneven
Pillsbury House Theatre, through March 25The Great Divide II is a collection of 5 short one acts presented without intermission by Pillsbury House Theatre (through March 25), a follow-up to last season’s successful The Great Divide. The plays – by Andrew Rosendorf, Christina M. Ham,…
Review | Indecent: beautifully dilapidated
The Guthrie, through March 24Your two agèd (make that astute and intelligent) www.HowWasTheShow.com reviewers, John Olive and Janet Preus, recently attended a performance at the G of Paula Vogel‘s Indecent. They then repaired to the bar downstairs and prepared the following review: John Olive:…
Review | Park & Lake: a hoot and a half
Ten Thousand Things; various venues (check the TTT website), through March 11What gives with all these outré comedies currently gracing stages in the twins? Two Mile Hollow. 21 Extremely Bad Breakups. Noises Off. And now the latest offering from Ten Thousand Things: Park & Lake. Are the sanctimonious clowns in Washington…
Review | Two Mile Hollow: over-the-top, and thoroughly enjoyable
A co-production between Mu Performing Arts and Mixed Blood Theatre; at Mixed Blood through March 4Camp: when the process(es) of the performers supercede(s) the needs of the story being told. By this definition, Two Mile Hollow – a co-production between Mixed Blood Theater and Mu Performing Arts (an arrangement one wishes more theaters would make),…
Review | Assassins: overlong maybe, but fab
Theater Latté Da, through March 18Ever wonder why the dapper Johnny Wilkes Booth murdered Abraham Lincoln? Laid awake at night sorting out the reasons why the cheerfully insane Charles Guiteau put a bullet in President Garfield’s back? Tried to figure out why the effervescently cute…
Review | My Mother Has 4 Noses: brilliant music, difficult subject matter charmingly rendered
At the Jungle Theatre, through March 4Let’s get this out of the way right off ye olde bat: My Mother Has 4 Noses (at the Jungle, through March 4) is not really a play. It’s a story. Relentlessly past tense. The teller – the charming and…
Review | The Maids: pure energy
Dark & Stormy Productions, 77 13th Ave NE, though Feb 17Like all of Dark & Stormy Productions plays, Jean Genet‘s The Maids is done in a small, empty office space in the old Grain Belt Brewery (77 13th Ave NE, Minneapolis, through Feb 17). The space is intimate. The actors…