Elmer Rice‘s brilliant Street Scene (beautifully done by Girl Friday Productions, performing at the Minneapolis Theater Garage through July 30) burst onto the Broadway stage in 1929. Groundbreaking, realistic but not grimly naturalistic, Street Scene explores the textures of life…
Author: John Olive
H.M.S. Pinafore at the Guthrie Theater
Perhaps director Joe Dowling and playwright Jeffrey Hatcher (provider of “additional material”) are right: as it stands Gilbert and Sullivan‘s gloriously English, emphatically 19th century H.M.S. Pinafore (at the Guthrie, through August 28) is too dry and dreary for 21st…
Panic at Park Square Theatre
In Panic (at Park Square Theatre, through July 10), playwright Joseph Goodrich creates a “cozy” mystery: characters are powerful, wealthy, self-assured. They live postcard-perfect lives. Henry Lockwood, famous film-director, prepares to open his latest film (a grand success, of course)…
Guys And Dolls at the Ordway
“What kind of doll are you?” Sky Masterson, high-roller extraordinaire, asks incredulously. To which Sergeant Sarah Brown, proud marcher for the Salvation Army, now sober after getting herself roundly sloshed on Bacardi-flavored milkshakes, replies defiantly, “I’m a mission doll!” End…
A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum at the Jungle Theater
For the first time in the Swiss cheesy memory of this reviewer, a Jungle Theater play has been directed by neither Bain Boehlke nor by his apparent heir apparent Joel Sass. Instead, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To…
God Of Carnage at the Guthrie Theater
New York is a marvelous city: compact, gorgeously slummy, ethnicities swirling together, SROs right next to upper income high-rises. The City (New Yorkers never bother with the actual name) is filled with weird clubs, outstanding eateries, architectural gems, astounding street…
Opus at Park Square Theatre
Park Square Theatre is turning plays about classical music into a minor specialty. They recently produced (it opened the night of the Big Blizzard) 2 Pianos 4 Hands, a lively and affecting mediation on failure: what happens when you devote…
In The Red And Brown Water by Pillsbury House Theatre performing at the Guthrie
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…
after the quake by Walking Shadow Theatre Company
Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami is a master of the everyday surreal: he creates ordinary characters – bank clerks, university students, data processors – and builds around them fantastic dream-like stories. Like Dorothy thrust into the land of Oz, Murakami’s people…
Sexy Librarian: File Under Rock Musical by Joking Envelope at the Minneapolis Theatre Garage
The play stars Anna Sundberg, and that’s all you really need to know. In Sexy Librarian: File Under Rock Musical (Joking Envelope at the Minneapolis Theatre Garage through May 21) Sundberg plays Constance Black, ultra-frumpy librarian, frizzy-haired, near-sighted, bent under…