Playwright Katie Hae Leo presents us with a pleasantly breezy and vivacious narrator in her lovely Four Destinies (Mu Performing Arts at Mixed Blood Theatre, through Oct 30). The narrator is named Katie Leo. This Katie is a playwright and…
Author: John Olive
Come Fly Away at the Ordway
Perhaps I’m beginning my review on an unacceptably mercantile note, but I believe that the under-sung heroes of the thrilling Come Fly Away (at the Ordway, through Oct 16) are the producers, and their agents and attorneys, who worked the…
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee by Theatre Latte Da performing at the Ordway
Looking for some undemanding entertainment? Something that provides talented actor/singers with a vehicle for goofy characterization, plus a slew of tuneful songs? Minus the distraction of a real story? Of course you are! Theater Latté Da has the show for…
Burial At Thebes at the Guthrie Theater
First you see Monica Frawley‘s astonishing set: raw crumbling concrete walls, soaring, high and deep, inset with urn and coffin-holding cubicles, incense smoke rising up. The set is simultaneously ancient and modern, late 21st century catacombs – and very creepy,…
reasons to be pretty by Walking Shadow Theatre Company performing in the Guthrie’s Dowling Studio
Steph is angry. Angry is to put it mildly. Steph is furious, screaming, in a state of howling rage, throwing pillows, stomping around the bedroom, spewing the fuck word and various other obscenities with machine-gun-like abandon. Her boyfriend Greg, the…
The Pride at the Pillsbury House Theatre
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…
A Short Play About 9/11 by Workhaus Collective
Nine-eleven. It’s no longer just a date, it’s code, for an impossible-to-describe national catastrophe. Even at this remove nine-eleven remains a series of jangled images: a jet plane slamming into a tall building. Conservatively dressed businessmen hurtling to their deaths…
Mercy Watson To The Rescue at Childrens Theatre Co.
Mercy Watson gets where she’s going in Act 1, Scene 1, page 1: “Toast!” she cries. “Toast and butter!” Mercy, a pig, says this, oh, seven or eight hundred times during CTC’s charming Mercy Watson To The Rescue (at the…
Hamlet at the Jungle Theater
Hamlet (at the Jungle Theater, through Oct 9) is the greatest play ever written. William Shakespeare‘s sinuous exploration of (in no particular order) revenge, love, ambition, power, madness, violence, suicide, lust, agonizing passivity, aristocratic privilege represents, along with the Sistine…
Waiting For Godot by Theatre Pro Rata at the Hollywood Theatre
In a just world, the Hollywood Theater, that Depression-era temple to the art of cinema, would thrive. A small but worthy arts group – like, oh, say, Theatre Pro Rata – would take over, quickly find the dough for lovely…